The Looniness Of The Long Distance Runner: An Unfit Londoner’s Attempt To Run The New York City Marathon From Scratch by Russell Taylor

SUMMARY: I enjoyed this book. It is written with a sense of humor.

Since I am currently training to run a marathon myself also from scratch, the title jumped out at me. I had to buy it. Since the author is English, the book is in English. I don’t mean US English. I mean it is written in English English. So there is some English slang sprinkled throughout the book, prices are in pounds, and distances are often in kilometers.
After the author, while in a drunken state, sponsors some other people to run in the New York City marathon, he decides to run it himself. He comes up with the plan of writing a book about his training, and the race itself. The author’s royalties from the book all go to charity. As he was not a runner to begin with, he starts running slowly, not telling people of his goal to run in the New York City Marathon. He begins to build up his speed and endurance. Along the way he runs some shorter races. I had scanned the whole book, converted it to text, and then converted the text to speech. I was listening to this book when I ran my first half marathon. In fact, the author was running his first half-marathon in the book while I was running mine. The author manages to run his New York Marathon, and even runs it in a sub-four-hour time.
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Posted by Rob in Reviews on September 22nd, 2006 |