Visualizing the hill: A champion runner’s advice for getting to the other side

“When you first get a hill in sight, look at the top of it only once. Then imagine yourself at the bottom of the other side.”
— Florence Griffith Joyner

The American sprinter still known to this day as Flo-Jo was recruited by the folks who do the “for Dummies” books to handle Running For Dummies, from which today’s quote is drawn.

It’s smart advice, and of course applies to more than just people running up that hill (and down it).

Griffith Joyner was a remarkable athlete, although she had to shake off a cloud of suspicion over her performances; she was competing, after all, in the late 1980s era of Ben Johnson and performance-enhancing drugs. When she died in 1998 at just 38, there were rumours that drugs somehow contributed. It turns out that only acetaminophen and an antihistamine were in her system. What actually killed her was a congenital condition that led to an epileptic seizure in her sleep.