Running Sports

Everyone learns how to run at an early age. It's naturally wired into your body. Yet in recent years, running has become complicated by trendy gadgets and doctrine. With a Boston Marathon win and over 100,000 miles run on his resume, Amby Burfoot steers the sport back to its simple roots in Run Forever. From a warm and welcoming perspective, Burfoot provides clear, actionable guidance to runners of every age and ability level.

This book is the result of 20 years of running, racing, and qualifying for the Boston Marathon as an average amateur athlete. In MarathonBQ, I share the accumulated knowledge of training and qualifying for Boston along with a simple training plan to get you there.

There is No Finish introduces the exploding world of the Backyard Ultra. Birthed from the high school musings of Lazarus Lake, renowned for the Barkley Marathons, the running event has spread globally—to over eighty countries— with sky-rocketing numbers. Runners have up to one hour to complete a 4.1-mile lap. At the start of the next hour, again they attempt to complete the same lap. The race keeps going, with no finish, until all except one person gives up. The winner is the last one standing who does one lap more than anyone else.

Whether you enjoy running for fun, want to lose weight, or hope to complete your first marathon, The Beginner’s Guide to Running has you covered. No matter if you have tried and failed at running in the past, this audiobook is designed to show you how to enjoy running and achieve your goals.

On the morning of December 22, 2005, New York City firefighter Matt Long was cycling to work when he was struck by and sucked under a 20-ton bus making an illegal turn. The injuries he sustained pushed him within inches of death. Miraculously, after five months in the hospital and more than 40 operations, Matt was able to start his recovery. This book chronicles Matt's road to recovery as he teaches himself to walk again and, a mere three years later, to run in the 2008 New York City Marathon.

The original Born to Run ignited a global barefoot running movement, inspiring a generation to step outside and explore the world on our own two feet: Free from injuries. Free from stress. Free from overpriced shoes and gear and race fees. But how do we start? Christopher McDougall and long-time coach and running wizard Eric Orton have answered with Born to Run 2: The Ultimate Training Guide, teaching every runner, new or experienced, how to master humankind's first true superpower and tap into hidden reserves of strength and stamina.

According to the rule books, a marathon is 26.2 grueling yet exhilarating miles. Millions of people run marathons around the world. Many more millions dream of doing it. But for novice or veteran runners, marathons require training and plenty of it. Certified marathon coach David Levine and dedicated marathoner Paula Petrella know how to get anyone in shape for the race and share the entire procedure in clear, jargon-free language.

Part memoir, part scientific investigation, Racing the Clock is the book biologist and natural historian Bernd Heinrich has been waiting his entire life to write. A dedicated and accomplished marathon (and ultra-marathon) runner who won his first marathon at age 39, Heinrich looks deeply at running, aging, and the body, exploring the unresolved relationship between metabolism, diet, exercise, and age. Why do some bodies age differently than others? How much control do we have over that process, and what effect, if any, does being active have?

The Tao of Running brings a fresh and unique perspective to the topic of running. It offers listeners multiple ways to significantly deepen, enlighten, and enrich their running experiences.

This incredible story of how an ordinary mum ran her way into the record books will inspire beginner runners and die-hard marathon devotees alike, proving that, no matter where life takes you, it’s never too late to achieve your dreams and do the impossible. When Mimi first started jogging on a treadmill as an unfit 36-year-old mother of three, she never imagined she would go on to become a world-record-breaking ultrarunner.

First broadcast in 1948, Sports Report is the longest-running radio sporting programme in the world and one of the BBC’s hardy perennials. Pat Murphy has been a reporter on the programme since 1981 and here he sifts comprehensively through the experiences of his contemporaries and those who made their mark on Sports Report in earlier decades. Drawing on unique access from the BBC Archives Unit, he highlights memorable moments from Sports Report.

In It for the Long Run is ultrarunner Damian Hall’s story of running a first marathon aged 36, dressed as a toilet, and representing Great Britain four years later. His midlife-crisis running problem escalated to 100-mile ultramarathons and record-breaking bimbles, culminating in his 261-mile Pennine Way run in July 2020.

Elizabeth Clor wanted nothing more than to qualify for the prestigious Boston Marathon. Dead-set on achieving this goal, she found herself bound up in a vicious cycle of perfectionism and anxiety that thwarted her at every turn, despite making significant gains in her physical abilities over seven years. Boston Bound is the story of how Elizabeth discovered that her own brain was the culprit, and explains the steps she took to completely overhaul her mindset about her running and her life.

Megan has been like a sister to Carly since they were very young. Now, they are university freshmen and on the Cross Country team together. One day, after running together, Megan sees Carly naked in the locker room. She realizes that she has feelings for Carly that go beyond friendship. Later in the week, during one of their runs, Carly and Megan head off the beaten path and find themselves skinny dipping near a waterfall. As they stare at each other naked beneath the falling water, they must confront their feelings of lust, passion, and love.

Olympian and World Champion Caster Semenya is finally ready to share the vivid and heartbreaking story of how the world came to know her name. Thrust into the spotlight at just 18 years old after winning the Berlin World Championships in 2009, Semenya’s win was quickly overshadowed by criticism and speculation about her body, and she became the center of a still-raging firestorm about how gender plays out in sports, our expectations of female athletes, and the right to compete as you are.

We all know girls develop differently to boys during puberty but, shockingly, pro coaches fail to adapt training to their bodies. Girls develop eating disorders, RED-S and amenorrhea; they're also likely to be emotionally and physically abused; and in their careers with sponsors like Nike, they're underpaid and misrepresented. Lauren Fleshman—one of the fastest American women runners—explores scientific and social research while telling her own story in a bold, energetic voice.

Two hours to cover 26 miles and 385 yards. Its running's Everest, a feat once seen as impossible for the human body. Now we can glimpse the mountaintop. The sub-two-hour marathon requires an exceptional feat of speed, mental strength, and endurance. The pioneer will have to endure more, live braver, plan better, and be luckier than any who has run before. Ed Caesar takes us into the world of elite runners: the greatest marathoners on Earth.

First and foremost a book about running, The Longest Race takes listeners alongside ultramarathoner Ed Ayres as he prepares for, runs, and finishes the JFK 50-mile race at a then record-breaking time for his age division - 60 and older. But for Ayres, this race was about more than just running, and the book also encompasses his musings and epiphanies along the way about possibilities for human achievement and the creation of a sustainable civilization.

Along the path to any goal - completing a marathon or a thesis paper, winning a medal or a contract - familiar mental hurdles arise: We may fixate on the odds of failure or find our interest flags two-thirds of the way through. That’s when elite endurance athletes - top performers in running, cycling, and swimming - turn to their rich arsenal of cognitive strategies to overcome self-doubt and unlock peak performance.

"It's a meditative act," they said. But it's far from meditative for Alexandra Heminsley when yet another wave slams into her face. It's survival. When she laced up her shoes in Running Like a Girl, all she had to do to become a runner was to get out there and run. But swimming is something else entirely. The water is all-consuming, confusing her every move, sabotaging every breath. Determined, Alexandra will learn to adapt, find new strengths, and learn to work with the water.