Yet the home courses are where you spend dozens to hundreds of hours a year. You must choose them well.

The records fell easily at first. Dozens of seconds peeled away with every running of a course, and I could hardly wait for the next chance to improve.

I've lived nearby since 1981 and probably have averaged one run a week there. That's more than 1000 repetitions, and I have yet to tire of this course.

His name, Buzz, fits. He can buzz along at 40 miles an hour when his genetic memory moves him.

The results would have stayed on the watch face until the batteries died. But trying to make time stand still this way would have been a mistake. It is just as important to erase times eventually as to save them at first.

Our favorite: a former garbage dump converted into a riverside park. I first ran there more than 30 years ago when a marathon passed through this park that later became home to Pre's Trail.

Time means a great deal to every runner. It means everything to me, because most days miles don't count; only minutes do.

That's how most of us would feel. But the sport has a few deviants without consciences.

When running to fill a time quota, however, the reverse happens. You can't make that time pass any faster by rushing, so you settle into a pace that feels right to you at the moment. Each minute above a quota is a little victory.

A lesser but still fundamental rule of racing is that you properly enter the event. Anyone who doesn't but still insists on running interferes with the paying customers.

These thieves defend themselves by saying, 'I was there all the time, and the officials missed me.' Favorite excuses for missing surveillance checkpoints: jacket covered the number took off the shirt with the number hidden in a crowd.

Where did you run today? Now there's a question you don't often hear.

That time is important. It gives a comforting illusion of permanence not found in running by the mile.

Speed eventually neared its peak. The records forced me to work ever harder to drop a less and less time. These time trials came to feel like races, which are fun to run sporadically but not daily.

This act demonstrates graphically a turning away the past and moving ahead. You now get to refresh your time in a friendly way by running with the watch instead of against it or away from it.

Ours is a life of constant reruns. We're always circling back to where we'd we started, then starting all over again. Even if we don't run extra laps that day, we surely will come back for more of the same another day soon.

The Chip also reduces the damage done by bandits. They still steal drinks and cheers along the course, but no longer scramble the paying runners' results. No entry fee, no Chip, no time or place.

The hours, minutes and seconds stand as visible reminders that your effort put them all there. Preserve until your next run, when the watch lets you see how Impermanent your efforts are.

A course never quite looks the same way twice. The combinations of weather, season, light, feelings and thoughts that you find there are ever-changing.

In fact, the bandits steal the drinks and assistance provided along the course. Worse, they cross the finish line and mess up the scoring of legitimate runners.

I feared the verdict of the watch, where I either lost the race against time that day or would lose it soon by making the record even harder to break. The time trap had snapped shut.

Buzz has reduced my range. Running safely with him means using fewer and shorter routes, with multiple laps per day or multiple returns there per week. Neither of us minds repeating ourselves. This is what runners do.

The natural urge when running a distance is to push harder and finish sooner - to race against time. Every second behind a deadline is a little defeat.

Yet the home courses are where you spend dozens to hundreds of hours a year. You must choose them well.

They trained mostly by time periods, checking their pace for known distance only on special occasions.

I've lived nearby since 1981 and probably have averaged one run a week there. That's more than 1,000 repetitions, and I have yet to tire of this course.

No marathon gets easier later. The half way point only marks the end of the beginning.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

Sitting at home the way I do, I'd just love the hear from people. It'd be a great help in passing the time.

Most fathers don't see the war within the daughter, her struggles with conflicting images of the idealized and flawed father, her temptation both to retreat to Daddy's lap and protection and to push out of his embrace to that of beau and the world beyond home.

I was stuck at home in bed with me and got more and more involved with the Internet. I used it to keep in contact with friends and to make sure I was up to date with everything that was going on in the world.

I'm going to buy some green bananas because by the time I get home they'll be ripe.

Removing substantial fuel loads from our forests helps prevent catastrophic fire and better protects species, watersheds and neighboring communities that call them home.

I'm looking forward to providing the men of Seattle with an evening where they can kick back, light up a cigar and enjoy a night to themselves. Women, we can't technically keep you out, but please stay at home.

I listen to the phone-ins on the way home and I know how the fans feel.

I'm a 7 o'clock act. My people want to go to a show, a dinner and then go home and go to bed.

The average husband enjoys the total effect of his home but is usually unable to contribute any of the details of work and organisation that make it enjoyable.

To my mind, the most important aspect of the Nobel Awards is that they bring home to the masses of the peoples of all nations, a realization of their common interests. They carry to those who have no direct contact with science the international spirit.

I think a good MP is someone who cares for their community and becomes their champion, which is why I will make my home in any seat I am lucky enough to be selected for. Looks play no part in the equation, what matters is your ideas and connecting them to the electorate.

We in this Congress have a choice. The American people have a right to exercise a choice on this issue, as to whether our men and women will continue to fight and die in a war based on deception and fantasy, or to start bringing the troops home.

American and Israel share a special bond. Our relationship is unique among all nations. Like America, Israel is a strong democracy, a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty, a home to the oppressed and persecuted.

I'd get 3-4 cheap home runs every year. You know, little 'wood shots' down either line. They would be pop flies in any other park. But, goodness me, they didn't count the number of long outs!

Your home should be your home. People shouldn't be allowed to use whatever crazy lenses they use to catch you waking up in the morning.

He went, ever on the move, with the slow, shuffling step of wandering beggars who are nowhere at home.

At home in Paris I take a milk bath two times a week, but here on the road it is more difficult. I miss them.

When I am home for like a two-year stretch, I get antsy, because I want to work.

We need to work together, on a bipartisan basis, to create new jobs, increase job training, enact real and substantive middle class tax relief, and reward companies that create jobs at home.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

You should never meet your heroes. Paul Newman... I was so excited about meeting him, but he turned up in shell suit bottoms, slippers, and a jumper. He was just so worn out and old, he wanted to go home.