FASTER ROAD RACING: 5K TO HALF MARATHON
by Pete Pfitzinger and Phillip Latter
Renowned running authority, coach, and best-selling author Pete Pfitzinger teams with Philip Latter, senior writer for Running Times, in this must-have training guide for the most popular race distances, including the 5K, 10K, and half marathon. Faster Road Racing: 5K to Half Marathon presents easy-to-follow programs proven to give you an edge in your next race. You’ll discover detailed plans for race-specific distances as well as expert advice on balancing training and recovery, cross-training, nutrition, tapering, and training over age 40. And for serious runners who compete in numerous races throughout the year, Pfitzinger’s multi-race, multi-distance training plans are invaluable. Faster Road Racing is your all-inclusive resource on running your fastest at distances of 5K, 8K to 10K, 15K to 10 miles, and the half marathon.
ADVANCED MARATHONING
by Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas
Shave minutes off your time using the latest in science-based training for serious runners. Advanced Marathoning has all the information you need to train smarter, remain injury free, and arrive on the start line ready to run the marathon of your life. Including marathon-pace runs and tempo runs, Advanced Marathoning provides only the most effective methods of training. You’ll learn how to complement your running workouts with strength, core, flexibility, and form training; implement cutting-edge nutrition and hydration strategies and recovery techniques; and taper properly to reach peak performance. With easy-to-understand day-by-day training schedules for 18- and 12-week preparation for weekly distances of 55, 55 to 70, 70 to 85, and 85-plus miles, Advanced Marathoning is simply the most comprehensive and efficient approach to marathoning. If you’re ready to achieve your personal best, this book is for you.
STRONG: A RUNNER’S GUIDE TO BOOSTING CONFIDENCE AND BECOMING THE BEST VERSION OF YOU
by Kara Goucher
Running is a head game. There are two options: Let your mind wander, or focus. To compete, you must focus. Kara Goucher shares her secrets to conquering self-doubt and improving running performance using proven tools from the field of sport psychology. Strong includes tips, techniques, and real-life experiences from Olympians Emma Coburn and Molly Huddle, and New York Times best- selling author Robin Arzón. Strong also offers perspectives from two experts in the field of sport psychology, including Kara’s own sport psychologist, Dr. Stephen Walker. THIS COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE INCLUDES: Kara’s stories, experiences, and glimpses inside her personal confidence journal; Insights from inspiring women in the field of running; Guided activities to incorporate eight confidence techniques into your own training, including: Positive Self Talk, Mantra, Setting Goals, Enclothed Cognition, Power Pose, Visualization Techniques, Power Words, and Social Connections and Tools to starting your own Kara-style confidence journal, with over 25 prompts to get you started.
RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES
by Chris Lear
In RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES, writer Chris Lear follows the University of Colorado cross-country team through an unforgettable NCAA season. Allowed unparalleled access to team practices, private moments, and the mind of Mark Wetmore–one of the country’s most renowned and controversial coaches–Lear provides a riveting look inside the triumphs and heartaches of a perennial national contender and the men who will stop at nothing to achieve excellence. The Buffaloes’ 1998 season held great promise, with Olympic hopeful Adam Goucher poised for his first-ever NCAA cross-country title, and the University of Colorado shooting for its first-ever national team title. But in the rigorous world of top-level collegiate sports, blind misfortune can sabotage the dreams of individuals and teams alike. In a season plagued by injury and the tragic loss of a teammate, the Buffaloes were tested as never before. What these men managed to achieve in the face of such adversity is the stuff of legend and glory. With passion and suspense, Lear captures the lives of these young men and offers a glimpse of what drives a gifted runner like Adam Goucher and a great coach like Mark Wetmore. Like Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not About the Bike, RUNNING WITH THE BUFFALOES is at once a glowing celebration of a sport and an inspiration to anyone who has ever had the courage to beat the odds and follow a dream.
RUN STRONG
by Kevin Beck
Run faster and longer with less effort than ever before! Putting in the miles is only one part of the training equation. You can become a much stronger overall runner by improving leg turnover, efficiency, body alignment, muscle balance, and running-specific muscle strength, and by finding your most effective range of motion. Expert coaches and runners show you how to assess what you need and implement these training methods into your current program. And if you’re returning from injury, you can bounce back stronger and faster than ever before.Make your base miles pay off by improving your efficiency and economy. With Run Strong you’ll maximize your current fitness level and see results at the very next race!
BORN TO RUN
by Christopher McDougall
The astonishing national bestseller and hugely entertaining story that completely changed the way we run. An epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt? 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, and, finally, to a climactic race in the Copper Canyons that pits America’s best ultra-runners against the tribe. McDougall’s incredible story will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that you, indeed all of us, were born to run.
ONCE A RUNNER: A NOVEL
by John L. Parker, Jr.
Originally self-published in 1978, Once a Runner captures the essence of competitive running—and of athletic competition in general—and has become one of the most beloved sports novels ever published. Inspired by the author’s experience as a collegiate champion, the story focuses on Quenton Cassidy, a competitive runner at fictional Southeastern University whose lifelong dream is to run a four-minute mile. He is less than a second away when the turmoil of the Vietnam War era intrudes into the staid recesses of his school’s athletic department. After he becomes involved in an athletes’ protest, Cassidy is suspended from his track team. Under the tutelage of his friend and mentor, Bruce Denton, a graduate student and former Olympic gold medalist, Cassidy gives up his scholarship, his girlfriend, and possibly his future to withdraw to a monastic retreat in the countryside and begin training for the race of his life against the greatest miler in history. A rare insider’s account of the incredibly intense lives of elite distance runners, Once a Runner is an inspiring, funny, and spot-on tale of one man’s quest to become a champion.
ENDURE: MIND, BODY, AND THE CURIOUSLY ELASTIC LIMITS OF HUMAN PERFORMANCE
by Alex Hutchinson
The capacity to endure is the key trait that underlies great performance in virtually every field—from a 100-meter sprint to a 100-mile ultramarathon, from summiting Everest to acing final exams or completing any difficult project. But what if we all can go farther, push harder, and achieve more than we think we’re capable of? Blending cutting-edge science and gripping storytelling in the spirit of Malcolm Gladwell—who contributes the book’s foreword—award-winning journalist Alex Hutchinson reveals that a wave of paradigm-altering research over the past decade suggests the seemingly physical barriers you encounter as set as much by your brain as by your body. This means the mind is the new frontier of endurance—and that the horizons of performance are much more elastic than we once thought. But, of course, it’s not “all in your head.” For each of the physical limits that Hutchinson explores—pain, muscle, oxygen, heat, thirst, fuel—he carefully disentangles the delicate interplay of mind and body by telling the riveting stories of men and women who’ve pushed their own limits in extraordinary ways. The longtime “Sweat Science” columnist for Outside and Runner’s World, Hutchinson, a former national-team long-distance runner and Cambridge-trained physicist, was one of only two reporters granted access to Nike’s top-secret training project to break the two-hour marathon barrier, an extreme quest he traces throughout the book. But the lessons he draws from shadowing elite athletes and from traveling to high-tech labs around the world are surprisingly universal. Endurance, Hutchinson writes, is “the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop”—and we’re always capable of pushing a little farther.
LORE OF RUNNING
by Tim Noakes, MD
Lore of Running gives you incomparable detail on physiology, training, racing, injuries, world-class athletes, and races. Author Tim Noakes blends the expertise of a physician and research scientist with the passion of a dedicated runner to answer the most pressing questions for those who are serious about the sport: How your body systems respond to training, the effects of different training methods, how to detect and avoid overtraining, and genetic versus trainable potential? How to train for the 10K up through ultramarathon with detailed programs from Noakes and several leading running experts? How to prevent and treat injuries, increase your strength and flexibility, and use proper nutrition for weight control and maximum performance? You’ll also find a candid analysis of supplements and ergogenic effects and training aids. The book includes new interviews with 10 world-class runners who share their secrets to success and longevity in the sport. Features on legendary figures and events in running history provide fascinating insights. And that’s just scratching the surface. Lore of Running is not only the biggest and best running publication on the planet. It’s the one book every runner should own.
THE SCIENCE OF RUNNING: HOW TO FIND YOUR LIMIT AND TRAIN TO MAXIMIZE YOU PERFORMANCE
by Steve Magness
If you are looking for how to finish your first 5k, this book isn’t for you. The Science of Running is written for those of us looking to maximize our performance, get as close to our limits as possible, and more than anything find out how good we can be, or how good our athletes can be. In The Science of Running, elite coach and exercise physiologist Steve Magness integrates the latest research with the training processes of the world’s best runners, to deliver an in depth look at how to maximize your performance. It is a unique book that conquers both the scientific and practical points of running in two different sections. The first is aimed at identifying what limits running performance from a scientific standpoint. You will take a tour through the inside of the body, learning what causes fatigue, how we produce energy to run, and how the brain functions to hold you back from super-human performance. In section two, we turn to the practical application of this information and focus on the process of training to achieve your goals. You will learn how to develop training plans and to look at training in a completely different way. The Science of Running does not hold back information and is sure to challenge you to become a better athlete, coach, or exercise scientist in covering such topics as: What is fatigue? The latest research on looking at fatigue from a brain centered view. Why VO2max is the most overrated and misunderstood concept in both the lab and on the track ? Why “zone” training leads to suboptimal performance? How to properly individualize training for your own unique physiology? How to look at the training process in a unique way in terms of stimulus and adaptation? Full sample training programs from 800m to the marathon.