I kind of have a love hate relationship with this book. It's both intriguing, annoying and perplexing at the same time.

What's intriguing about it is his brain centered focus on training. How many times have you heard someone explain how the lack of glycogen causes muscle fatigue? It's text book right? Well, according to Matt Fitzgerald that's the wrong way to look at it. According to him, research shows that fuel is still available in the muscles when fatigue sets in. In actuality, whats happening, is the brain perceives a drop in fuel levels, and begins to slow the body down (fatigue) in an attempt to preserve it's self. There are many moments in this book where Mr. Fitzgerald turns conventional wisdom on end.

What's perplexing is, why does this matter? When you look at his training program, it looks very similar to many other training programs out there: base runs, intervals, tempo runs, cross-training, etc. Maybe I just didn't get it.

The book annoyed me in two ways. First, phrases like "recent research shows," and there are a lot of them, have no citation. It's one of my pet peeves, please cite the research. Not only does it add credibility to the work, some of us actually like to do some follow up research of our own. Second, there was a kind of tonal undercurrent throughout the book that smacked of arrogance.

But I did really like this book, and I'll be rereading sections of it from time to time. He's got some real good advice on, "How to Outsmart Injuries," chapter 9. I also liked the chapter on handling discomfort and pain. He nails it on the head on page 156, "Pain encompasses the raw sensations of discomfort associated with fatigue: screaming muscles, burning windpipe, and so forth. Suffering, on the other hand, is a layer of emotional unpleasantness that emerges from the runner's conscious reaction to pain." Of course Buddhists have been saying that for years :)

All in all this was a great book. The training programs are a little too advanced for me at this stage, but at some point I'd like to give it a go. I'm certainly going to incorporate some of the suggestions in the book, such as the strengthening methods and using proprioceptive cues to improve running form. ( )

The book looks very promising from the first 1.5 chapters I've read. Most marathon running books I've read are just a lot of motivational material followed by a workout plan. This book seems to go into details of how to improve your running iteratively and continously. I'll post a more detailed review after I'm done reading it once. ( )