Is there a Better Book on Running than Noakes's The Lore of Running ? (Read 1050 times)

I'm not too impressed with the musings of a physiologist who has never been a top runner, far better to read about someone who's actually been successful in the sport and find out what they did.

Although there may be some overlap, the skill set needed to understand the psyiological underpinnings of running and write about them is not the same as the skill set for being a top runner. Trent's point about oncologists, as well as the points about baseball managers, are just a few of the myriad examples of this. Otherwise, all former NFL players would be successful in the broadcast booth, and Isiah Thomas would be a Hall-of-Fame-caliber coach. Thee recently deceased Chuck Daly wasn't much of a player, but was one of the NBA's all-time greatest coaches. And the running world is full of great coaches who were nowhere near as fast as the runners they coach. Lydiard never won any medals, but his runners sure did. Same with Bill Bowerman and Jumbo Elliot, to name a few. That's not to say that there isn't great value to be found in the writings/teachings of those "in the trenches." But if you limit yourself only to them, you'll get far too narrow a perspective.

Very few top players in any sport become great coaches.

Sure. But very few people become great coaches. And very few people become top athletes. The fact that there is any overlap at all shows that experience at the top level--if not everything--is worth a great deal. Seems like many of the best coaches are the ones who made it to the top level, but were not superstars. The Phil Jacksons and Doc Rivers and Brad Hudsons of the world.

Jack Daniels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Daniels_(coach)

I've learned more about running after having recently read through most of the Daniels book. I sure wish I knew some of this stuff back when I was a lot faster.

For the first 10 years of my life, I thought he was Donkey Hotey. I have Mister Rogers to thank for that (Donkey Hotey was one of the weird puppets).

You don't have to have been a top runner to write intelligently about running, but Noakes did neither. I gave him credit for a good but slightly misguided attempt until I actually engaged in an exchange with him. He's another crank with a preset conception twisting the facts to fit it with whatever pseudo-logic is needed. For a PhD he was shockingly incoherent in his train of logic. Remember, he and our pal Richard get along really well. I always wondered about that....now I know why, they are very, very similar in the head. For the average runner, I always felt Daniels and Pfitz both did a good job.

You don't have to have been a top runner to write intelligently about running, but Noakes did neither. I gave him credit for a good but slightly misguided attempt until I actually engaged in an exchange with him. He's another crank with a preset conception twisting the facts to fit it with whatever pseudo-logic is needed. For a PhD he was shockingly incoherent in his train of logic. Remember, he and our pal Richard get along really well. I always wondered about that....now I know why, they are very, very similar in the head. For the average runner, I always felt Daniels and Pfitz both did a good job.

Yes. Thank you. I've read the book (and underlined and annotated it) cover-to-cover, but it never comes off the shelf. Much more useful are Coe, Daniels, Pfitz, heck, even Lydiard (though I'd never use his methods on pure mid-d guys). His book is huge, and it has lots of footnotes, but that doesn't mean that he knows how to train distance runners.

I haven't read any of them, but did find usefulness in some of Noake's pages on Cross Friction Massage. It helped me with recurring scar tissue problem in my calf.,,, Wait that's not true, I read George Sheehan's,,, it was like John Updike on running. Which by and large is a good thing. The one thing I took away from Sheehan was the value of ' an hour a day' .