This Is Not About Running: A Memoir

*TW/CW: bullying, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts, cutting/self harm, psychological abuse and gaslighting, sexual predators

very readable memoir about how easily (and unfortunately all too often) female athletes can be psychologically abused (and groomed for sexual abuse), especially when they start being coached at a young age (Mary was 12 when she joined the HS varsity track team). Her male coaches were at best inappropriate, creepy, careless bullies and more accurately emotionally/psychologically abusive to the extent that most certainly ought to be criminalized and illegal. Male athletes were not exempt from similar abuse but at least were not held to inhuman (and incredibly dangerous) standards of thin, conventional "feminine" show more beauty. show less