Greatest Running Book

in general, running books suck a fat dick. sorry i'm the most hardcore runner in the world, but f*** running books.

You f***ing tard, Cassidy's time isn't important. He f***ing beat the guy and that's the story- a 3:50 miler defeated by a kid who did nothing but trained and went insane living by himself to do it. Once a Runner is a look a the soul of a runner and by far is the best running book ever written- it cannot and will not be surpassed.

What do you think the greatest running book of all time is or when of your favorite running books? I am going to have to go with Once a Runner.

Once a runner sucked. I am sick how people get such a hard on over this book - get over it - Once a Runner was not that great of a book

I've always been a fan of Noaks' 'Lore of Running'- mixes lots of anecdotes and interesting facts/bios/quotes with all the geeky science.

I read Once a Runner about 6 months ago and I don't get the hype. It's "ok," but it ain't all that and the ending blows. A few weeks later I read "Life at These Speeds" by Jeremy Jackson - now THIS is a GREAT read - much better than Once a Runner.

"Running With the Buffaloes" by Chris Lear. Outstanding read.

The Silence of Great Distance is a great book that very few people talk about. Although it tells the story of Stephanie Herbst and Kathy Ormsby it is essentially a history of women's running focussing on the legacy of Doris Brown, Tatyana Kazankina and Mary Decker. To me it is essential reading for anyone who is involved with competitive women's running.

better training for distance runners by martin and coe

You Can't Understand the Depth of Me, by Josh Cox

I personally think Once A Runner is probably one of the best books ever.

The writing is fluid and the characters are so interesting you don't have to be a runner to appreciate the book. If you are doubting the book--re-read the chapter "Demons".

no bugles, no drums

simple, 'The Greatest' by Jim Denison

Kipligat's Chance by David Odhiambo. It's a page turner with interesting characters, great prose, realistically written running scenes and it's about more than just running.

i just read 'life at these speeds' and i can't agree with you.

first, the descriptions of running are woefully inaccurate. jackson has an 8th grade kid go from 2:19 to 2:01 in one race just because he wanted it badly. the descriptions of kevin being unable to hear while he runs don't make sense, nor does his ability to break the 4 minute mile in high school while under extreme emotional stress, having back problems, and sleeping very very little. the book says he felt terrible but ran faster - it just doesn't work that way.

kevin schuler would surely have known that roger bannister attempted the 'lag lap' pacing method to get someone to pace him throug his third lap in his first attempt at sub-4. (bannister failed in that attempt but broke the british record. his record was not ratified because the pacing tactics were deemed illegal). schuler never mentioned it though. apparently, jackson just never heard of it.

i'm also just not a fan of his writing. look at the parade of ridiculous character names he rolls out. just flipping through the book i see the names: oligarchy, prophorhessohln, deek hazystrump, burt kahl, henny bulfinch, gregory altrabashar, freeda vanderhoffenblau, etc. i can see doing this if there were some sort of reason, but i don't see any pattern to characters with fairly normal names vs. characters with ridiculous names.

some of his humor works, but a lot of it, like people standing around and saying 'what?' to each other over and over just gets annoying.

kevin's psychology doesn't make sense to me. he goes from being a typical 8th grader at the beginning of the book to talking like a college lit major for the rest of it, starting just a few months later. the forgetting of people's names and identities doesn't seem realistic, but maybe that can actually happen. i don't know.

but enough nitpicking. to me the novel is flawed because it jumps around the issues it tries to deal with. he occasionally touches on a 'commercialism is evil' theme but does nothing with it. kevin is constantly in some sort of inner turmoil but we never really get a good look at it. and kevin's solution to his problems - turning around to run the second half of the race backwards, seems like a ridiculous version of the solution come up with by the kid from 'loneliness of the long distance runner'. the book is like some sort of cross between that and 'crime and punishment' and it doesn't work for me

I read "Once a Runner" about a month ago after hearing all the hype about it. I also got "Sub4", "Running with the Buffaloes" and "The Perfect Mile" with it. I've read "Pre" as well as far as running books go.

"Once a Runner" was a pretty decent book. The storytelling was very good and it brought me back to what its like to go out and run in the morning through a small town. However, I didnt like not knowing Cassidy's finish time.

"Sub4" was a good documentary. Having the advantage of hindsight really makes the book more interesting.

"Running with the Buffaloes" was awesome. It was a good narrative as well as a documentary. I loved it.

"The Perfect Mile" was great. Reading how those guys trained and how each tried and failed to break the record was really interesting.

"Pre" will always be a book I love b/c I'm a Pre fan. It gave a lot of good information and is a classic.

I have to go with Harry Wilson: Running Dialogue, closely followed by Bannister's book.

Harry's book focusses on Ovett up to 1981. In a way it's incomplete, because the Ovett / Wilson story continued for a few years. But it's so insightful and well written. I never met "the Tiger", but what a great guy he was. This book also serves as a kind of "flipside" to the first Coe book. When I first read that, I thought Ovett sucked. But I realized, after the Wilson book, that there are always two sides to a story.

The Bannister book has always given me a sense of the wonderment and innocence of running. It was my first runnin book, and it has always inspired me. Here was a guy who knew how to get the best out of himself, before drugs, money, Vdot, full time athletics etc etc etc. He achieved something miraculous in merry old Oxford in innocent 1954.

Cheers

Skuj

30 Phonebooths to Boston

and

Long Road to Boston

why die- philosophies of Percy Cerruty, awesome book-you may run faster than me today but you won't run harder!!