By telling her own story of how she stopped dieting, got off the couch, and unleashed her inner athlete—as well as showcasing similar stories from other women—Green inspires other plus-size women to do the same.Green also provides concrete advice, based on the latest research, about how to get started, how to establish a support team, how to choose an activity, what kind of clothing and gear work best for the plus-size athlete, how to set goals, and how to improve one’s relationship with food. And she stresses the importance of paying it forward—for it is only by seeing plus-size women in leadership roles that other plus-size women will be motivated to stop trying to lose weight and get fit instead.

    Illustrated with 16 pages of photographs.

    In The Summit Seeker, Vanessa Runs explores trail and ultra running on an emotional, psychological, and spiritual level. Vanessa started running to battle her demons, to heal her deepest wounds, and ultimately, to find her peace in the mountains. Her vivid descriptions of spectacular trails call you into wild places where you will find rugged beauty, expansive wilderness, and deep personal insights. Weaving her personal stories of struggle, hunger, and adventure, Vanessa tugs at our heartstrings and appeals to our most primitive drive as a species: to survive.

    But over the past decade, a wave of dramatic findings in the cutting-edge science of endurance has completely overturned our understanding of human limitation. Endure widely disseminates these findings for the first time: It’s the brain that dictates how far we can go—which means we can always push ourselves further.Hutchinson presents an overview of science’s search for understanding human fatigue, from crude experiments with electricity and frogs’ legs to sophisticated brain imaging technology. Going beyond the traditional mechanical view of human limits (like a car with a brick on its gas pedal, we go until the tank runs out of gas), he instead argues that a key element in endurance is how the brain responds to distress signals—whether heat, or cold, or muscles screaming with lactic acid—and reveals that we can train to improve brain response.An elite distance runner himself, Hutchinson takes us to the forefront of the new sports psychology—brain electrode jolts, computer-based training, subliminal messaging—and presents startling new discoveries enhancing the performance of athletes today and shows how anyone can utilize these tactics to bolster their own performance—and get the most out of their bodies.

    An inquiry into how ultra-endurance sports can induce preternatural states in athletes.

    The Great Fitness Experiment is not a how-to guide but rather a fitness memoir in which Charlotte Hilton Andersen sifts through the morass of contradictory claims and information in today’s health- and fitness-obsessed world. Andersen tries a new workout each month for a year in an attempt to discover what works, what doesn't, and what’s just plain weird. She delves into such subjects as the Action Hero Workout, Cross Fit Training, Going Vegan, Double Cardio, and others. Interspersed between the chapters on the monthly experiments, Andersen offers personal essays on everything from her past experiences with eating disorders to testing the ugliest fitness shoes on the planet to lesson about, as she puts it "what I’ve learned from being a girl in our body-obsessed culture." She writes candidly about her history of anorexia, orthorexia, and "general-low-self-esteem-exia," including anecdotes about the effects of the health craze on her students, friends, and gym buddies.

    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.

    Everything Aris does with his runners—male and female alike—is new and extraordinary, and he has created a new American running dynasty. The cross-country runners of Fayetteville-Manlius, or F-M, in upstate New York have dominated high school running for 15 years, sweeping boys’ and girls’ titles at the Nike Cross Nationals championships (NXN) in 2014 in an unprecedented achievement.The girls’ team, empowered by Aris’ unique, unwavering brand of gender equity, has won 11 of the last 13 NXN titles, some by margins of over 100 points. The boys’ team has the best cumulative national record of NXN podium performances. F-M domination has shocked the sport for its defiance of accepted running principles and limitations. One year at NXN, the F-M girls defeated the all-star field of top teams by an average of 59 seconds per girl in the 5k race.Another year, the girls ran faster than their teenage Kenyan counterparts, who competed in the Portland, Oregon event as an international showcase. Across the country, coaches awed by F-M and unaware of the team’s methods and discoveries, whispered, “How do they do it?”From adopting long-forgotten “Stotan” creeds—combining the rigors of a Spartan and stoic lifestyle—to delving into teenage developmental psychology and gender-blindness in training, Amazing Racers is a must read for millions of runners and the millions more who strive for better performance.

    . . with the book that goes beyond 12 weeks, and then some: TRANSFORMATION: How to Change EVERYTHING. Within these pages, Phillips delivers on the title's promise. In a unique fusion of art, science, common sense, and the wisdom of the life experience itself, TRANSFORMATION illuminates the right way to making significant, meaningful, and healthy changes. Specifically, Phillips guides readers step-by-step through his 11 Transformation Tenets, which, when practiced daily, "energizes authentic and lasting change, beginning deep within your heart and then radiating out into every aspect of your life, and are reflected in everything you see, do, feel and experience. Truly . . . the Transformation is the way to change everything . . . beginning within your Self, but only beginning there."

    Welcome to laughing until it hurts while covered in bodily fluids. Welcome to simple math at very high stakes. Welcome to an incredibly inappropriate sense of humor. Welcome to serving people on the most stressful days of their lives. Welcome to putting your hands in places you never imagined they'd be. Welcome to your front row seat to the ballad of life and death. That's not the welcome that this nurse was looking for, but that's the one he got. Irreverent and audacious, this brutally honest memoir covers what it’s like to come of age in an American Hospital. Welcome to a rollicking peak behind the curtain to what medical providers, and the health care system, are truly like.

    Between Moehl's positive and encouraging attitude and her deep knowledge and enthusiasm for the sport, there's no one better to prepare and train you for your first ultra and beyond!Moehl will become your guide to completing a 50K, 50-mile or 100-mile race. Her experience translates into the most effective and easy-to-follow training method, broken down into phases to help all runners take it to the next level and accomplish their goals. She shares her love of the sport by providing helpful tips, bonus content and personal stories. Her commitment to growing the sport and passion for coaching others running their first is evident in the care she's taken to create detailed plans and lifestyle adjustments. With Moehl, you will find all the resources and encouragement you need to succeed in challenging your mind and body with an ultramarathon!

    Now read her life story. Li Na claimed an unprecedented victory at the 2011 French Open at age twenty-nine, and became the first player from an Asian country to win a Grand Slam singles title. Outspoken and likeable, the 'late-blooming' Chinese tennis superstar is one of the world's top ten players, and has championships on grass, clay and hard courts to her name.Li Na is a tennis player few forget. She claimed an unprecedented victory at the 2011 French Open at age twenty-nine, and became the first player from an Asian country to win a Grand Slam singles title. Outspoken and likeable, the 'late-blooming' Chinese tennis superstar is one of the world's top ten players, and has championships on grass, clay and hard courts to her name.Beyond the rankings and million-dollar endorsements is a life just as remarkable as her success. Li Na grew up within a rigid national sports system, living away from home and training six days a week, and spent years struggling to believe in herself. Her outstanding feats in a sport she grew to love, recovering from three knee surgeries and conquering her own demons, are nothing short of inspirational.Told with honesty and humour, Li Na: My Life is the moving story behind an extraordinary sporting icon.

    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.

    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.

    Chris Spealler is 5’5" and 140 pounds. Such daunting facts would make most declare defeat before trying. Chris didn’t buy the odds, though. Instead, he forged his own modern-day David-and-Goliath story. Speal is Chris’s account of struggle and perseverance, despite being "too small." What others did with ease, he seemed to do with sheer grit and will. And his actions put him among CrossFit’s elite. His is not a story of a gifted athlete whose natural talent granted him acclaim, but rather of one man who refused to back down and inspired an entire community in the process.