Running Book Review: Running with the Buffaloes

Last fall during marathon training, my running buddy Chris lent me Running with the Buffaloes after I mentioned that I wanted to read it but my library didn't have it. Of course, he lent me a copy that was signed by both Chris Lear AND Adam Goucher. He's clearly not a librarian; you do NOT lend out signed book copies! Because of that I only read it at home, keeping it next to my bed so it wouldn't get damaged. Thus it took me FOREVER to read it. It was really great to pick it up when I needed extra running motivation.

I finally finished it during my coaching certification weekend, and it 100% lived up to all the hype. It also desperately makes me wish I had ran cross country in college, and also makes my mind spin as to how a coach would coach that many runners and be able to get them all the peak during the national championship while also managing all of the injuries along the way. I would love to be in Wetmore's brain for a season, that's for sure.

My rating: 5 stars

Summary from Amazon:

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.

Weekly Reads: The Happy Runner: Love the Process, Get Faster, Run Longer

I received an e-ARC of The Happy Runner: Love the Process, Get Faster, Run Longer, co-authored by running folks that some of my friends have been coached by. I'm always excited to get my hands on a new book about running and training, and this one blew me away. As I was reading it, I was writing myself notes of who I needed to gift this book to. I was also reading this at a time that I definitely needed the perspective that the book shared. I would highly recommend this to all runners out there looking to enjoy theirselves more on every mile.

My rating: 5 VERY ENTHUSIASTIC STARS. <--that's said in my best Addie dog voice.

Summary from goodreads:

Is your daily run starting to drag you down? Has running become a chore rather than the delight it once was? Then The Happy Runner is the answer for you.

Authors David and Megan Roche believe that you can't reach your running potential without consistency and joyful daily adventures that lead to long-term health and happiness. Guided by their personal experiences and coaching expertise, they point out the mental and emotional factors that will help you learn exactly how to become a happy runner and achieve your personal best.

Following the "some work, all play" approach, The Happy Runnerintroduces the three commandments of happy running and teaches you how to balance the effort of running with the simple joy of the activity:

- Learn how to run fast, run long, and stay healthy with proven training methods.

- Read real stories from professional and recreational athletes who have had personal breakthroughs as they learned to love the process of running.

- Understand how to adapt your running based on your personal lifestyle and goals as well as avoid setbacks from injury.

- Develop your self-belief and make positivity your default setting so you can reach your goals.

Whether you're battling burnout, are returning after an injury, or are new to running and want to enjoy a 5K or an ultramarathon, the science-based training guidance in The Happy Runner will help you get faster, go longer, and live stronger--all with a smile.

Weekly Reads: Let Your Mind Run: A Memoir of Thinking My Way to Victory

Let Your Mind Run: A Memoir of Thinking My Way to Victory is Deena Kastor's new book and is a must read for all runners. There is so much about her running career that I didn't know and I had so much fun diving into it. Also her perspective on training and positive thinking really helped facilitate a shift in the way I plan to approach running going forward. So when I say it's a must-read, I'm not messing around!

My rating: 5 stars

Summary from goodreads:

From an Olympic medalist runner and the record-holder in the women's marathon and half-marathon, a vividly inspirational memoir on using positive psychology and brain science to achieve unparalleled athletic success 

The day Deena Kastor became a truly elite runner was the day she realized that she had to ignore her talent--it had taken her so far, but only conquering the mental piece could unlock higher levels of achievement. In Let Your Mind Run, the vaunted Olympic medalist and marathon and half-marathon record holder, will reveal how she incorporated the benefits of positive psychology into her already-dedicated running practice, setting her on a course to conquer women's distance running. Blending both narrative running insights and deep-dive brain science, this book will appeal to and motivate steadfast athletes, determined runners, and tough-as-nails coaches, and beyond.
This memoir, written by perhaps the most famous American woman active in the competitive world of distance running, will appeal to the pragmatic athletic population, and jointly to fans of engaging sports narratives, inspirational memoirs, and uplifiting biographies. 

Training Book Review: Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance

Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance is by Alex Hutchinson and has been on my to-be read pile for months. Alex made the rounds on all of the running/training podcasts I follow, promoting his book, and being a total training nerd, I was really excited to learn some things! It's a really intriguing book, split into chapters of focus. The studies and examples used were sometimes hit or miss for me, as I have a hard time relating to some of the extreme examples of mountain climbing and similar scenarios, but it was really intriguing and I learned a few gems.

My rating: 3.5 stars

Summary from goodreads:

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.

Training Books

The off season is upon us, or as some like to call it "winter". Hashtag winter is coming. I'm not even a GoT person, but I throw around that reference all the time, like I know what's up. With less miles on the schedule, I have more time and energy to throw into learning about the sport. So obviously I have a giant list of books that I want to get my hands on and dive into.

I'll surely do a report of these as I get through them, but right now my list includes:


The Science of Running: How to find your limit and train to maximize your performance



Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success



Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance




Running Science




What else do I need to add to my list?

Training Book: Running Science

I absolutely love reading books about running and training. Anytime I'm excited about something, I have to read, read, read as much as I can to learn everything I can about the topic. I've been reading running and training books for years and years, but I'm always excited to add something new to the bookshelf.


Running Science is the newest one I've picked up as it was referenced in the last book I read. I'm excited to tear my way through it, but it is a pretty decent sized book, so we'll see.

What are your favorite running related books?

Summary from Goodreads:

More than 50 years ago, New Zealand's Arthur Lydiard started using terms like base training, periodization, and peaking. His U.S. counterpart, Bill Bowerman, brought Lydiard's term for what until then had been called roadwork, or jogging, to the States. Soon after, the 1970s running boom started, spurred by exercise-advocating research from the growing fields of exercise science and sports medicine and from enthusiasts such as Jim Fixx, author of The Complete Book of Running. One of Bowerman's former runners at the University of Oregon, Phil Knight, saw to it that those millions of new runners had swoosh-adorning footwear designed specifically for their sport.

The pace of knowledge enhancement and innovation has, in fact, been so brisk through the years that even highly informed runners could be excused for not keeping up, but no longer.Running Science is a one-of-a-kind resource:

- An easily comprehended repository of running research

- A wealth of insights distilled from great sport and exercise scientists, coaches, and runners

- A do-it-right reference for a host of techniques and tactics

- An array of the most credible and widely used training principles and programs

- Perhaps most of all, a celebration of the latest science-based know-how of running, now truly the world's most popular sport

Elite running coach Owen Anderson presents this comprehensive work in a compelling way for runners. A PhD and coach himself, Anderson has both a great enthusiasm for sharing what scientific studies offer the running community and a keen sense of what's really important for today's informed runners to know. 

Weekly Reads: Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon

Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathonwas such a fascinating read (technically a listen, since I caught it on audiobook). It was fascinating from a running geek standpoint, but the book also did a great job of breaking down and explaining some of the information for the non-runner geeks of us. It's definitely worth a read (or listen) for other runners or science geeks out there.

My rating: 4 stars

Summary from goodreads:

Just published to extraordinary acclaim in Britain as “Hoop Dreams for runners” (The Spectator) and “a celebration of the human spirit” (The Observer), Two Hours is the first book from a blazing new talent who “has established himself as perhaps the best new long-form magazine writer since the arrival of John Jeremiah Sullivan” (The Guardian) and whose “reportage has the wonderfully old-fashioned feel of the very best of American journalism” (The Sunday Times).

Two hours to cover twenty-six miles and 385 yards. It is running’s Everest, a feat once seen as impossible for the human body. But now we can glimpse the mountaintop. The sub-two hour marathon will require an exceptional combination of speed, mental strength, and endurance. The pioneer will have to endure more, live braver, plan better, and be luckier than anyone who has run before. So who will it be?

In this spellbinding book, journalist Ed Caesar takes us into the world of elite marathoners: some of the greatest runners on earth. Through the stories of these rich characters, like Kenyan Geoffrey Mutai, around whom the narrative is built, Caesar traces the history of the marathon as well as the science, physiology, and psychology involved in running so fast for so long. And he shows us why this most democratic of races retains its brutal, enthralling appeal—and why we are drawn to test ourselves to the limit.

Two Hours is a book about a beautiful sport few people understand. It takes us from big-money races in the United States and Europe to remote villages in Kenya. It’s about talent, heroism, and refusing to accept defeat. It is a book about running that is about much more than running. It is a human drama like no other.

Weekly Reads: The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances

Almost everyone knows of The Oatmeal blog, and nearly every runner does as well with the explosion of his comics "Running Your First Marathon" and "The Blerch" and the race series that has come from the blerch. So being an avid blog reader and runner, I had to get my hands on a copy of The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances. It did not disappoint. There were some familiar cartoons from the blog, and there were new comics I hadn't seen before, but familiar LOLZ all around. This would make an awesome gift for an running fiend, and is great for non-runners to read to better understand their insane running sibling/partner/friend/etc./etc.

And bonus: The book comes with two stickers for your car. Since I had my library's copy, I didn't take them, although I really really really really wanted to.

My rating: 4.5 stars

Summary from goodreads:

"All runners wonder, at some point or another, why we do what we do. Mr. Inman's explanation is the best I've ever seen. And the funniest. Because he is clinically insane."
-Mark Remy, editor at large, Runner's World, author of The Runner's Rule Book

"He runs. He sweats. He heaves. He hates it. He loves it. He runs so hard his toenails fall off. He asks himself, why? Why do I do this? Here, gorgeously, bravely, hilariously, is Matt's deeply honest answer."
-Robert Krulwich, NPR

"Finally! A voice that sings with the Blerches of angels!"
-Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run