Ultrarunning has the power to transform, and so does a good book. Many ultrarunners take up the sport as a means to slay demons or deal with hardship and loss. Some have written stories about their journey, and many of t...
Tag: Book
When I got Running Rewired by Jay Dicharry in the mail, my first reaction was to sigh and think “wow, another book that will tell me how I can become a better runner.” As I halfheartedly flicked through the pages, I soon...
Winter is here, and if your enthusiasm for getting out the door to run is low, your enthusiasm for wanting to read yet another running book review is likely even lower. But fear not! This review involves asteroids hittin...
The story of Finding Gobi is likely one you’re familiar with. A little dog, later christened with the name “Gobi,” appears in the middle of the 155-mile Gobi Desert stage race, picks ultrarunner Dion Leonard out of the c...
The River Road is a lovely period novel about becoming a runner in 1972. The story revolves around Lenny, a middle school student who discovers running when it becomes clear to him that he will never become a successful...
When I think of pool training, I usually think of it as an injury-induced last resort. After reading “Deep End of the Pool Workouts” I have a whole new perspective. I suspect that you, too, consider pool workouts only wh...
I receive many books each month that have to do with some aspect of running. There are biographies and autobiographies, cookbooks for runners, books about particular races and of course training books – lots of training...
Do you keep a running log? A lot of people do, noting a few details about their daily runs. But I am unsure how many runners keep a journal. When I say “journal” I mean more than just the recording of the time and distan...
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain and difficulty. I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult liv...
Adharanand Finn has a dream job. In 2012 he traveled to Kenya and spent six months immersed in the running culture there trying to uncover the secrets of what makes the Kenyans the fastest runners on earth. The book he w...
Ultrarunners and other endurance athletes should pay attention to the main message of this fascinating book. Decades of intensive training and racing can cause long-term damage to your heart. Surely we have all wondered...
In his newest book, The Road to Sparta, Dean Karnazes takes a deeply personal and engaging look back into Greek history. With the help of two modern-day Greek scholars he explores the well-worn tale of Pheidippedes and t...
Charlie Engle, by his own admission, is an addictive personality. His new memoir, Running Man, is a brutally honest and compulsively readable account of his years as an alcoholic and crack addict and how he managed to fi...
With the holidays fast approaching the books slated for review start piling up at a furious pace. As I write this, the stack that is on my desk is towering over me as precariously as a certain tower in Pisa. Amidst this...
It has been quite a long time since I have written a book review for this esteemed publication. In the years that my husband and I published UltraRunning, I reviewed five to seven books a year, but that figure is but a s...
December’s bad weather and shortened daylight hours conspire to keep us indoors and off the trails. It’s a good time to pursue ultrarunning by other means – by reading about it. Here’s a short list of running books that...