Amby Burfoot

I mean the author is definitely full of himself and that gets annoying, but this was probably one of the better books I've read as far as motivating me to get back into running after years of injuries, and the book actually included plans that were helpful.

(Update two years later: I'm still a consistent runner, back up to 2 half marathons a year, and I have to largely credit this book for helping me get back into it after 8 years off.)

Great short profiles by a writer and marathoner with decades of experience. At a minimum, this needs to be in every school library so kids can use it to write papers for Women's History Month. But it is good reading both for the individual runners and for the slow increments of history in women's running. It starts with women running as unofficial entrants and ends up with half of all entrants being women. Quite a story.

As the title suggests, this book is your go-to guide for running information from 2004 or so. Not that many things have changed in running since then, or at least I assume so. There are a few things I didn't like about it, yet it wasn't all bad.

First off, there are plenty of photographs of people running and looking fit and happy. That's the sort of thing you want from your fitness magazines or books. There was advice that was rather spurious and some of it was rather preachy. Take show more vegetarianism for instance; I will never become a vegetarian. I know it works for people, but I like meat too much. I already have a dietary restriction due to having celiac, so don't tell me that meat is out of my diet now too. I don't care about your ethical ideals. Animals exist, many exist just for our consumption, thus we should eat them. That is my ethics on eating meat. What other point does a cow even have? Perhaps I am being close-minded.

Since the book is on running in general, it realizes that women run too. Therefore, there is an entire section on women in running that I skipped since I don't need to know how to choose a sports bra.

It does tell you how to prepare for marathons and how to carbo load and the other nutritional information. If you are thinking of taking up running for any reason, this book is pretty good for that. show less

I'm not one to read running books since I just feel that one should go out and run! But this was very good...I highly recommend it to other runners and significant others of runners. Burfoot does a good job of explaining some of the basic "unexplainables" that we runners deal with. My favorite chapters were "Listening" and "Simplicity". I let go of the mp3 a couple years ago and while I want to go back to it from time to time I love the sounds I hear during the run.