Forums >Off the Beaten Path>Favorite Running Book
Running With The Buffaloes without a doubt. It's a must-read in my opinion. Everything else is second tier. I did recently read How Bad Do You Want It by Matt Fitzgerald. I read in the night before a half marathon and thought about it during the last couple miles when the going got tough.
Thanks, everyone for the suggestions. I'll give a few of these a look.
Running and Being, PRE, How Bad Do You Want It , The Runners Guide to the Meaning of Life Amby Burrfoot, The Quotable Runner, Running to the Top Arthur Lyidard. I have a huge running library and would love some suggestions!!
Trails
Nowhere Near First by Cory Reese...got me into trail running and now into ultras.
Are we there, yet?
Another great book, especially for trail runners, is Run Gently Out There by John Morlock who posted here as John M before passing away last February.
2024 Races:
03/09 - Livingston Oval Ultra 6-Hour, 22.88 miles
05/11 - D3 50K 05/25 - What the Duck 12-Hour
06/17 - 6 Days in the Dome 12-Hour.
It's Tuesday every day
I just finished "Today We Die a Little! The Inimitable Emil Zatopek" by Richard Askwith, which I really enjoyed. Also liked "What I Talk About when I Talk About Running" by Haruki Murakami and "An Honorable Run" by Matt McCue.
"Heroes and Sparrows" by Roger Robinson, "Best Efforts" by Kenny Moore and "Running with the Legends" by Mike Sandrock are also good. --CH (who is very tempted to keep typing in more book names)
Slower but happier
This was pretty fascinating to me. The Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1626549958/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_3kMuAbRQNM7BK
2020 goal: couch to 5K, currently working on the couch block
My faves:
Mud, Sweat and Tears by Moire O'Sullivan
Feet in the Clouds by Richard Askwith
Run: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel by Matt Fitzgerald
anything by George Sheehan
Don't make excuses for why you can't get it done.
Focus on all the reasons why you must make it happen.
If you like running with the Buffaloes, read An Honorable Run by Matt McCue. Fantastic book about high school and college running by a guy who was inspired by Running with the Buffaloes. I
I enjoyed An Honorable Run as well.
And you can quote me as saying I was mis-quoted. Groucho Marx
Rob
Running and Being is one of my all-time favorites....George Sheehan was an inspiration to me, and I used to look forward to his articles in RW back in the day. A new running book that I came across recently is Running Man by Charlie Engle. I read a sample of it on Amazon's Kindle App, and it's on my reading list.
April 21- Fast Half Marathon
May 5 - Colleen Ritzer 5K
June 22 - Mad Fox Trail Fest 10K
If you liked George Sheehan as a writer, you should look into the book written by his son called "Chasing the Hawk". It's actually was a very good read since it really gives you the inside look at George through the eyes of another, who was close to him. I enjoyed it enough to dust off my copy of "On running" which was a George Sheehan book that I could never really get into.
I've recently read the Charlie Engle Book "Running Man" (in December 2017). Wow, what a story. The troubles, and downtimes, that Charlie went through makes most runners journey seem rather mundane. Of course, I'd rather not go the Engle route, as the price just seems too high. The running parts of the book were pretty amazing.
Currently, I'm reading a book called "Tread Lightly" by Peter Larson and Bill Katovsky. It's a book about running form, and footwear. I wasn't sure how excited I'd be to read the book, but it's turned out to be pretty interesting. Most of it is not new, but I like how the authors organize their information into a readable format. I'm 2/3rd's of the way through it, and so far I like it.
Pace Prophet
Though my own running tends to the longer distances, and I don't follow elites, my favorite is The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It by Neal Bascomb.
This is a fabulous and fascinating account of not just the three athletes who individually strove to run the sub-four-minute mile, but of the history of the sport of racing, the ideal (and reality) of amateur athletics, the tension between Great Britain and its former colonies in the mid-20th century, and the psychology of people faced with what appears to be an insurmountable barrier. Even though I already knew who "won" the race to be first under four minutes (although none of the subsequent events - the breaking of that record or the "Mile of the Century" race) I loved the structure, which alternates among the contenders as each makes progress toward the goal, with diversions of history, philosophy, and medicine. Incidentally, the film of this first sub-4 mile is on Youtube, and I appreciated being able to watch it with an understanding of what was really happening - knowing, for example, that the man leading at the beginning was deliberately pacing his friend, rather than trying to win the race. A link from that video clip led me to a clip of the most recent world record mile, in 1999 (mentioned in the book's epilogue), which was run in an astonishing 3:43.13 - more than 16 seconds faster than the mark they were striving for in 1954, in a race where winners were determined by fractions of a second.
Totally agree, and your description is wonderful. I just finished this book a few days ago and loved it. The other two runners (John Landy and Wes Santee) I had never even heard of before reading this. Heartbreaking for both of them. And Bannister's story is so much bigger than just breaking the 4-minute barrier. So much pressure on all 3 of them from their respective countries (and themselves).
I just finished a book titled My First 100 Marathons, by Jeff Horowitz. While certainly not a game changer book, it does qualify as a motivational read.
Yes, it's about running. Obsessive running you might say. I found the story interesting, as the author began as typical fresh runner with few goals. Then as he began running marathons he found something he felt that he could do (run 100 marathons) that would give him a belief in himself.
His descriptions of several of the marathons that he completed gave a first hand account of particular events, and also showed that every 26.2 mile race is not equal. I really enjoyed his enthusiasm, as well as some of his own personal feelings of not only his journey through the marathon maze, but also of his dealing with typical daily life encounters that we all go through.
I picked the book up because it seemed a little out there, and although the are several "advice" sections, I liked the story most of all. Just a normal guy looking to do a special goal.
The book was published by Skyhorse Publishing and was printed in 2008.