Best Training Books for Running Nerds

A few others to add

How They Train any of them by Fred Wilt

Running with the Legends Michael Sandrock

Lasse Viren Olympic Champion by Antero Raevuori & Rolf Haikkola ( his coach)

Franz Stampfl on Running ( very under rated coach)

The New Competitive Runner's Handbook by Bob Glover

The Running Book of Training Secrets by Ken Sparks ( in his day world class 800 meter later world class masters runner PhD in exercise Physio trained out of Costill's lab

Van AAken Method by Ernst van AAken M.D.

Becoming Varsity by Doug Soles

Road racers and Their Training by Joe Henderson

Galloways Book on Running 1st book

Train Hard Win Easy by Toby Tanser

High Performance Training for TYrack and Field by William Bowerman and William Freeman

Two books I can't recall the titles one by harry Wilson (n Steve Ovett's coach the other by Ron Daws about Lydiard training has specific training schedules

There was a great thread on Mikayl Igloi"s training with an excellent contribution by Ghost of Igloi,

How to Train by Hal Higdon

Computerized Running training programs by James Gardner and J. Gerry Purdy

...review Frank Shorter/ Bill Rodgers running logs from mid to late '70's. end of story.

I am familiar with Rodgers logs. Where are Shorter's posted?

We have used Mark Coogan's book for the past year & our HS XC teams have taken a minute off their average individual times for Crystal Springs. All except one gal on each team's top 7 have achieved PRs in XC & on the track. We use Daniels to figure the paces & is the go to for predicting times. An oldie but goodie is Breakthrough Running by Gordon Bakoulis. A real oldie but goodie is Bill Dellinger's "Winning Running" which has great running drills we start mid-track season. They also have access to Coogan's & former NOP Team Podiatrist, an antigravity treadmill & shockwave who is married to the head coach :)
Personal Best Running: Coach Coogan’s Strategies for the Mile to the Marathon

podcasts.apple.com

Episode 48: A visit with Amol Saxena, Podiatrist Behind World-Class Runners

Podcast Episode · Steep Ravine...Deep Thoughts About Running · 01/13/2025 · 1h 3m

Open link

alan schied, The Self Coached Runner

track and field omnibook is a good history

Depending on where OP is in their nerding out of training foundation/systems/etc., I would personally say Jan Olbrecht's book is the absolute must-read. It's going to take time to really understand it, though. This is not the type of book you read along like great fiction where you blow threw the whole things over a night and pot of coffee.

Olbrecht's book is the type you read a paragraph or two and have to sit there and think about it, re-read it, think some more, etc.

It's the type of book you can open up to any page and there will be a massive amount of content.

One of those books you can re-read every year and each time you understand it a little more.

Absolutely amazing, but will likely be meaningless for those who are just getting started.

In the same category, although packed with even more science and all-around incredible knowledge is SuperTraining by Dr Verkhoshansky. There is a lifetime of info in it and I say that without any exaggeration whatsoever. Truly astounding/humbling levels of organization when it comes to citing and conducting studies.

Thanks for sharing my book! Anyone who wants to connect I can be found on Insta ryan.banta

Back in the mid 70’s a training partner of Frank Shorter asked Frank if he would ever write a book about training since he had coached himself since graduating college.

Frank said no probably not but if he did it would probably only be a couple page pamphlet, it just wasn’t that hard.

Frank told him that you just run 2 quality workouts and a long run each week and as many easy miles as you could between them without compromising those workouts. Do this consistently year round, year after year (with short breaks after goal races) and the mileage you could handle would increase and you’d get faster and faster. He said to mix up what you did your quality days based on what race you had coming up or what you thought you needed work on.

He did this and his mileage grew to 140 miles per week and he raced successfully from 5k to the marathon. And was the best marathoner in the world from 1971-1976 and top 10 at the 10k.

There is a lot of wisdom to this philosophy even now, 50 yrs later.

From what I read last, I liked "Lore of Running" by Tim Noakes