Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds


David Goggins - 2018
    But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a U.S. Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events, inspiring Outside magazine to name him "The Fittest (Real) Man in America."In Can't Hurt Me, he shares his astonishing life story and reveals that most of us tap into only 40% of our capabilities. Goggins calls this The 40% Rule, and his story illuminates a path that anyone can follow to push past pain, demolish fear, and reach their full potential.

Running to Extremes


Lisa Tamati - 2012
    In Running to Extremes, she attempts to answer that question and many more about ultramarathon running. In the past few years, Lisa has taken part in some of the most gruelling races on earth. Not content with having run the Badwater Ultramarathon once, she's been back and done it a second time. She's also completed the Gobi March and a race in the Egyptian Sahara. However, none of these could have prepared her for her greatest challenge to date: La Ultra, a 222-kilometre non-stop race over two Himalayan mountain passes. Running to Extremes tells the stories behind these races and provides plenty of advice for runners of all levels and distances. Filled with training tips, gear lists, information on nutrition and supplements, advice on mental preparation and, most importantly, a focus on how to keep yourself healthy while training and racing, it will inspire and motivate runners and non-runners alike.

Build Your Running Body: A Total-Body Fitness Plan for All Distance Runners, from Milers to Ultramarathoners—Run Farther, Faster, and Injury-Free


Pete Magill - 2014
    This easy-to-use workout manual draws on the latest research in running physiology to target all the components that go into every stride—including muscles, connective tissue, cardiovascular fitness, energy production, the nervous system, hormones, and the brain. With the breakthrough whole-body training program in Build Your Running Body, runners will improve their times, run longer and more comfortably, and reduce injury.With more than 150 workouts—from weightlifting and cross-training to resistance exercises and plyometrics—fine-tuned to individual skill levels and performance goals, PLUS: • 393 photos that make it easy to follow every step of every workout • 10 training programs to help runners of all levels integrate the total-body plan into their daily routines • Interviews with leading runners, exercise scientists, and coaches—learn how elite runners train today • Race strategy for the crucial weeks leading up to the competition and through to the finish line • Exercises to prevent injury and rehabilitate common running ailments • Seasoned insight on barefoot running, the pros and cons of stretching, and other hot-button topics • Nutrition guidance on carbs, proteins, fats, and weight loss • More than 30 recipes to speed recovery and cement fitness gains • Beginners' guidelines every step of the way • Valuable tips on proper apparel, tracking your progress, and more!

The Athlete's Guide to Recovery: Rest, Relax, and Restore for Peak Performance


Sage Rountree - 2011
    Hard workouts tear down the body, but rest allows the body to repair and come back stronger than before.The Athlete’s Guide to Recovery is the first comprehensive, practical exploration of the art and science of athletic rest. Certified cycling, triathlon, and running coach and yoga instructor Sage Rountree guides you to full recovery and improved performance, exploring how much rest athletes need, how to measure fatigue, and how to make the best use of recovery tools.Drawing on her own experience along with interviews with coaches, trainers, and elite athletes, Rountree details daily recovery techniques, demystifying common aids like ice baths, compression apparel, and supplements. She explains in detail how to employ restorative practices such as massage, meditation, and yoga. You will learn which methods work best and how and when they are most effective.Recovery is critical to performance gains. The Athlete’s Guide to Recovery offers recovery plans that target various training and race distances, in events from short distance bike races to ultramarathons, as well as examining recovery between seasons.This invaluable resource will enable you to maintain that hard-to-find balance between rigorous training and rest so that you can feel great and compete at your highest capability.

The Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling: Build the Strength, Skills, and Confidence to Ride as Far as You Want


Edmund R. Burke - 2000
    Whether Your Goal Is 30 Miles or 3,000From Edmund R. Burke, Ph.D., and Ed Pavelka - two of the country's top cycling experts - comes the most comprehensive guide ever to achieving the strength, skills, and strategies you need for long-distance riding. Whether you're training for day rides, centuries, or cross-country trips, The Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling helps you choose the right equipment, train step-by-step, and map out your riding strategy so that you can go the distance.Discover how to: * Make the most of every hour on your bike* Build your mileage base efficiently* Customize your training to suit your personality and physical capabilities* Build extra training time into your hectic schedule* Avoid injuries and the dangers of overtraining* Achieve the mental edge you need to ride farther and faster* Train for both road and off-road touring* Choose cycling gear that goes and goes* Eat for the long haul-- nutrition before, during, and after your ridesTo help you achieve your riding goals, The Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling gives you complete, step-by-step training programs for riding a half-century, century, double century, and beyond. You'll also find strategies and techniques for special situations, such as riding in bed weather and riding at night. Published by the world's leading authority on bicycling, this informative guide is a must-have for all cycling enthusiasts.

Bravey


Alexi Pappas - 2021
    When her father started signing her up for sports teams as a way to keep his bereaved daughter busy, female athletes became some of the first women Pappas looked up to, and she became a girl with a goal: to be an Olympian. Despite setbacks and hardships, Pappas held fast to that dream, putting in the tremendous hard work, both mentally and physically, and letting nothing stand in her way until she achieved it, making her Olympic debut as a runner in 2016. Unflinching, often exuberant, and always entertaining, Bravey showcases Pappas's signature, charming voice as she reflects upon the touchstone moments in her life and the lessons that have powered her career as both an athlete and artist--chief among them, how to be brave. She faces obstacles with optimism and finds the dark moments as important to her process as the breakthroughs, from high school awkwardness to post-Olympic depression, offering valuable wisdom on the benefits of embracing what hurts, both physical and emotional. To Pappas, bravery is inward-facing; it's all in how you feel about yourself, as much about always believing in yourself as it is about running toward your goals. Pappas's experiences reveal how anyone can overcome hardship, befriend pain, celebrate victory, relish the loyalty found in teammates, and claim joy. In short: how anyone can be a bravey.

I Hate Running and You Can Too: How to Get Started, Keep Going, and Make Sense of an Irrational Passion


Brendan Leonard - 2021
    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.

The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It


Neal Bascomb - 2004
    In 1952, after suffering defeat at the Helsinki Olympics, three world-class runners each set out to break this barrier.Roger Bannister was a young English medical student who epitomized the ideal of the amateur — still driven not just by winning but by the nobility of the pursuit. John Landy was the privileged son of a genteel Australian family, who as a boy preferred butterfly collecting to running but who trained relentlessly in an almost spiritual attempt to shape his body to this singular task. Then there was Wes Santee, the swaggering American, a Kansas farm boy and natural athlete who believed he was just plain better than everybody else.Spanning three continents and defying the odds, their collective quest captivated the world and stole headlines from the Korean War, the atomic race, and such legendary figures as Edmund Hillary, Willie Mays, Native Dancer, and Ben Hogan. In the tradition of Seabiscuit and Chariots of Fire, Neal Bascomb delivers a breathtaking story of unlikely heroes and leaves us with a lasting portrait of the twilight years of the golden age of sport.

An Accidental Athlete: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Middle Age


John Bingham - 2011
    I became an athlete. And not just any athlete, but a runner—all without taking a running step until I was 43 years old. Known by fans as "The Penguin" for his back-of-the-pack speed, John Bingham is the unlikely hero of the modern running boom. In this warm, witty memoir, the best-selling author and columnist recalls his childhood dreams of athletic glory, sedentary years of unhealthy excess, and a life-changing transformation from couch potato to "adult-onset athlete."Overweight, uninspired, and saddled with a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoking habit, Bingham found himself firmly wedged into a middle-age slump. Then two scary trips to the emergency room and a conversation with a happy piano tuner led him to discover running—and changed his life forever.In turns inspiring, poignant, hilarious, and heartbreaking, An Accidental Athlete is the story of the unexpected joys of running—the pride of the finisher’s medal, a bureau-busting t-shirt collection, intense back-of-the-pack strategizing. And one man’s discovery that middle age was not the finish line after all, but only the beginning.

Relentless Forward Progress: A Guide to Running Ultramarathons


Bryon Powell - 2011
    What was once the pinnacle of achievement in a runner’s life is now a stepping stone for extraordinary adventure in ultramarathoning. The number of ultrarunners—those running distances of 50k (31miles), 50 miles, 100k (62 miles), or 100 miles—is growing astronomically each year.Dean Karnazes’ Ultramarathon Man and Chris McDougall’s Born to Run have inspired tens of thousands to try these seemingly superhuman distances. But to date, there has been no practical guide to ultramarathoning. Now, Bryon Powell has written Relentless Forward Progress, the first how-to manual for aspiring ultrarunners. Powell covers every aspect of training for and racing ultra distances. This encyclopedic volume prepares runners for going farther than they have ever gone before and, in the process, shows them that they are capable of the “impossible.”

Run Like a Girl: How Strong Women Make Happy Lives


Mina Samuels - 2011
    Run Like A Girl includes the stories of a US-ranked amateur triathlete who's raising an autistic son, a thirteen-year-old girl who falls in love with cross-country running, a woman who runs her first marathon at age sixty, an investment banker who quit her job to become a yoga teacher and adopt a daughter on her own, a young mother with scoliosis who cycled her way back to health and became a jewelry designer along the way, and countless other women, including Kathrine Switzer, Rebecca Rusch, and Molly Barker, who have been changed by their experiences with sports. Run Like A Girl argues that physical strength lends itself to psychological strength, and that for many women, participating in sports translates into leading a happier, more fulfilling life.

How to Think About Exercise


Damon Young - 2014
    In the office or at study we are ‘mind workers’, with superfluous bodies. In the gym we stretch, run and lift, but our minds are idle. Damon Young challenges this idea, revealing how fitness can develop our bodies and minds, together. Exploring exercises and sports with the help of ancient and modern philosophy, he uncovers the pleasures, virtues and big ideas of fitness. By exercising intelligently, we are committing to wholeness: enjoying and enhancing our full humanity.

Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection


A.J. Jacobs - 2012
    Jacobs tackles his most challenging experiment yet: a yearlong mission to radically improve every element of his body and mind—from his brain to his fingertips to his abs.From the bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All comes the true and truly hilarious story of one person’s quest to become the healthiest man in the world. Hospitalized with a freak case of tropical pneumonia, goaded by his wife telling him, “I don’t want to be a widow at forty-five,” and ashamed of a middle-aged body best described as “a python that swallowed a goat,” A.J. Jacobs felt compelled to change his ways and get healthy. And he didn’t want only to lose weight, or finish a triathlon, or lower his cholesterol. His ambitions were far greater: maximal health from head to toe. The task was epic. He consulted an army of experts— sleep consultants and sex clinicians, nutritionists and dermatologists. He subjected himself to dozens of different workouts—from Strollercize classes to Finger Fitness sessions, from bouldering with cavemen to a treadmill desk. And he took in a cartload of diets: raw foods, veganism, high protein, calorie restriction, extreme chewing, and dozens more. He bought gadgets and helmets, earphones and juicers. He poked and he pinched. He counted and he measured. The story of his transformation is not only brilliantly entertaining, but it just may be the healthiest book ever written. It will make you laugh until your sides split and endorphins flood your bloodstream. It will alter the contours of your brain, imprinting you with better habits of hygiene and diet. It will move you emotionally and get you moving physically in surprising ways. And it will give you occasion to reflect on the body’s many mysteries and the ultimate pursuit of health: a well-lived life.

Runner's World Complete Book of Women's Running: The Best Advice to Get Started, Stay Motivated, Lose Weight, Run Injury-Free, Be Safe, and Train for Any Distance


Dagny Scott Barrios - 2000
    Listen to their quiet breaths as they talk in predawn pairs, before the rest of the family wakes-- the lessons and questions they share to the rhythm of steady footsteps. 'I never thought I could...' 'I feel so much stronger...' 'I'm ready to take on a new challenge...'Women develop a special sorority on the roads. This bond is an understanding based on acceptance, an appreciation of how far they have come, a knowing wink that says how much is yet to be gained. And so they talk and share and grow-- and run. Singly and in groups, swiftly and slowly, they run."--Dagny ScottChoose the best clothes and accessories * Lose weight permanently * Train for any race, from a 5-K to a marathon * Run through Menopause * Be safe wherever you run * Deal with self-consciousness and body image * Prevent and treat injuries * Run during pregnancy * Eat for maximum energy

Relentless: Secrets of the Sporting Elite


Alistair Brownlee - 2021
    Winning gold in consecutive Olympic Games has only strengthened this need and desire.Over the last 4 years Alistair has been on a journey to learn from the best, talking to elite figures across multiple sports as well as leading thinkers and scientists, to understand what enabled these remarkable individuals to rise to the very top, and to push the limits of human capability in their relentless pursuit of perfection.Alistair uses these fascinating interviews, along with extensive research, to explore a range of sports and environments – athletics, cycling, football, rugby, horseracing, hockey, cricket, golf, motor racing, snooker, swimming and ultra-running – to reveal how talent alone is never enough and how hard work, pain, pressure, stress, risk, focus, sacrifice, innovation, reinvention, passion, ruthlessness, luck, failure and even a lockdown can all play a crucial part in honing a winning mentality and achieving sustained success.