I made my way to the remotest islands, the hottest deserts and the coldest of climates. I was robbed, suffered injuries, got sick and depressed. I covered around 320,000 kilometres by plane, train, boat, bus and car and ran just over 2300 race kilometres. It proved to me that you can do whatever you want to – just find the starting line, believe in yourself, and Run Like Crazy!When Tristan Miller lost his job as a result of the global economic crisis, he set himself a huge personal challenge. He would spend a year seeing the world, each week running an official marathon in a different country. This is the story of an ordinary man who chased his dream, 42.2 kilometres at a time.

    Having won the Boston Marathon and New York Marathon four times each, he remains the only marathoner to have appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated twice. Winning the Holy Grail of marathons in an unthinkable record time changed Bill’s life forever.But his dramatic breakthrough in Boston also changed the lives of countless others, instilling in other American runners the belief that they could follow in his footsteps, and inspiring thousands of regular people to lace up their shoes and chase down their own dreams. In the year before Rodger’s victory at the 1975 Boston Marathon, 20,000 people had completed a marathon in the United States. By 2009, participants reached nearly half a million.Thirty-seven years later Bill Rodgers still possesses the same warm, endearing, and whimsical spirit that turned him into one of America's most beloved athletes. In Marathon Man he details for the first time this historic race and the events that led him there.

    

    We run for health, to ease tension, for strength, to challenge ourselves, to be social with friends, as professional athletes or the dream of being one, to turn our minds on, and to turn them off. Whether running a marathon, taking a quick jog around the neighborhood, or trying to reach the top of Pikes Peak, women of all ages and abilities have discovered running. In Women Who Run a wide range of women, including Olympians, marathoners, ultra runners, young track phenoms, and recreational runners, talk about why they run, what drives them, and what continues to spark their interest in the sport.Women Who Run features Bobbi Gibb, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon; Louise Cooper, breast cancer survivor and finisher of the grueling 135-mile Badwater Marathon; Kristin Armstrong, who found solace and camaraderie in running with other women post-divorce; Olympic runner and two-time LA Marathon winner and Kenyan Lornah Kiplagat, Wall Street Journal reporter and Muslim women's activist, Asra Nomani; Pam Reed who ran 300-miles in one run—and many more.This book will inspire and motivate you to get off the couch and find your inner runner.

    With wit, self-deprecation, and the input of experts from around the world, he provides critical information on nutrition and hydration, selecting shoes, race strategy, pacing, proper form, motivation, and how to stave off injuries while continually crossing new finish lines. He shares running music recommendations provided personally by a variety of pop and rock stars, including Paul Simon, Justin Bieber, The Black Keys, Ghostface Killah, Willie Nelson, Feist, and Norah Jones. Kaplan's infectious enthusiasm about running — and music — inspires the most recalcitrant runners to lace up their shoes and hit the pavement.

    This book is not about how to get faster or run a marathon; rather, it explores how the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other helps you harness your creative powers. Learn about the psychological, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual benefits of running and introduce lifestyle changes based on the latest scientific research on running and its effects on hormones and the brain.As a nationally recognized running and fitness coach with a PhD in Exercise Physiology, Jason Karp brings his expertise in science-based coaching to runners of all levels. He believes that running gives you a chance to discover, challenge, and bring out the best in yourself by impacting your creativity, focus, imagination, confidence, and health. Let The Inner Runner help you become not only a better runner, but a more creative, productive, and imaginative person.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team.In addition to books on popular team sports, we also publish books for a wide variety of athletes and sports enthusiasts, including books on running, cycling, horseback riding, swimming, tennis, martial arts, golf, camping, hiking, aviation, boating, and so much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

    From suburban Hopkinton, Massachusetts, to the center of metropolitan Boston, the author takes the reader through the mile-by-mile sights and sounds experienced by the runners, past and present. For this new edition, author and lifetime Bostonian Michael Connelly conducts interviews with runners of the 2013 Marathon and those preparing to run in 2014 – which will prove to be the Marathon’s most historic, celebrated, and highly attended. While still containing the wonderful trivia, history, and traditions from the original edition, this updated edition will bring a wider point of view, weaving in the shocking events surrounding the 2013 race, the aftermath, and Boston’s resilience and commitment to make the 2014 race something special.

    How did a penniless artist, a young shepherd, and a playboy poet believe they could carry out such a remarkable feat of strength and endurance, smuggling the general past thousands of Nazi pursuers, with little more than their own wits and courage to guide them?  McDougall makes his way to the island to find the answer and retrace their steps, experiencing firsthand the extreme physical challenges the Resistance fighters and their local allies faced. On Crete, the birthplace of the classical Greek heroism that spawned the likes of Herakles and Odysseus, McDougall discovers the tools of the hero—natural movement, extraordinary endurance, and efficient nutrition. All of these skills, McDougall learns, are still practiced in far-flung pockets throughout the world today. More than a mystery of remarkable people and cunning schemes, Natural Born Heroes is a fascinating investigation into the lost art of the hero, taking us from the streets of London at midnight to the beaches of Brazil at dawn, from the mountains of Colorado to McDougall’s own backyard in Pennsylvania, all places where modern-day athletes are honing ancient skills so they’re ready for anything.  Just as Born to Run inspired readers to get off the treadmill, out of their shoes, and into the natural world, Natural Born Heroes will inspire them to leave the gym and take their fitness routine to nature—to climb, swim, skip, throw, and jump their way to their own heroic feats.

    This journal chronicles Ryan Hall’s 14-week preparation for the 2010 Boston Marathon, providing practical insights into the daily regimen of someone training at the absolute peak of human performance. It also reveals the spiritual journey of an elite athlete who is a follower of Jesus Christ.Readers will discover how Ryan deals with nagging injuries and illness, bad weather, disappointing workouts, and a slavish focus on results that can take the fun out of running. Ryan runs 140 miles a week, often at altitude and a blistering pace. Yet millions of everyday runners will identify with and appreciate his intentional return to running with joy and his lifelong goal of glorifying Christ on and off the racecourse.

    He also speaks candidly about overcoming his lifelong addiction to alcohol, and the friends, family and thousands of fans who helped him do it.

    She wrote her stories by living them, until eventually life on the thin edge of risk began to seem normal. After she married, Katie and her husband vowed to raise their daughters to be adventurous, too, in the mountains and canyons of New Mexico. But when her father died of cancer, she was forced to confront her own mortality.His death was cataclysmic, unleashing a perfect storm of grief and anxiety. She and her father, an enigmatic photographer for National Geographic, had always been kindred spirits. He introduced her to the outdoors and took her camping and on bicycle trips and down rivers, and taught her to find solace and courage in the natural world. And it was he who encouraged her to run her first race when she was seven years old.Now nearly paralyzed by fear and terrified she was dying, too, she turned to the thing that had always made her feel most alive: running. Over the course of three tumultuous years, she ran alone through the wilderness, logging longer and longer distances, first a 50-kilometer ultramarathon, then 50 miles, then 100 kilometers. She ran to heal her grief, to outpace her worry that she wouldn’t live to raise her own daughters. She ran to find strength in her weakness. She ran to remember and to forget. She ran to live.Ultrarunning tests the limits of human endurance over seemingly inhuman distances, and as she clocked miles across mesas and mountains, Katie learned to tolerate pain and discomfort, and face her fears of uncertainty, vulnerability, and even death itself. As she ran, she found herself peeling back the layers of her relationship with her father, discovering that much of what she thought she knew about him, and her own past, was wrong.Running Home is a memoir about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our world—the stories that hold us back, and the ones that set us free. Mesmerizing, transcendent, and deeply exhilarating, it is a book for anyone who has been knocked over by life, or feels the pull of something bigger and wilder within themselves.Advance praise for Running Home“A contemplative, soul-searching account of the death of [Katie Arnold’s] beloved father and how she used long-distance running as a way to heal from the grief.”— Kirkus Reviews “A beautiful work of searching remembrance and searing honesty . . . will soon join such classics as Born to Run and Ultramarathon Man as quintessential reading of the genre.”—Hampton Sides, author of On Desperate Ground and Ghost Soldiers

    You might run for speed. But ultimately, running is about much more than the physical act itself. It is about the challenges we face in life, and how we measure up to them. It is about companionship, endurance, ambition, hope, conviction, determination, self-respect and inspiration. It is about how we choose to live our lives, and what it means to share our values with other people. In this year-long memoir, which might be described as a historian’s take on Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, the celebrated historian Ian Mortimer considers the meaning of running as he approaches his fiftieth birthday. From injuries and frustrated ambitions to exhilaration and empathy, it is a personal and yet universal account of what running means to people, and how it helps everyone focus on what really matters.

    Since bursting onto the international trail-running scene by winning the first multistage race he ever entered – the brutal Gobi March – Ryan has gone on to win various other multistage and single-day races around the globe. Written with bestselling author and journalist Steve Smith, Trail Blazer – My Life as an Ultra-distance Trail Runner recounts the life story of this intrepid sportsman, from his experiences as a rudderless party animal to becoming a world-class athlete, and includes details on his training regimes, race strategies and aspirations for future sporting endeavours.Sports enthusiasts will enjoy the adrenaline-inducing trials and tribulations of one of South Africa’s most awe-inspiring athletes, while endurance-sport participants – from beginners to aspirant pros – will benefit from his insights and advice. As Professor Tim Noakes says in the Foreword to this book: ‘However much we might think we know and understand, there are some phenomena which now, and perhaps forever, we will never fully comprehend. We call such happenings “enigmas”. Or even miracles. Ryan Sandes is one such.’

    In The Grace to Race, she shares the no-nonsense spirit and deep faith that inspired her extraordinary journey from a prominent St. Louis family to a Catholic Convent and finally to championship finish lines all over the world. As a beautiful young woman, she became an elegant equestrian and accomplished amateur actress. But as she describes in this intimate memoir, she had a secret plan as early as 14: she wanted to devote her life to God. After being courted by the most eligible bachelors in her hometown, she chose a different path and became a Sister of the Good Shepherd. She lived a mostly cloistered life as a Nun until her late forties, when a Priest suggested she take a run on the beach. She dug up a pair of shorts in a pile of donated clothes, found a pair of second-hand tennis shoes, and had a second epiphany. This time, she discovered the spiritual joy of pushing her body to the limit and of seeing God’s natural world in all its splendor. More than thirty years later, she is known as the Iron Nun for all the triathlons she has won. Just five years ago, the age 75–79 category was created for her at the Hawaiian Ironman in Kona, where she completed a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a full 26.2-mile marathon in record time. Now she has set her sights on a new goal: inaugurating another new Ironman age group, 80–84, in 2010. Sister Madonna holds dozens of records, has broken dozens of bones, and tells of dozens of miracles and angels that propelled her to a far-flung race. "It is my faith that has carried me through life’s ups and downs," she writes. "Whenever injured, I wait for the Lord to pick me up again and set me on my feet, confidently reminding Him, ‘God, you know, my intent is to keep running toward you.’" The Grace to Race is the courageous story of a woman who broke with convention, followed her heart, and found her higher mission.

    When Meb Keflezighi ran his final marathon in New York City on November 5, 2017, it marked the end of an extraordinary distance-running career. As the first person in history to win both the Boston and New York City marathons as well as an Olympic marathon medal, Meb’s legacy is forever cemented. Meb's last marathon was also his 26th, and each of those marathons has come with its own unique challenges, rewards, and outcomes. In 26 Marathons, take on those legendary races alongside Meb—every hill, bend, and unexpected turn of events that made each marathon an exceptional learning experience, and a fascinating story. 26 Marathons offers the wisdom Meb has gleaned about life, family, identity, and faith in addition to tips about running, training, and nutrition. He shows runners of all levels how to apply the lessons he's learned to their own running and lives. Equal parts inspiration and practical advice, 26 Marathons provides an inside look at the life and success of one of the greatest runners living today.