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.

    But whether they are twenty-mile-a-day elite marathoners or twenty-mile-a-week recreational runners, each of them can invariably point to a singular performance as “the best race I ever ran.”MY BEST RACE is a collection of those singular performances. In this inspirational collection, fifty runners, from Olympians and World Champions, to courageous disabled athletes and middle-of-the-packers, share their personal accounts of what they consider the best race they ever ran...and why.Contributors include:Jeff Galloway: A top marathoner sacrifices his place on the Olympic marathon team by pacing his friend to the third and final qualifying spot at the Olympic Trials. Trisha Meili: The woman once known only as “The Central Park Jogger” crosses the finish line in the race she founded to benefit disabled athletes, fourteen years after being left for dead from a brutal attack that gripped the nation. Ed Eyestone: The unheralded runner comes out of nowhere to beat a previously undefeated state champion in a high school cross-country race, giving him the confidence to eventually become a four-time NCAA champion and two-time Olympian. Kathrine Switzer: The woman they tried to physically remove from the male-only Boston Marathon in 1967 had no one but herself to blame forty-three years later as she struggled through the 2,500th anniversary of the original marathon in Greece.Through interviews with the author, fifty runners recount their inspiring races and personal achievements with excitement, laughter, and sometimes tears.

    Through the eyes of seven principal characters including the bombers, the wounded, a cop, and a doctor, Boston Globe reporters Helman and Russell trace the paths that brought them together.

    update of first edition

    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.

    Now, Carl Hoffman uncovers startling new evidence that finally tells the full, astonishing story.Despite exhaustive searches, no trace of Rockefeller was ever found. Soon after his disappearance, rumors surfaced that he'd been killed and ceremonially eaten by the local Asmat—a native tribe of warriors whose complex culture was built around sacred, reciprocal violence, head hunting, and ritual cannibalism. The Dutch government and the Rockefeller family denied the story, and Michael's death was officially ruled a drowning. Yet doubts lingered. Sensational rumors and stories circulated, fueling speculation and intrigue for decades. The real story has long waited to be told—until now.Retracing Rockefeller's steps, award-winning journalist Carl Hoffman traveled to the jungles of New Guinea, immersing himself in a world of headhunters and cannibals, secret spirits and customs, and getting to know generations of Asmat. Through exhaustive archival research, he uncovered never-before-seen original documents and located witnesses willing to speak publically after fifty years.In Savage Harvest he finally solves this decades-old mystery and illuminates a culture transformed by years of colonial rule, whose people continue to be shaped by ancient customs and lore. Combining history, art, colonialism, adventure, and ethnography, Savage Harvest is a mesmerizing whodunit, and a fascinating portrait of the clash between two civilizations that resulted in the death of one of America's richest and most powerful scions.

    From the Tsarnaev brothers’ years leading up to the act of terror to the bomb scene itself (which both authors witnessed first-hand within minutes of the blast), from the terrifying police shootout with the suspects to the ultimate capture of the younger brother, Boston Strong: A City’s Triumph over Tragedy reports all the facts—and so much more. Based on months of intensive interviews, this is the first book to tell the entire story through the eyes of those who experienced it. From the cop first on the scene, to the detectives assigned to the manhunt, the authors provide a behind-the-scenes look at the investigation. More than a true-crime book, Boston Strong also tells the tragic but ultimately life-affirming story of the victims and their recoveries and gives voice to those who lost loved ones. With their extensive reporting, writing experience, and deep ties to the Boston area, Sherman and Wedge create the perfect match of story, place, and authors.If you’re only going to read one book on this tragic but uplifting story, this is it.

    The other was the most electrifying distance runner of his time. In 1982, they battled stride for stride for more than two hours in the most thrilling Boston Maraton ever run. Then the drama really began. . . ." Thus John Brant sets the stage for the epic race that took place 23 years ago between Alberto Salazar and Dick Beardsley. Since Beardsley was only 26 and Salazar 23 at the time, everyone assumed that this would be the start of a long and glorious rivalry.Instead Beardsley soon began a descent into drug addiction that brought him perilously close to dying. Salazar's decline was more gradual, his vigor slowly giving way to baffling symptoms that left him completely exhausted. Brant's portraits of the painkiller-addicted Beardsley and the depression-plagued Salazar are at once sensitive and hair-raising. The supporting characters are also richly drawn, from Alberto's father, Jose Salazar, a towering presence with a fascinating history and a former close friend of Fidel Castro, to Bill Squires, Beardsley's coach, a Casey Stengel–like figure whose oddball goofiness masks an encyclopedic knowledge of distance running. This elegantly written story is riveting nonfiction at its very best.

    It’s a world that I love—a world unlocked when you dress up in lycra, put plasters on your nipples and run 26.2 miles in the company of upwards of 30,000 complete strangers." Phil Hewitt sets a fast pace in this light-hearted account of his adventures on the road. He has completed over 20 marathons in conditions ranging from blistering heat to snow and ice, and in locations from Berlin to New York. This story of an ordinary guy's addiction to running marathons looks at the highs and lows, the motivation that keeps you going when your body is crying out to stop, and tries to answer the ultimate question, "Why do you do it?"

    history. Every week, thousands of marathoners, CrossFitters, and casual weekend warriors shell out money to run through mud and fire, crawl under barbed wire, scramble over ten-foot walls, and dodge baton-wielding gladiators. Some even sprint through electrically charged wires only to suffer muscle-seizing shocks and faceplant in the muck.In　Off Course, Outside　journalist and endurance athlete Erin Beresini dives straight into this strange world to reveal a new subculture of military-inspired amateur competition and the industry that’s rapidly growing to support it. Having reached a crossroads in her own athletic pursuits, Beresini embarked on a　journey to train and compete in several obstacle races herself, culminating in the world’s first marathon-length event, the grueling Spartan Ultra Beast. Along the way, she met a wild cast of characters, from frat boys to housewives, fitness buffs to financiers to fanatics, and uncovered the sport's biggest scandals, lawsuits, and rivalries.　As Beresini inches ever closer to her goal — and gets pretty buff in the process — she also illuminates the history, psychology, science, and sociology of this new sport that’s taking the endurance world by storm.

    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.

    Decades later, in the mid 1970's, they would meet again. By then, Connolly was a major figure in the FBI's Boston office and Whitey had become godfather of the Irish Mob. What happened next -- a dirty deal to being down the Italian mob in exchange for protection for Bulger -- would spiral out of control, leading to murders, drug dealing, racketeering indictments, and, ultimately, the biggest informant scandal in the history of the FBI.Compellingly told by two Boston Globe reporters who were on the case from the beginning, Black Mass is at once a riveting crime story, a cautionary tale about the abuse of power, and a penetrating look at Boston and its Irish population.

    Jimmy Carter was President; gas prices were soaring; and Americans were hunkering down to weather the economic crisis. But in bookstores Jim Fixx’s The Complete Book of Running was a bestseller. Frank Shorter’s gold medal in the 1972 Olympic marathon had put distance running in the mind of a public enamored of baseball and football. Suddenly, the odd activity of "jogging" became "running," and America was in love. That summer, a junior from the University of Oregon named Alberto Salazar went head to head with Olympic champion Frank Shorter and Boston Marathon champion Bill Rodgers at the Falmouth Road Race, losing in the last mile to Rodgers's record-setting 32:21, nearly dying in the process, and setting the stage for a great rivalry. In Shorter, Rodgers, and Salazar, running had its conflict and drama like boxing had Ali and Foreman, like basketball had Russell and Chamberlain. Each man built on what the other achieved, and each pushed the other to succeed. Their successes, in turn, fueled a nation of coach potatoes to put down the remote and lace up their sneakers.Kings of the Road tells the story of running during that golden period from 1972 to 1981 when Shorter, Rodgers, and Salazar captured the imagination of the American public as they passed their figurative baton from one to the other. These three men were American running during those years, while the sport enjoyed a popularity never equaled. As America now experiences a similar running boom, Kings of the Road is a stirring, inspiring narrative of three men pushing themselves toward greatness and taking their country along for the ride.

    When he realized he couldn't, he asked for a pad and paper and wrote down seven words: Saw the guy. Looked right at me, setting off one of the biggest manhunts in the country's history.Just thirty hours before, Jeff had been at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon cheering on his girlfriend, Erin, when the first bomb went off at his feet. As he was rushed to the hospital, he realized he was severely injured and that he might die, but he didn't know that a photograph of him in a wheelchair was circulating throughout the world, making him the human face of the Boston Marathon bombing victims, or that what he'd seen would give the Boston police their most important breakthrough.In Stronger, Jeff describes the chaos and terror of the bombing itself and the ongoing FBI investigation in which he was a key witness. He takes us inside his grueling rehabilitation, and discusses his attempt to reconcile the world's admiration with his own guilt and frustration. . Brave, compassionate, and emotionally compelling, Jeff Bauman's story is not just his, but ours as well.

    Jennifer Graham doesn't run to lose weight—she runs because she loves it. And as much as she runs, her excess poundage never leaves. So she accepts her body type for what it is, and runs for the sheer joy of it. But along the way she must endure not only her self-made exhaustion and lactic acid, but also the bemused stares of neighbors, offers of a car ride from strangers, and disdain from the dominant strain of runner—those long, lean "shirtless wonders."The story revolves around her decision to run a serious half-marathon race, and her imaginary coaching relationship with the spirit of Steve Prefontaine. The late, great Oregon distance star gives her advice and encouragement, and doesn't like excuses. ("Yeah, I know he's been dead thirty-five years; it's a minor metaphysical challenge.") Moreover, the race is one month after Graham's ex-husband is getting remarried (to a skinny woman), and the emotional rollercoaster heightens the intensity of her running. As she says, "If training for it doesn't help me get over the pain, at least it will keep me preoccupied."Her irreverent, hilarious, and brutally honest story will appeal to runners and non-runners alike, fat or thin.