running book review

February 25, 2009 at 9:13 pm | Posted in food | Leave a comment
Tags: exercise

i’ve been on the search for a good running book for a long time. after reading my boyfriend’s cycling books (joe friel is pretty awesome if you’re looking for that), i was disappointed again and again with the crap that was written for runners.

someone recommended road racing for serious runners to me and i promptly ordered it from amazon. after it arrived, i kind of flipped through it and set it down. there was nothing in it to draw me in and it seemed like a lot of the book was dedicated to different race lengths. because i was only interested in maybe two, most of the book was wasted on me. the useful sections on nutrition and training principles were not written in a way that grabbed me and made me want to read on.

after doing a quick search for running training books at the library, i came across a couple put out by runner’s world, a magazine i subscribe to, mostly for entertainment but partially for the good information they sometimes have. run less run faster was the first of my holds to arrive, and i devoured it. this is a great book for anyone looking to become faster and stronger. the principles and science behind the training program (based on 3 days of running + 2 days of cross training. totally reasonable for busy people!) are clearly laid out and interesting to read about. i read it cover to cover, rather than flipping around like i might with another reference book. i give this one two thumbs up! there is even a section on how to qualify for boston.

although i’ve been doing base (and strength) training since november, my real season starts once i can hit the roads. my first race is in just 12 weeks! because the half marathon program in the book is 18 weeks and i will have maybe 8-9 from the time i can officiallly start running to my first race, 16 weeks between the first and the second race, and 5 weeks between the second and the third, i will be modifying the workouts a bit, but i do plan to stick closely to their program to work on cutting those 16 minutes off my time.

what are you working towards?