Jim Axelrod—once among the most watched correspondents on network news and the first television reporter to broadcast from Saddam International Airport in 2003—is covering the final stages of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. He’s forty-five years old and thirty pounds overweight. He’s drinking too much, sleeping too little, and scarcely seeing his family. He’s just figured out that the industry that pulled him up the corporate ladder is imploding as he’s reaching for its final rungs. Then, out of the blue, Jim discovers his late father’s decades-old New York Marathon finish times. At forty-six, Bob Axelrod ran a 3:29:58. With everything else going on in his life, Jim sets himself a defining challenge: “Can I beat him?” So begins a deeply felt, often hilarious, quixotic effort to run the 2009 New York Marathon. Along the way, Jim confronts his listing marriage, a career upset by the seismic changes going on throughout the television news industry, excruciatingly painful shin splints, and the worst-timed kidney stone possible. Looming over it all is the shadow of a loving father, who repeatedly lost his way in life but still has a lesson to impart. This is a book about a dead father’s challenge to a son at a crossroads, but, more than that, it is about the personal costs paid when ambition and talent are not enough to ensure success. Most fundamentally, though, it is a book about learning what it takes to be happy in your own skin.

    As Engle got sober, he turned to running, which became his lifeline, his pastime, and his salvation. He began with marathons, and when marathons weren’t far enough, he began to take on ultramarathons, races that went for thirty-five, fifty, and sometimes hundreds of miles, traveling to some of the most unforgiving places on earth to race. The Matt Damon-produced documentary, Running the Sahara, followed Engle as he lead a team on a harrowing, record breaking 4,500-mile run across the Sahara Desert, which helped raise millions of dollars for charity. Charlie’s growing notoriety led to an investigation and a subsequent unjust conviction for mortgage fraud for which he spent sixteen months in federal prison in Beckley, West Virginia. While in jail, Engle pounded the small prison track, running endlessly in circles. Soon his fellow inmates were joining him, struggling to keep their spirits up in dehumanizing circumstances. In Running Man, Charlie Engle tells the surprising, funny, and emotional story of his life, detailing his setbacks and struggles—from coping with addiction to serving time in prison—and how he blazed a path to freedom by putting one foot in front of the other. “A fast-paced, well-written account of a man who accepts pain, pushes beyond imagined limits, and ultimately finds redemption and peace” (Booklist), this is a raw and triumphant account about finding the threshold of human endurance, and transcending it.

    Fortunately for all of us, and especially those women who like to eat and dress well, she decided to fight back. Leaving kilos of herself and two bra sizes behind 'somewhere in the Waitakeres' she embarked on a fitness and training regime, with a goal to complete the Auckland marathon. to the laugh out loud delight and support of her readers and listeners, she battled her way to fitness and achieved her goal - then decided that she didn't want to stop. With the 2008 New York marathon in her sights, Short Fat Chick documents her life changing decision to get fit and stay fit, eat what she wants and still wear a size 12 dress. With insightful comments and fitness and training tips from her personal trainer, Gaz Brown, Kerre tells it like it is and takes the reader on a journey of self discovery and self discipline we can all admire and emulate.

    He has also been a professional philosopher. And for him the two - running and philosophising - are inextricably connected.In Running with the Pack he tells us about the most significant runs of his life - from the entire day he spent running as a boy in Wales, to the runs along French beaches and up Irish mountains with his beloved wolf Brenin, and through Florida swamps more recently with his dog Nina. Intertwined with this honest, passionate and witty memoir are the fascinating meditations that those runs triggered. He ends by describing running a mid-life marathon with absolutely no training. Woven throughout the book are profound meditations on mortality, midlife and the meaning of life. This is a highly original and moving book that will make the philosophically inclined want to run, and those who love running become intoxicated by philosophical ideas.

    In the book Cross Country, Gates documents this epic experience from South Carolina to San Francisco, sharing first-person essays, interviews, and over 200 photographs of the ordinary and extraordinary people and places he saw along the way.While Gates delivers unparalleled insight into the extreme athletic and mental challenge of this transcontinental run, running is not the core focus of Cross Country—it is a story of the remarkable people across the United States who we would otherwise never meet.• A photographic travelogue that follows along Rickey Gates's run across the country, and the individuals who live in it• Filled with portraits, landscapes, and collages of towns and communities that most people have never seen• From South Carolina to San Francisco, the five-month-long run covers 3,700 miles of hiking trails, rivers, and roads. Gates slept in the rain, carried meager possessions on his back, ran through the night, endured mental and physical challenges, and survived on a staple of gas station hot dogs and Pop Tarts. Delivering a patchwork portrait of America, Gates's captivating story captures the spirit of our country—that grit, determination, and compassion are qualities that can unite us all.• Perfect gift for runners, hikers, and lovers of the outdoors, as well as fans of travelogues, photography, and photo-journalism• A great pick for those who loved Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton, The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey by Rinker Buck, and A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson.• A unique perspective of the United States

    Clark writes this book from her passion for teaching the everyday champions that we all are how to use food to help achieve our marathon goals. She combines her personal experiences and professional expertise to teach us to eat well and enhance our energy. We learn what, when and how to eat to enjoy not only the process of training for the marathon, but also participating in the marathon itself with energy to spare.

    Flanagan, a grand-scale promoter in the P. T. Barnum vein, organizes a cross-country footrace from Los Angeles to New York, with a purse of $150,000 for the winner. Two thousand runners from around the world gather to participate in the grueling trek, which takes them through mountains, deserts, plains, and cities, forcing some friends and some alliances, tempered of course by the intense competition of the situation. Only a portion of the novel is set in Illinois, but organized fisticuffs in Springfield and organized crime in Chicago provide interesting and lively entertainment, along with period views of those cities.

    With humor, compassion, and lots of love, Jill Angie delivers the goods: overcoming the challenges of running with an overweight body and giving individuals’ self-esteem an enormous boost in the process. This isn't a guide to running for weight loss, or a simple running plan. It shows readers how a woman carrying a few (or many) extra pounds can successfully become a runner in the body she has right now. Jill Angie is a certified running coach and personal trainer who wants to live in a world where everyone is free to feel fit and fabulous at any size. She started the Not Your Average Runner movement in 2013 to show that runners come in all shapes, sizes and speeds, and, since then, has assembled a global community of revolutionaries that are taking the running world by storm. If you would like to be part of the revolution, flip to the inside and find out more!

    She placed sixth. Which is breath-taking. But what is your typical good Indian girl, super-nerd doing at the Ultraman? Anywhere but Home is the funny, heart-breaking, unexpected story of a woman who would not give up. As she followed her passion on the roads of Bangalore and across several Indian cities, coaches advised her to get married. She was stuck in sports facilities that lacked basic support systems, even toilets. If she wanted to compete, it would need to be on her own salary. All she could rely on were her own two feet and the seat of her bike. With self-deprecatory humour and characteristic curiosity, Vaidyanathan tells the story of how she found triathlon, how she came to be training in one of the most challenging sports in the world. She writes of her many firsts in the Ultraman, Ironman, Half-Ironman, but also of motherhood and pushing the boundaries of what a body can do. Heart-warming and heart-breaking, this is most of all a tale of love: for a sport and for life.

    He hates it so much that he once logged fifty-two marathon-length runs in fifty-two weeks. Now he’s sharing everything he’s learned about the sport so that you can hate it too. Packed with wisdom, humor, attitude, tips, and quotes—and more than sixty illuminating charts—I Hate Running and You Can Too delivers a powerful message of motivation from a truly relatable mentor. Leonard nails the love-hate relationship most runners have with the sport. He knows the difficulty of getting off the couch, teaches us to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, embraces the mix of running with walking. And he shares all that he’s learned—celebrating the mantra of “Easy, light, smooth, and fast,” observing that any body that runs is a runner’s body. Plus Leonard knows all the practical stuff, from training methods to advice for when you hit a setback or get injured. Even the answer to that big question a lot of runners occasionally ask: Why? Easy: Running helps us understand commitment, develop patience, discover self-discipline, find mental toughness, and prove to ourselves that we can do something demanding. And, of course, burn off that extra serving of nachos.