Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness


Scott Jurek - 2012
    Until recently he held the American 24-hour record and he was one of the elite runners profiled in the runaway bestseller Born to Run.In Eat and Run, Jurek opens up about his life and career as a champion athlete with a plant-based diet and inspires runners at every level. From his Midwestern childhood hunting, fishing, and cooking for his meat-and-potatoes family to his slow transition to ultrarunning and veganism, Scott’s story shows the power of an iron will and blows apart the stereotypes of what athletes should eat to fuel optimal performance. Full of stories of competition as well as science and practical advice—including his own recipes—Eat and Run will motivate readers and expand their food horizons.

A Life Without Limits: A World Champion's Journey


Chrissie Wellington - 2012
    As a newcomer to the sport and a complete unknown to the press, Chrissie's win shook up the sport. A LIFE WITHOUT LIMITS is the story of her rise to the top, a journey that has taken her around the world, from a childhood in England, to the mountains of Nepal, to the oceans of New Zealand, and the trails of Argentina, and first across the finish line.Wellington's first-hand, inspiring story includes all the incredible challenges she has faced--from anorexia to near--drowning to training with a controversial coach. But to Wellington, the drama of the sports also presents an opportunity to use sports to improve people's lives.A LIFE WITHOUT LIMITS reveals the heart behind Wellington's success, along with the diet, training and motivational techniques that keep her going through one of the world's most grueling events.

The Long Run: One Man's Attempt to Regain His Athletic Career-And His Life-by Running the New York City Marathon


Matt Long - 2010
    The injuries he sustained pushed him within inches of his life. Miraculously, more than 40 operations and months later, Matt was able to start his recovery. In spite of the severity of his injuries, Matt found the psychological consequences of the accident nearly as hard to process. He would no longer be able to compete at the highest level.In the 18 months before the accident, he had competed in more than 20 events including several triathlons and marathons and had qualified for running's most prestigious race, the Boston Marathon. After the accident, his doctor told him he'd be lucky if he could even walk without a cane.The Long Run is an emotional and incredibly honest story about Matt's determination to fight through fear, despair, loneliness, and intense physical and psychological pain to regain the life he once had. The book chronicles Matt's road to recovery as he teaches himself to walk again and, a mere three years later, to run in the 2008 New York City Marathon--a gimpy seven-and-a-half hour journey through the five boroughs. "Running saved my life," Matt says, and his embrace of the running community and insistence on competing in the marathon has inspired many, turning him into a symbol of hope and recovery for untold numbers of others.

To Be a Runner: How Racing Up Mountains, Running with the Bulls, or Just Taking On a 5-K Makes You a Better Person (and the World a Better Place)


Martin Dugard - 2011
    With an exuberant mix of passion, insight, instruction, and humor, bestselling author and lifelong runner Martin Dugard takes a journey through the world of running to illustrate how the sport helps us fulfill that universal desire to be the best possible version of ourselves each and every time we lace up our shoes. To Be a Runner represents a new way to write about running by bridging the chasm between the two categories of running books: how-to and personal narrative. Spinning colorful stories of his running and racing adventures on six continents, Dugard considers what it means to truly integrate running into one's life. As entertaining as it is provocative, To Be a Runner is about far more than running: It is about life, and how we should live it..

Ready to Run: Unlocking Your Potential to Run Naturally


Kelly Starrett - 2014
    Kelly Starrett, author of the bestseller Becoming a Supple Leopard: The Ultimate Guide to Resolving Pain, Preventing Injury, and Optimizing Athletic Performance, has focused his revolutionary movement and mobility philosophy on the injury-plagued world of running.Despite the promises of the growing minimalist-shoe industry and a rush of new ideas on how to transform running technique, more than three out of four runners suffer at least one injury per year. Although we may indeed be “Born to Run,” life in the modern world has trashed and undercut dedicated runners wishing to transform their running. The harsh effects of too much sitting and too much time wearing the wrong shoes has left us shackled to lower back problems, chronic knee injuries, and debilitating foot pain.In this book, you will learn the 12 standards that will prepare your body for a lifetime of top-performance running. You won’t just be prepared to run in a minimalist shoe–you’ll be Ready to Run, period.In Ready to Run, you will learn:• The 12 performance standards you must work toward and develop on an ongoing basis.• How to tap into all of your running potential and access a fountain of youth for lifelong running.• How to turn your weaknesses into strengths.• How to prevent chronic overuse injuries by building powerful injury-prevention habits into your day.• How to prepare your body for the demands of changing your running shoes and running technique.• How to treat pain and swelling with cutting-edge modalities and accelerate your recovery.• How to equip your home mobility gym.• A set of mobility exercises for restoring optimal function and range of motion to your joints and tissues.• How to run faster, run farther, and run better.

Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself


Rich Roll - 2012
    Nearly fifty pounds overweight and unable to climb the stairs without stopping, he could see where his current sedentary life was taking him—and he woke up. Plunging into a new routine that prioritized a plant-based lifestyle and daily training, Rich morphed—in a matter of mere months—from out of shape, mid-life couch potato to endurance machine. Finding Ultra recounts Rich’s remarkable journey to the starting line of the elite Ultraman competition, which pits the world’s fittest humans in a 320-mile ordeal of swimming, biking, and running. And following that test, Rich conquered an even greater one: the EPIC5—five Ironman-distance triathlons, each on a different Hawaiian island, all completed in less than a week. In the years since Finding Ultra was published, Rich has become one of the world’s most recognized advocates of plant-based living. In this newly revised and updated edition, he shares the practices, tools, and techniques he uses for optimal performance, longevity, and wellness, including diet and nutrition protocols. Rich reflects on the steps he took to shift his mindset and leverage deep reservoirs of untapped potential to achieve success beyond his wildest imagination, urging each of us to embark on our own journey of self-discovery.

Mile Markers: The 26.2 Most Important Reasons Why Women Run


Kristin Armstrong - 2011
    This collection considers the most important reasons women run, celebrating the inspiring passion runners have for their sport and illustrating how running fosters a vitally powerful community. With unique wit, refreshing candor, and disarming vulnerability, Armstrong shares her conviction that running is the perfect parallel for marking the milestones of life. From describing running a hardfought race with her tightly-knit group of sweat sisters, to watching her children participate in the sport for the very first time, Armstrong infuses her experiences with a perspective of hope that every moment is a chance to become a stronger, wiser, more peaceful woman. Running threads these touching stories together, and through each of them we are shown the universal undercurrents of inspiration, growth, grace, family, empowerment, and endurance.

Triathlons for Women


Sally Edwards - 2000
    The book also explores overtraining, mental preparation, and time management. This revised edition includes a new chapter on transition training and equipment.

Train Like a Mother: How to Get Across Any Finish Line - and Not Lose Your Family, Job, or Sanity


Dimity McDowell - 2012
    At its core, Train Like a Mother will comprehensively cover how to train for a race, including training plans for four race distances (5K, 10K, half-marathon, and marathon) for both beginner and more experienced runners; the importance of recovery; pre- and post-race nutrition; strength training; injury prevention (and rehab); and everything busy women need to know to add racing to their multitasking schedules. It is all presented with the same wit, empathy, and tone the avid fans connect and identify with.The book is divided into 13.1 chapters--the distance of a half-marathon, the sweet spot for many mother runners--narrated by both Sarah and Dimity. Like the first book, Train Like a Mother chapters have plenty of sidebars, including Practical Motherly Advice (helpful information about training- and race-related advice), Take It from a Mother (advice and answers from the growing tribe of running moms), and Racy Talk (entertaining, race-related stories from the authors and other moms). The .1 sections are entertaining "commercial breaks" celebrating the sport of running and the added thrill of racing.

The Courage To Start: A Guide To Running for Your Life


John Bingham - 1999
    The miracle is that I had the courage to start.” Take your first step toward fitness and a happier, healthier life.Has the idea of running crossed your mind, but you haven't acted on it because you don't think you have the body of a runner? Have you thought about running but quit before you started because you knew that you would be breathless at the end of your driveway? Well, put aside those fears because you can do it. John Bingham, author of the popular Runner's World column “The Penguin Chronicles,” transformed himself from an overweight couch potato who smoked into a runner who has completed eleven marathons and hundreds of road races. Forget about the image of a perfect body in skintight clothes, and don't worry about how fast or how far you go. Bingham shows how anyone can embrace running as a life-enhancing activity—rather than as a competition you will never win. In an entertaining blend of his own success story and practical advice, Bingham provides reasonable guidelines for establishing a program of achievable goals; offers tips on clothing, running shoes, and other equipment; and explains how anyone can prepare for and run distances ranging from a few miles to marathons. After all, in running and in life, the difference between success and failure sometimes comes down to a single step. Waddle on, friends.

Your Pace or Mine?: What Running Taught Me About Life, Laughter and Coming Last


Lisa Jackson - 2016
     Lisa Jackson is a surprising cheerleader for the joys of running. Formerly a committed fitness-phobe, she became a marathon runner at 31, and ran her first 56-mile ultramarathon aged 41. And unlike many runners, Lisa's not afraid to finish last – in fact, she's done so in 20 of the 90-plus marathons she's completed so far. But this isn't just Lisa's story, it's also that of the extraordinary people she’s met along the way – tutu-clad fun-runners, octogenarians, 250-mile ultrarunners – whose tales of loss and laughter are sure to inspire you just as much as they've inspired her. This book is for anyone who longs to experience the sense of connection and achievement that running has to offer, whether you're a nervous novice or a seasoned marathoner dreaming of doing an ultra. An account of the triumph of tenacity over a lack of talent, Your Pace or Mine? is proof that running really isn't about the time you do, but the time you have!

My Year of Running Dangerously: A Dad, a Daughter, and a Ridiculous Plan


Tom Foreman - 2015
    He has interviewed serial killers and been in the line of fire. But the most terrifying moment of his life didn't occur on the job--it occurred at home, when his 18-year old daughter asked, "How would you feel about running a marathon with me?" At the time, Foreman was approaching 51 years old, and his last marathon was almost 30 years behind him. The race was just sixteen weeks away, but Foreman reluctantly agreed. Training with his daughter, who had just started college, would be a great bonding experience, albeit a long and painful one. My Year of Running Dangerously is Foreman's journey through four half-marathons, three marathons, and one 55-mile race. What started as an innocent request from his daughter quickly turned into a rekindled passion for long-distance running--for the training, the camaraderie, the defeats, and the victories. Told with honesty and humor, Foreman's account captures the universal fears of aging and failure alongside the hard-won moments of triumph, tenacity, and going further than you ever thought possible.

Women Who Tri: A Reluctant Athlete's Journey Into the Heart of America's Newest Obsession


Alicia DiFabio - 2017
    It was to her utter surprise that this middle-aged, out-of-shape mother found herself on the starting line of a triathlon.In Women Who Tri, DiFabio explores the triathlon phenomenon that has gripped her town and swept the nation.Her memoir is both inspiring and informative as it explores the popularity, psychology, subculture, and transformative power of triathlons among -ordinary- women. Set in a small New Jersey town that now hosts America's largest women-only triathlon club, Women Who Tri weaves together the insights of a psychologist, the research of a journalist, and the deep insecurities of a daunted newbie.DiFabio shares her journey from nervous newcomer to triathlon finisher as she investigates one of the world's most challenging and inspiring sports. She profiles women who have overcome challenges to become athletes and tri for themselves and to help others. Women Who Tri will entertain, enlighten, and inspire any triathlon enthusiast, from tri-addicts to the tri-curious.

The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances


Matthew Inman - 2014
    Mr. Inman's explanation is the best I've ever seen. And the funniest. Because he is clinically insane."-Mark Remy, editor at large, Runner's World, author of The Runner's Rule Book"He runs. He sweats. He heaves. He hates it. He loves it. He runs so hard his toenails fall off. He asks himself, why? Why do I do this? Here, gorgeously, bravely, hilariously, is Matt's deeply honest answer."-Robert Krulwich, NPR"Finally! A voice that sings with the Blerches of angels!"-Christopher McDougall, author of Born to RunThis is not just a book about running. It's a book about cupcakes. It's a book about suffering.It's a book about gluttony, vanity, bliss, electrical storms, ranch dressing, and Godzilla. It's a book about all the terrible and wonderful reasons we wake up each day and propel our bodies through rain, shine, heaven, and hell.From #1 New York Times best-selling author, Matthew Inman, AKA The Oatmeal, comes this hilarious, beautiful, poignant collection of comics and stories about running, eating, and one cartoonist's reasons for jogging across mountains until his toenails fall off.Containing over 70 pages of never-before-seen material, including "A Lazy Cartoonist's Guide to Becoming a Runner" and "The Blerch's Guide to Dieting," this book also comes with Blerch race stickers.

Power of 10: The Once-A-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution (Harperresource Book)


Adam Zickerman - 2002
     The Power of 10 seems to contradict nearly everything we're accustomed to hearing about exercise. Forget hours on the treadmill, and forget daily visits to the gym. This new program offers 20 minute workout sessions, once or twice per week, with an alluring emphasis on rest and recovery on your days off. The principle behind The Power of 10 is simple: by lifting weights in slow motion, making each rep last 20 seconds (10 seconds lifting and 10 seconds lowering) instead of the typical 7 seconds, you can maximize muscle transformation. The short workouts are so effective that your body will need days to recover and repair properly. Studies have shown that such routines can increase lean body mass, help burn calories more efficiently, and prevent cardio–vascular disease more effectively than aerobic exercise alone.