Running Book Reviews with Alan and Liz
All types of running related books are reviewed by two non-elite track, road and trail runners. Observation and description of running books intended to inform, help and inspire anyone involved or related to running at any level. Whenever possible we chat with the author about the book, but if not then we try to do it justice. If you have been enjoying the podcast and want more, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram. You can also go to our Buy Me A Coffee website where we have a few more posts: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/AlanandLiz
Episodes
For those who wanted to hear about it, we decided to tell you about our most recent sub-3-hour marathon attempt in this bonus episode. For our listeners we explain what plan we were using and the history we have with following the same plan in the past, but most of this episode is about the result of our marathons.
The race we did was the Wineglass marathon in Corning, NY. In case you're interested in kn...
Built to Run is a book to help runners improve form, mobility and strength so that they can run injury free more often… because we all know we’ll eventually get some kind of niggle, but the idea is that we’re not sidelined for months at a time. The book has 8 chapters, starting with an explanation of your body as a system, moving on to training mobility and strength, and ending with breathing (yes, we can actually tra...
Ultrarunner Jen Scotney has achieved podium finishes in some of the UK’s toughest races and now has her sights firmly set on the Pennine Way. In Running Through the Dark, Jen talks about her ambitions, not just to run the 268-mile Pennine Way but to take the record as the fastest woman to do so. But that didn’t happen. Nothing went according to plan. The Jen the world knew was a successful lawyer and running coach – a...
Running From Tragedy is Michael Salsbury’s family story and how running, in the end, helped lessen the burden of three life changing events. Michael met the love of his life when he decided to take a break from his career in the financial industry to work at Club Med for a few months. Little did they know that they were both carriers of an ultra-rare genetic mutation that ended up taking the lives of three children be...
Good For A Girl by Lauren Fleshman is the story of Lauren's life and experience in professional running. Running seemed straight forward when she was growing up, you work hard and you get the reward, but women don't have the same performance trajectory as men when going through puberty. Women often plateau as they get used to their "new body" after puberty, but this comes at an inconvenient time in...
Running Challenges, by Keri Wallace, is like a tour guide for Trail running in the UK. It features 100 of the best trail, fell and mountain runs in England, Scotland and Wales, and those three countries make up the three sections of the book. There is something for everyone with the shortest challenges being 5k parkruns and the longest ones going over 100k.
Keri Wallace is a mountain runner, running guide for Girls on...
Trails and Tribulations is Susie Chan's memoire. She tells us a little about her life before running, including some pretty big life events, how she started running, and some of her very very long runs. A few of the races that Susie did and talks about include:
- Marathon de Sables (which she ran more than once!): A self-supported, multi-day, stage race through the dessert.
- The Jungle Ultra: Another self-suppor...
How To Run The Perfect Race is a book all about pacing. The book is divided into two sections:
Section 1: All about how to master pacing
Section 2: RPE based training plans for your next 5k, 10k, half-marathon and marathon.
Pacing isn’t about having an even pace on your Garmin. It’s about having an even effort which takes into account things like terrain and weather conditions on race day. Pacing may sound easy but most ...
In this episode of Running Book Reviews, we had the pleasure of chatting with Tim Rossi, founder of The Lost Boys running club in New York, about a book he helped bring to life in collaboration with Ciele and Maurten. We talk about the book, the Lost Boys Club, and how long it took to finish the book. Despite there not being a lot of writing in the book, the time it took to put together was just as long (if not longer...
If you're thinking that you've heard us talk about Running Rewired, it's because we read the original version which came out in 2017 and it was featured in one of the first episodes we did in 2020. Well the second edition is out now and we had the pleasure of speaking with authir Jay Dicharry in this episode!
Running Rewired is about strength training specifically for runners. The first 4 chapt...
So we know it's a bonus episode and not our usual book dedicated episode, but we need more time to line up our guests and didn't want to leave our listeners without anything to listen to. We hope that we can earn your forgiveness with some of the episodes that are coming in the future.
In this bonus episode we talk about our plan for marathon training which we'll be starting on the day this epi...
Join us for this wonderful conversation with Jen and Sim about all things running! Their fantastic book, Smart Running, is packed with useful information about a diverse range of topics and we only covered a few of them in our chat. The 19 chapters of this book are divided into 6 parts:
- Our bodies and Systems
- Becoming a resilient running
- Mental skills for runners
- Races, challenges and adventures
- Practicalities
- Training...
Here we are again! We can't believe we've read another 10 books already... and actually it's been more than 10 books... This might be a long episode (unless Alan did some aggressive editing) because when we start talking about books, we just can't stop. You don't know it, but you're lucky that this episode wasn't 3 hours long! Good thing Liz needed to get to work. Neither of us were...
We have a fantastic conversation with author Sabrina Little, about her new book, The Examined Run. In this chat we talk about ethics and role of virtues and vices in running.
The Examined Run discusses the ethics of sport, specifically the sport of running, through the lens of virtue ethics. As with any discussion of ethics, this one has many angles and nuances, and could have easily been a trilogy of books....
The Race to Be Myself is a 4 part memoire where Caster talks about:
- The beginning: how she grew up, how she liked to hang out with boys and play sports, and what happened in puberty.
- The rise: How she got into running and eventually decided to be more serious about training. She also talks about getting more serious about school because she wanted to sun with for a university where she could have access to coaches ...
Running Through; my journey through moments of flight, is Steven’s journey into Running via a series of tiny moments of flight. This book is divided into short stories describing some of the moments in his personal running journey and how they ended up influencing his life. Some stories are funny anecdotes and others are not funny at all and deeply personal. The common thread is that Steven is running through them all...
If you've been following our social media accounts (mainly FB and Instagram... we're not as good about posting to X or Threads...) then you'll have seen that Alan went to Boston this year. Before the Boston Marathon, we reviewed The Boston Marathon Handbook buy Marc Pollina, and it turned out that Alan and Marc ran very similar finish times. That's why we invited him on for this bonus episode!
All In Stride is the story of two Kenyan born athletes who have competed at the highest levels in running, and one US athlete and Olympian in the modern pentathlon. The bond that the three characters share is that they have all been in the Army’s world class athlete program (WCAP).
The book is divided into two parts:
Part 1: Kenya – which is about Elvin and Shadrak’s upbringing in Kenya and their journey into ...
The Boston Marathon Handbook is part of the Falcon Guides series, which cover the entire spectrum of outdoor activities. This book covers everything about Boston from what makes Boston so special, to getting in and training, and even what to do after the race and more!
There are 12 chapters that make up the book:
Chapter 1 - Why Is The Boston Marathon Special?
Chapter 2 - There's Only One Boston
...
In The Spell Of The Barkley tells the story of the Barkley race in Tennessee with its history and traditions, how the author discovered it and became determined to finish the “fun run”, and explores the reasons why participants keep coming back despite being almost guaranteed to fail. The book is a mix of the authors experience and stories of the people he met in the ultrarunning world. A few people he talks about in ...
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