Running Book Reviews with Alan and Liz

Send us Fan Mail With a name like Born to Run 2 you might be expecting that this is part 2 of Chris McDougall’s story from 2009; there's a little of that, but also so much more. This is the training manual to accompany Born to Run and also features returns of some of the athletes who ran Caballo Blanco’s race organized with the Tarahumara in the Copper Canyons. The book is divided into 3 part...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode Alan and Liz chat about Steve Magness' book, Do Hard Things. This book talks about toughness and how we all probably think of toughness wrong. Toughness has long been defined as an absence of weakness, but this book challenges that with research to back up the authors claims. In addition, the author proposes 4 pillars for all of us to become more resilient: Pi...

Send us Fan Mail You (Only Faster) puts a new spin on the training book. In this book you get some good training principles but Greg uses them to guide you through a 6 step process to modifying a training plan, that you may have gotten online or from a book, to better suite you as a runner. So if the plan follows good training principles, why would you need to modify it, right? Well, you’re an ind...

Send us Fan Mail The Humiliation Tour is a running themed fiction novel that could’ve probably been 2 novels. There are 2 separate stories, one starting in 1933 during the great depression and the other starting in 1993, that are related in an unexpected way towards the end of the book. Both stories feature a young man that discovers running and this changes his life in some way. Both stories are...

Send us Fan Mail Already 10 books since the last recap episode and also another marathon under our belts. This marathon didn’t go well for either of us but we’ll have another chance in October. Here are the books we chat about in this episode: The Mock Olympian, by Michael Long You can get a copy here: https://a.co/d/3Fu37FX Fast 5k, by Pete Magill You can get a copy here:  https://a.co/d/cqjh7cg...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Alan and Liz chat about Kara Goucher’s recently released book, The Longest Race . They’ll tell you what they learned, what they thought, and why they wanted to read the book in the first place. Kara Goucher grew up with Olympic dreams. She excelled at running from a young age and was offered a Nike sponsorship deal when she graduated from college. Then in 2004, sh...

Send us Fan Mail A Beautiful Work in Progress is Mirna’s memoir and the story of how she got into ultrarunning and subsequently finishing her first 100k race. Although the book starts with her running, she goes back to her childhood and talks about her family, how she grew up surrounded by cousins, and the time she spent outside with them. Mirna grew up in a body positive environment where all the...

Send us Fan Mail   Run Faster Marathons is dedicated to providing advice that you can incorporate onto your marathon training, to make you faster. The information is divided into 3 sections: Essential Concepts for Marathon Success – Which talks about knowing your “why?”, some running rules, the right way to increase mileage, improving running form, and the importance of a good warm-up. The Six Pha...

Send us Fan Mail Run Your Best Marathon is a guide to training and racing the marathon distance. The marathon has many challenges if you are trying to run at your full potential; you need to run at a hard effort while managing fuel stores and try to stay focussed for several hours. This book uses science as a base, for concrete tips and recommendations for approaching everything from training, to...

Send us Fan Mail The Villanova Track Story is the story of Villanova University’s dominance in the DMR, distance medley relay, at the Penn Relays from 1966 to 1981. The book features this piece of running history, the athletes involved, and the circumstances that brought it all together. The author, Jerry Bouma, was himself a scholarship athlete from 1970 to 1974, but he tells the story by piecing...

Send us Fan Mail Taking Life in Stride is Harvey’s memoire divided into short stories. The stories are divided into themes, and each theme section has an introduction story. There are 6 themes: Racing Moments Fun on the run Life’s Little Difficulties People Family The stories can be read independently but some characters are featured in multiple stories throughout the book, like Harvey’s first dog...

Send us Fan Mail A Runner’s High; My Life in Motion is the story of Dean Karnazes’ return to Western States 100 in his 50’s, at a time when he is also wondering about the future of his running career. He is waitlisted, so doesn’t feel the motivation to train. As he gets to within only a few months of race day, Dean enters a 100k race to kick off his training. Throughout the book Dean reminisces ab...

Send us Fan Mail Out and Back; A Runner’s Story of Survival Against All Odds is about Hillary Allen’s miraculous survival and recovery after she fell off a ridge in Tromso Norway during the 2017 Tromso Skyrace 57k. Hillary’s survival and recovery was not only due to her perseverance and desire to live, but also because she had the right help at exactly the right time. During the race there was ano...

Send us Fan Mail Fast 5k; 25 Crucial Keys and 4 Training Plans is about two-thirds reading and one-third training plans. The reading consists of 25 short chapters, each one about a key to running a fast 5k. There are 15 training keys, 5 lifestyle, diet and gear keys, 5 race day keys, and a bonus key for masters athletes with age-related adjustments and advice. There are various charts and tables t...

Send us Fan Mail The Mock Olympian is the story of author Michael Long’s journey to run in every Olympic city, 23 in total, between the 2012 and 2016 Olympic games. Although he tried to combine trips if he was in a particular corner of the world, this goal required a lot of travel and even a month off once it was time to run in North America, which luckily, Michael’s employer approved. The book is...

Send us Fan Mail What do you mean we have read another 10 books? Already?! Well then we are due for another reflection on the things we remember, and how all this reading helped us. Here are the books we chat about in this episode: Breakthrough Women’s Running, by Neely Spence Gracey and Cindy Kuzma Running The Orient, by Gavin Boyter Running Throughout Time, by Roger Robinson Chase That Smile, by...

Send us Fan Mail How She Did It is a compilation of stories from 50 legendary female distance runners spanning 6 decades! The book starts with a short introductory section called “Part 1: The Experts”, that addresses some key factors you need to pay attention to if you want to perform to your full potential. These are physical health, hormonal health, sound nutrition and mental health. “Part 2: Th...

Send us Fan Mail Running With The Kenyans is the story of how Adharanand moved his family to Kenya for 6 months so that he could explore why Kenyan runners are so dominant. Adharanand discovered a talent for running at a young age, but like many kids in sport, ended up getting distracted along the way and not realizing his potential. He continued to run in adulthood, but never really pushed his li...

Send us Fan Mail Catch me if you can is the story of 1970’s running legend, Filbert Bayi’s, life. The book is divided into 3 parts:  In the shadow of Kilimanjaro – Which talks about Filbert’s upbringing and childhood Setting the pace – Which talks about Filbert’s introduction to the sport and the hurdles he had to overcome during his long and successful running career. Chasing a legacy – Which tal...

Send us Fan Mail Endure; Mind, body, and the curiously elastic limits of Human Performance explores all the science that has been done to find out what limits or endurance performance. The book has a total of 13 chapters divided into 3 parts: Part I: Mind and muscle Part II: Limits Part III: Limit breaker Alex Hutchinson holds a Ph. D. in physics from the University of Cambridge and has worked as...

Send us Fan Mail On Pace is Matt Fitzgerald’s most recent book where he delves into pacing.  He talks about the importance of pacing to get the most out of yourself, how good the pros are at pacing, why the rest of us are not so good at pacing, and how we can get better. There are 8 chapters about pacing: 1. Why Pacing matters 2. The science of pacing 3. Why you suck at pacing 4. Pacing as self-re...

Send us Fan Mail Depression Hates A Moving Target is about author Nita Sweeney’s experience with crippling anxiety and depression and how she got into running despite often not being able to get out of bed before taking up the sport. Nita was inspired by some posts from her Facebook friend who got into “jogging” by following a run-walk plan, and one day took the kitchen timer and her dog Morgan ou...

Send us Fan Mail Chase That Smile is Harold Cabrera’s autobiography and account of how he managed to train for 3 big endurance events in the year he turned 40: The Paris marathon, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro (this one was with his wife Tania), and completing an Ironman Triathlon. The book has 3 sections that correspond to the 3 challenges. Each section is sub-divided with dates in chronological order...

Send us Fan Mail Running Through Time aims to tell key stories about the history and evolution of running. A comprehensive book of every story that makes up running history would be massive, so this book tries to pick stories that were not told as often or not told correctly. It starts with the story of the marathon and how it became the 42.2km distance we know today, and ends with Alison Roe from...

Send us Fan Mail Running the Orient is the story of Gavin Boyter’s 2300 mile run across Europe with his girlfriend Aradhna who follows him in their camper-van Roxy. The Orient Express was a long-distance passenger train service created in 1883. It started in Paris and end in Istanbul, and along the way stopped in Strasbourg, Munich, Vienna, Budapest, and Bucharest. Gavin’s goal was to run the same...