Showing titles in Running & Jogging

Running offers much more than road racing! After a decade of writing about running, sports columnist Susan Lacke found herself in a serious running rut. The runners around her seemed to be thriving, setting goals, and having fun, but her own interest in running was lackluster. Seeking to reengage with the sport she once loved, Lacke spent a year exploring running in its many shapes and forms, taking on running challenges that scared her, pushed her, and downright embarrassed her.

Every sports fan loves a great comeback. Is there a special quality shared by top athletes who triumph over great challenges? And can anyone acquire it? In The Comeback Quotient, celebrated sports writer Matt Fitzgerald supplies the answer to both questions. He identifies these mega-achievers of astounding athletic comebacks as "ultrarealists", men and women who succeed where others fail by fully accepting, embracing, and addressing the reality of their situations.

Isolated by Mexico's deadly Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. In a riveting narrative, award-winning journalist and often-injured runner Christopher McDougall sets out to discover their secrets. In the process, he takes his readers from science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America, where ever-growing numbers of ultra-runners are pushing their bodies to the limit.

Marathons have become too easy for some runners. 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 (31 miles), 50 miles, 100k (62 miles), or 100 miles - is growing astronomically each year. 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.

Step by step, mile by mile, his body and mind heal. In this lyrical, vulnerable, and breathtaking memoir, J. M. Thompson, now a successful psychologist, retraces the path that led him from despair to wellness, detailing the chilling childhood trauma that caused his depression, and the unorthodox treatment that saved him. Running Is a Kind of Dreaming is a luminous literary testament to the universal human capacity to recover from our deepest wounds.

With his historic win at the 2014 Boston Marathon, Meb Keflezighi cemented his legacy as one of the great champions of long-distance running. Runners everywhere wanted to know how someone two weeks away from his 39th birthday, who had only the 15th best time going into the race, could defeat the best field in Boston Marathon history and become the first American man to win the race in 31 years. Meb for Mortals describes in unprecedented detail how four-time Olympian Keflezighi prepares to take on the best runners in the world.

Travis Macy has summited glacial peaks in the French Alps, rappelled into limestone caves in China, and raced through parched deserts in Utah. In 2013 he famously won the Leadman Series, a combination of nearly 300 miles of high-altitude trail running and mountain biking over the course of five epic endurance races. Macy achieved all of these victories without elite professional training or even exceptional strength, speed, or flexibility.

The Running Revolution provides both beginning and experienced runners with everything they need to know in order to safely and efficiently transition to and master a safer and more biomechanically efficient way of running that is guaranteed to improve performance and minimize wear and tear on the body.

Until five years ago, Alexandra Heminsley was decidedly not a runner. Nor was she athletic in any sense of the word. She was an ordinary, curvy woman who was convinced that sports of any kind, especially running, were beyond her. But she's made running part of her life, and gets to reap the rewards: not just the obvious things, like a touch of weight loss, health and glowing skin, but self-belief, and immeasurable daily pleasure.

Featured in the best-selling book Born to Run, coach and performance guru Eric Orton has spent a lifetime learning and thinking about running and about the limitless possibilities of the human body and mind. In The Cool Impossible, Orton shares his wealth of knowledge in an inspiring step-by-step guide that will open up a new world of achievement for runners of all levels of ability and experience. The truth is: Athleticism is awareness. That simple phrase is at the core of The Cool Impossible.

Writing from both the cutting edge of scientific discovery and the front-lines of elite athletic performance, National Magazine Award-winning science journalist Alex Hutchinson presents a revolutionary account of the dynamic and controversial new science of endurance.

What will it take to run a marathon in less than two hours? The world's fastest times for the marathon have been dropping since the distance of 26.2 miles was made official nearly one hundred years ago. But after a noticeable decline that occurred for a half century, the times, while still edging lower, have stalled several minutes north of two hours for the past decade. For the first time, 1:59 examines what it will take for an elite distance runner to go subtwo hours.

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noe Álvarez worked at an apple-packing plant alongside his mother. A university scholarship offered escape, but as a first-generation Latino college-goer, Álvarez struggled to fit in. At 19, he learned about a Native American/First Nations movement called the Peace and Dignity Journeys, epic marathons meant to renew cultural connections across North America. He dropped out of school and joined a group runners, all fleeing difficult beginnings. Telling their stories and his own, Álvarez writes about a four-month-long journey from Canada to Guatemala.

A misfit kid at the best of times, Mishka Shubaly had his world shattered when, in a 24-hour span in 1992, he survived a mass shooting on his school's campus then learned that his parents were getting divorced. His father, a prominent rocket scientist, abandoned the family, and their home was lost to foreclosure. Shubaly swore to avenge the wrongs against his mother but instead plunged into a magnificently toxic love affair with alcohol.

First and foremost a book about running, The Longest Race takes listeners alongside ultramarathoner Ed Ayres as he prepares for, runs, and finishes the JFK 50-mile race at a then record-breaking time for his age division - 60 and older. But for Ayres, this race was about more than just running, and the book also encompasses his musings and epiphanies along the way about possibilities for human achievement and the creation of a sustainable civilization.

When Bernd Heinrich decided to write a memoir of his ultramarathon running experience, he realized that the preparation for the race was as important, if not more so, than the race itself. In Why We Run, Heinrich considers the flight endurance of birds, the antelope's running prowess and limitations, and the ultra-endurance of camels to understand how human physiology can or cannot replicate these adaptations. Heinrich offers an original and provocative work combining the rigors of science with the passion of running.

This incredible story of how an ordinary mum ran her way into the record books will inspire beginner runners and die-hard marathon devotees alike, proving that, no matter where life takes you, it’s never too late to achieve your dreams and do the impossible. When Mimi first started jogging on a treadmill as an unfit 36-year-old mother of three, she never imagined she would go on to become a world-record-breaking ultrarunner.

The Tao of Running brings a fresh and unique perspective to the topic of running. It offers listeners multiple ways to significantly deepen, enlighten, and enrich their running experiences.

Walk, Run, Soar is a 52-week devotional and training journal designed for runners who hope to experience God's presence, purpose, and glory in a deeper way as they run. Dorina Gilmore Young, and her triathlete husband, Shawn, will get you moving with a new motivation: improving your spiritual health.

Today, millions of women and girls around the world enjoy running and entering races. It wasn't always so. First Ladies of Running tells the inspiring stories runners who refused to give up despite the cultural and sports barriers they faced. Legends such as Doris Brown, Francie Larrieu, Mary Decker, Jackie Hansen, Miki Gorman, and Grete Waitz are chronicled by Runner's World editor Amby Burfoot.