Arun Gupta, Miles to go ...

Arun Gupta is a technology enthusiast, a passionate runner, and a community guy who works for Sun Microsystems.

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Saturday July 26, 2008

July 2008 issue (page 96) of Hemisphere Magazine has an interview with Billy Mills - the only American to ever win a Gold medal in the 10,000 meter run at Olympics. He did that in 1964 Olympics @ Tokyo. It is quite an inspiring interview and I read it a few times during my travel this week. I could connect with it more closely now that my upcoming 1/2 marathon is a week away.

I'd like to share some inspirational quotes from there:

"I tried all different sports. Running - even though I wasn't fast in the beginning - brought me tranquility. It was almost spiritual."

His dad was his inspiration who said:

"Look down deeper, where the dreams lie. Find your dream, son. Pursure your dream. It's the pursuit of a dream that heals you."

And another one ..

"It's important to pursue a dream that heals you. With dreams come desire.. With desire comes self-motivation. With self-motivation comes work. With work comes success."

Check out one of the biggest upsets in Olympics:

A movie was created based upon Mills's story in 1983 - Running Brave and it's way at the top in my Netflix queue now! Here is an excerpt from the movie:

Quite an inspiration! Team Hoyt and Dean Karnazes are my other inspirations for running. What motivates you ?

I could not verify the "only American" claim @ Olympics official website because the searchable database allows to search for all sports except "Running". Weird, isn't it ? But check for your self:

Wikipedia comes to help and prooves that Billy Mills has indeed been the only American to ever win a Gold medal in 10,000 meters. Billy has taken running to a different extent now where he is traveling 300 days in a year as motivational speaker and supports non profit group Running Strong.

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