What I read about when I read about running

I've read a lot of books about running in my time. Partly because of work; I used to work on Nike and the Bowerman Series. Partly for inspiration as I tried to get into running. And partly because it's an interesting cultural thing, like football. Running is to football as ambient is to house.

My favourites have probably been:

Jogging by Bill Bowerman "crammed with pulmonary-vascular lore"

The Courage to Start - actually got me going for a while

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - which got me going a second time. I think because it gave me a romantic/literary alibi for running. It made it feel a bit equivalent to sitting in a Parisian cafe like Hemingway.

And now there's The Running Ground by Nicholas Thompson which I've just finished and has got me out on some cold winter roads.

I only highlighted three bits. An excellent quote:

“Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote.

A useful thought:

"The Central Governor Model theory of fatigue also leads to an interesting hypothesis. Maybe one way to train ourselves to run fast is to train ourselves to endure in other tasks. As Hutchinson writes, endurance is what you need to finish a marathon and it’s also what you need to fly cross-country with toddlers. To the extent that this is true, it gives me a theory for how to merge my hobby with my life. Long conference calls and stressful debates about the org chart are ways of learning to stay focused deep into a marathon. And staying focused deep into a marathon is a helpful way to learn how to stay calm and engaged two hours into a tense all-hands session."

And a fantastic sounding thing to google

He founded what he called the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team.

Including Suprabha Beckjord and a 3100 mile race.