Rachel Toor's Blog, page 5

New Athleta post

The Monkey MindMay 16, 2014 By Rachel Toor 3 Comments4Don’t force it? If I didn’t force it I wouldn’t be here.I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to be thinking about how much I hate my good friend Val right now. I hate her for being able to fold at the waist, wrap her arms around her legs, and kiss her own knees. She’s got her face nestled into her shins and I can barely touch my own ankles.I’m pretty sure that when we’re in crow pose, I shouldn’t want to give Val, one of my oldest, closest friends a shove—just a little push, really—and watch her topple from that perfect perch on her elbows.I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to be having any of the seven hundred thoughts going through my head: How much longer is this going to last? Why did I agree to do this? Is Val gloating about being so stretchy? Is she looking at me thinking, Ha! You may be able to run faster, but look how bendy I am!In fact, I’m almost positive that every thought that’s going through my mind—competitive, petty, jealous, angry, distracted, hopeless, impatient—is the opposite of what yoga is supposed to be all about.And yet, every time I do yoga, this is what happens in my head.What happens in my body is a whole other story. A sad, sad story of hamstrings that will not give, of arms that don’t have the strength to support my own weight, of a stomach that decides to rumble loudest in the quietest rooms, whose gas picks mortifying times to pass.When people say that they love to stretch, I want to hit them. Just as I want to clobber the folks who say they love to write. I find both these undertakings unutterably difficult. Stretching—and writing—for me are painful endeavors.I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be able to reach down from a standing position and “rest” your hands on the floor. Or sit in lotus pose for more than four seconds. Or balance on one foot like a tree.On the rare occasions I take yoga classes—and I am speaking here of the perhaps peculiarly American practice that involves deracinated Sanskrit words, membership cards, and expensive tight clothing—I end up looking around at sinewy women who can contort themselves into pretzels and gorging on envy. They seem so at home in their bodies, comfortable in poses that feel to me like waterboarding. The teachers tell me not to force it, to go as far as I can, but let’s be honest: if I didn’t force it I’d just end up standing there. Actually, if I didn’t force it, I’d be lying on a couch reading a novel. In the inescapable glare of dimly lit mirrors I discover new flaws in myself.I know that yoga might be good for me, that a regular and truly spiritual practice could benefit my heart, soul, and mind. I know that yoga is probably (though not conclusively, based on divisive findings in sports science) a balm for my runner-tight body. So periodically I go to classes; the whole time I look forward to them being over.Not long ago, when I was in Chicago visiting Val, she asked if I wanted to join her and her partner for a yoga class. The teacher was coming to their house that evening. I could go right to bed after. My usual excuses evaporated and I couldn’t get myself to say no, even though I wanted to.I had recently run a hard 50K trail race at a ski resort at the end of a season of long, hard races. Yet here I felt like a weak, out-of-shape lump of unmovable flesh. I watched the teacher and Val and Val’s partner—a man! How could a man be more stretchy than me?—and silently reviled them all.Until we got to savasana, corpse pose.I lay there and, after a while, the frenetic thoughts in my head slowed to a jog. And then they stilled. I stopped worrying about work, quit thinking about how hungry I was, and I was able to sink into my mat. After a bit, I could feel myself rise above my body, I swear it. I had a moment when I got there. I got there.I saw what it could be like.I love the idea of finding a way to still my frenetic mind, and if I were a better person, and I thought this would happen each time I lay like a dead body, I would try to practice yoga consistently.But I’m afraid that I would also stop writing.When I don’t run enough, I have nothing to say. Something about the act of running allows things to jog loose in my mind and helps me have ideas, lets me to work them out, frees me to wonder about things. Part of it might be the salutatory effects of natural beauty. When I’m outside among gasp-worthy scenery, I am paradoxically able to go deeper into my own head. Instead of trying to quiet the shrieking stinking monkey house of my overfull brain, I let it rip. If I’m angry, I run faster. If I’m stuck, I run until whatever got clogged shakes free.Sometimes I take it easy, sometimes I challenge myself on runs. I task myself to be braver and crazier than what makes me comfortable. I do exactly what the yogis tell me not to do: I force it. I expose myself to brutal weather, and to solo ascents, and to more miles than is good for me. I keep going when I want to stop, run when I want to walk.For a balanced life perhaps I need not make a choice. I could run and do yoga, and if I could find as easy a way to bring yoga into my daily routine, I’m sure I would come to rely on it. I know I’ve nipped only the smallest sip of what it could do for me. But for me, right now, there’s nothing more beautiful or simple than putting on my running shoes and heading out the door. And nothing that does more for my mind, body and soul. Namaste.

Week Two of Guest Blogging

THURSDAY, MAY 15, 2014 0 CommentsI Wrote A Romance Novel? — A Guest Post by Author Rachel ToorRachel Toor
When I was first asked to blog for this site I thought: Romance? I wrote a romance novel? I thought I had written a book about failure and loss, about eventually seeing your way past hard, bad stuff and finding out who you are, about dealing with the horrors of the college admissions process, about loving a member of a (wrongly) despised species, about discovering a passion (running) and looking at the ways that can shape your identity. Then I realized that—duh!—I’d written a romance novel.Would I want to read a book in which the main character didn’t bounce off an amorous interest? Not so much. Love is such an essential part of life and literature that it didn’t occur to me to highlight and separate it out. It’s always there.Every novel is in some ways about failure and loss, and every story is a love story. The genre has been around for a long, long time. My favorite romance novel isPride and Prejudice. How much fun is it to hate haughty Mr. Darcy at the beginning and to wish you were just like Elizabeth, always quick with a witty comeback? How much more fun to realize how wrong we had been about that arrogant hottie? I love being wrong about people. As far as romance goes, among my other faves are little Jane Eyre and dark and stormy Mr. Rochester, broken Heathcliff and selfish Catherine, and the geeky, ailing pairing of Augustus and Hazel. There are plenty of novels that do not have love stories at their center, and many that do don’t end happily, but there’s a real pleasure in seeing the court and spark of love, even if it sometimes goes sideways.It’s said that a literary novel starts where a romance ends—when the characters use the backs of their hands to wipe the spit off the happily-ever-after kiss and start arguing about whether the toilet paper should roll over or under or if the toothpaste should be squeezed from the middle or the bottom of the tube. (For the record: the toilet paper should roll over—I’ve change my mind about this—and it’s better to get toothpaste that stands upright so you don’t have to deal with the whole issue.) The beginnings of things are always more exciting and fun than the middles, which are stable and therefore boring, and the ends, when things can get icky and messy. One of the crazy things I know from many (many, many) years of dating is that at the start of each new romance, no matter how old you are, you are transported back to high school. The sleeplessness, the sense of excitement and anticipation, the way that lines from songs or poems suddenly mean so much more, how you want to learn everything about the other person, and how much, in the process, you learn about yourself—very little about all that changes. Each new relationship promises hope and the prospect of a better you.When I started writing I knew my character, Alice, would find a runner boy to fall for, a tasty morsel of a dude who loves the same things she does and who helps her see things a little differently. I knew that when they ran together they would head into uncharted territory. The act of running with another person is an intimate experience. You’re moving together, and breathing hard, and you’re out in the big world and also in a tiny little bubble that consists of just the two of you.What I didn’t know was that her experience would feel so familiar to me. I may not get as tongue-tied around a new crush as Alice does when she’s with Miles, but the sense that a part of you has opened and bloomed like a flower after a long winter, that suddenly the universe is twitching and alive and so are you, that there’s never enough time to say everything, that being apart even for a few hours is painful—that rush, that jolt, never fades. With each new person you roll out a version of yourself, the best you have to offer. You fall for him, but also for the idea of who you could be with him by your side. A life that felt sepia-toned turns suddenly, vividly, Technicolor. You wait for the phone to ring, you loiter in spaces you shared together, you feel bloodless when he’s not around. You think: No one has ever experienced anything like this before.
I’ll end this post with one of my favorite love poems. e.e. cummings says it far better than I can.


somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyondany experience,your eyes have their silence:in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose methough i have closed myself as fingers,you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i andmy life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,as when the heart of this flower imaginesthe snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equalsthe power of your intense fragility:whose texturecompels me with the color of its countries,rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens;only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Rachel Toor is an associate professor of Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University and the author of three nonfiction books. Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish her first Young Adult novel, On the Road to Find Out, in June 2014. Rachel lives with her dog, Helen, who raced in her first half marathon this February. She was 4th dog (out of 42).Visit her online at http://racheltoor.com.posted in: Author Guest Posts tags: e.e. cummings, Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice, Rachel Toor,romance, The Fault in Our Stars, Wuthering Heights

Ack!

Horrible spammers have colonized my website, so it's down for now. Hope to have www.racheltoor.com up and running (and not sending out thousands of pieces of spam) soon.

First blog post for SwoonReads

THURSDAY, MAY 08, 2014 0 CommentsLuck, Hard Work, and More Luck: My Publishing Story – A Guest Post by Author Rachel ToorRachel Toor
I can’t tell whether my publishing story will make other writers want to stick their heads in the oven, kill me, or be happily inspired. If I heard it, I’d probably feel a combination of all of those things. The truth is, what happened to me is a lot about luck, a little about the rewards of hard work, and then some more luck.Even though I’d published three books of nonfiction, I’d been struggling to find the right topic for a next one. I’d finally come up with a proposal and after working with my agent on it for about a year, she had just sent it out to publishers. We got an early offer I wasn’t thrilled about, and a bunch of rejections. Then I got this out-of-the-blue email from an editor at FSG BYR who said he’d just read my memoir about becoming a runner,Personal Record, and wondered whether I’d ever considered writing a YA novel about a teenage girl who decides to take up running.Yikes! I said I was flattered (I was beyond flattered, if you want to know, I chased my dog around the house chanting FSG, FSG, FSG!) but I told him I couldn’t do it; I didn’t write fiction. He said, “That’s ridiculous,” and encouraged me to try. I would write twenty pages, e-mail them to him, and the minute after I pressed Send would realize how bad they were and start over. I wrote and discarded hundred of opening pages until I knew who my characters were. He read and made suggestions and the process became truly collaborative. I listened to and thought hard about every single thing he said. Sometimes I didn’t follow his suggestions exactly, but if he said there was a problem, I knew there was mostly likely a problem and that I had to try to fix it. It was like having a coach who sees what you can do, understands where you want to go, and helps you get there.Me running with my dog, Helen.This novel was the first time I’ve really had fun writing. In the graduate nonfiction creative writing classes I teach I always tell my students that writing is hard, hard work. If you haven’t sweated and bled to write something, readers will probably struggle to enjoy it. I always rolled my eyes when novelist friends would say things like, “I can’t wait to see what happens to these characters,” as if the writer wasn’t in charge. But guess what? You’re not in charge. The characters become live little extensions of your subconscious and take over. They change and grow and you begin to see connections that surprise, and sometimes delight, you.I thought I wanted to write a book that showed those who didn’t think they could be runners that they were wrong, that helped teens (and their parents) through the horrors of the college admissions process, and that would help rehabilitate the image of pet rats, which have, let’s face it, gotten a bad rap throughout history. It turned out to be about a whole bunch of other things that I hadn’t realized would come up. So. Much. Fun.After we’d been working together for a while my editor had gotten to know me pretty well. He understood the many ways that I’m neurotic and insecure. One day he asked me for a bunch of changes on the first section and said he wanted to share it with his colleagues.My very first YA novel!A few days later I got an e-mail from my agent with the official offer.I’d been flying from Spokane, Washington, to Chicago to see my college roommate. By the time I had to change planes in Minneapolis my agent told me they’d made a deal.At O’Hare I got in a taxi and called my editor. He said he didn’t want to tell me he was taking the project to an acquisitions meeting because he knew it would freak me out.And was he ever right. I had heart palpitations and hives for about three months after getting the good news. I knew I could finish the novel, and I was happy and excited, but my body couldn’t contain my emotions and it twitched and erupted in weird ways.Which isn’t to say that the whole process wasn’t wonderful. From that very first e-mail to getting a lovely message from the editorial director who said that after reading my proposal one of the editorial assistants had started running and she, the editorial director, was considering getting a pet rat, I could not have imagined a better publishing experience. Nearly all the people at Macmillan who have worked on the book are runners, and I’m thrilled to have been made an honorary member of the company’s running club, MacRunners. I feel like I’m surrounded by my peeps.A friend of mine once asked why it feels so much worse to lose than it feels good to win. I thought about that a lot and finally I realized that it doesn’t. The sense of triumph I had the day I got the news about the contract has not faded. Whatever happens to the book after it goes out into the world can’t take away from how proud I am to have written it.It might make me seem like a loser or not a “real” writer to say this, but I would never have had the faith or the guts to do this on my own. Finding someone who believed in me and kept me going—especially when it got tough—was how this novel got done.I love that Swoon Reads provides a whole community of people who will read, and cheer, and prop you up when you start to slump. Sometimes, it takes a village to write a novel. Find your village and get to work.

Rachel Toor is an associate professor of Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University and the author of three nonfiction books. Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish her first Young Adult novel, On the Road to Find Out, in June 2014. Rachel lives with her dog, Helen, who raced in her first half marathon this February. She was 4th dog (out of 42).Visit her online at http://racheltoor.com.

Kirkus review

When I was a book editor I used to hate sending out pre-publication reviews from Kirkus to authors. Often they're critical. Often they're mean. Often they're so mean authors want to curl into a ball and never write another word, including a shopping list, again.

After I read this review--that really gets what I was trying to do with the novel--Helen and I ran around the house screaming, THANK YOU, KIRKUS. (Okay, I screamed and she thought I was crazy, but we both ran around the house.)

I hadn't realized I'd written a romance. But since every story is, at bottom, at love story, I'll take it.

ON THE ROAD TO FIND OUT
Author: Rachel Toor

Review Issue Date: May 15, 2014
Publisher:Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pages: 320
Price ( Hardcover ): $17.99
Publication Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN ( Hardcover ): 978-0-374-30014-2
Category: Children's
In a light and gently humorous romance, self-centered Alice learns to run, to cope with disappointment and to consider other people’s feelings.

Alice is heartsick after Yale rejects her Early Action application. However, as a family friend both wise and wisecracking points out in a heavy-handed but nonetheless insightful speech, her crushed feeling is less about Yale itself than about not having gotten her own way. Stubborn, snarky and sometimes glaringly un–self-aware, Alice has a smart retort for everything her mom, dad or family friend Walter tries to tell or offer her. She is kinder to Jenni, the best friend for whom Alice’s parents serve as a sort of surrogate family, but astute readers will notice the imbalances in the pair’s relationship long before Jenni herself points them out. What keeps readers engaged with Alice is her devotion to her beloved pet rat, a comical, curious and deeply lovable creature also named Walter, who inspires enthusiastic and endearing rat-related asides to readers. As Alice follows up on her hastily made New Year’s resolution to start running and meets the kind and driven head of a running shop as well as a down-to-earth and dreamy boy runner, her growth is palpable. Lessons—of the life-skills variety and the SAT-vocabulary variety—are many, but the vibrant characters and lively dialogue make them easily to digest.

Warm, funny and wise. (Fiction. 12-18)

Some advance praise for OTRTFO

“On the Road to Find Out is a smart and beguiling novel about rejection, running, and the way life can recalculate around a roadblock.” – Jean Hanff Korelitz, author of Admission“This is a road worth taking."  Publishers Weekly
Rachel Toor's novel On the Road to Find Out is challenging, upbeat, poignant, funny and just … so cool. I wish I hadn’t read this story of running-as-life so I’d still have it to look forward to. – Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean“On the Road to Find Out is entertaining, surprising, and inspiring. I loved spending time inside Alice’s bizarre and charming brain. I am definitely not a runner. But reading this book somehow made me feel like, ‘I could do that!’ which is how I know it is a very convincing work of fiction.”  —Leila Sales, author of This Song Will Save Your Life
“Rachel Toor has never been afraid of blazing her own trail, and in On the Road to Find Out she does just that. Fresh and imaginative, it hooked me from the first page. Readers of any age, runner or not, are sure to find this book both inspiring and endearing.”  —Dean Karnazes, endurance athlete and New York Times–bestselling author
“Rachel Toor gets it about running; this is the book I’d like my daughters to read, and I suspect a lot of young people would like their parents to read. Rachel can write like hell—she’s got the firepower and understands how the simple act of becoming a runner changes lives for the better.”     —Bill Rodgers, four-time winner of the Boston and NYC marathons, author of Marathon Man: My 26.2-Mile Journey from Unknown Grad Student to the Top of the Running World 

Publication date: June 10!

Find Us OnlineHOMEBLOGBOOKSESHORTSCHAPTER SAMPLERSFEATURED BOOKOn the Road to Find OutBy: Rachel ToorSocial Media Sharing: Add to Goodreads: On New Year’s Day, Alice Davis goes for a run. Her first ever. It’s painful and embarrassing, but so was getting denied by the only college she cares about. Alice knows she has to stop sitting around and complaining to her best friend, Jenni, and her pet rat, Walter, about what a loser she is. But what doesn’t know is that by taking those first steps out the door, she is setting off down a road filled with new challenges—including vicious side stitches, chafing in unmentionable places, and race-paced first love—and strengthening herself to endure when the going suddenly gets tougher than she ever imagined, in On the Road to Find Out by Rachel Toor.Preorder Your Copy Today                 Read an Excerpt1I pumped my arms and covered ground with almost no effort. I was Superman. I was Nike—not the shoe company, but the winged goddess of victory. I could practically hear Bruce singing that tramps like us, baby—well, you know.For one and a half blocks. That’s the part he left out. We may have been born to run—but not very far. After two blocks, everything started to hurt. I couldn’t get enough air and each leg weighed about eight hundred pounds. Great Lake–sized puddles lurked at every corner and I stepped in all of them. When I tried to leap across, I landed—splat!—in the deepest part.I hadn’t expected to see so many people out on this dreapy holiday morning. It took only a few minutes for me to realize my New Year’s resolution was typical, ordinary, and uninspired—just like me.The boulevard was buzzing with runners, all trucking along in their tight tights and sporty vests, their long-sleeved shirts with the names of marathons or colleges or clothing brands plastered across the front, their baseball hats from professional football teams and their nondescript black beanies. Some had on backpacks and belts studded with water bottles, as if they were going to be traveling for days. Some people ran alone, and some were in groups. Those in groups chatted as if they were using no more energy than it would take to hoist a latte to their lips. When they came toward me they’d nod and raise a gloved hand.Which reminded me I was not invisible. I hadn’t realized—when I squeezed into the jeggings my mother had bought me years ago (but that I only got to wear to school twice before my best friend, Jenni, told me they were already tragically unhip), donned a long-sleeved T-shirt from an unfortunate family trip to Disney World, and layered on one of my dad’s plain old slightly tatty sweatshirts—no, I hadn’t realized the superpower I would most want when I set out for my first run would be invisibility.Each time someone ran past me from behind, splattering me with dirty sidewalk water, I straightened up, went a little faster, and tried to hide how hard I was breathing.
And each time someone came toward me I’d look up only for a second, raise a paw in acknowledgment, and think: Don’t look at me. Please don’t look at me.My feet hurt because I had secretly borrowed a pair of never-worn, slightly too-small running shoes I found in my mother’s shoe room. Yes, my mother has a room just for her shoes. Other people might call it a closet. But then, as Dad likes to point out, other people live in houses with less acreage than the space dedicated to my mother’s footwear. She’s a material girl, my mom, a doctor who earns enough jack to pay for everything she needs and wants, and a bunch of things that I neither need nor want.My eyes never stopped watering and I had to constantly wipe my face with my sleeve. I’m sure I looked like I was sobbing throughout the whole thing. It might have been the wind, or maybe I was really crying.My calves cramped up and I felt dizzy. On the other side of the street I could see a huddle of teens smoking cigarettes. Or something. They yelled an insult, or maybe it was just a whoop, a holler, and I thought again: Make me invisible.My feet still hurt. It felt like my arches had flattened into the shoes. Some jerks drove by in a pickup truck adorned with a Confederate flag and honked their horn. It scared me so much I jumped and landed funny and that made my feet hurt more. I wanted to scream, Go back to your cave, you howling trolls, but I didn’t say anything.Then came the panting. I was breathing like a prank caller. My arms were so heavy I could hardly swing them.And then a guy with long legs, floppy hair, and a dog that looked like Toto with trashy blond highlights passed me.Hear this, people: I got passed by a dog who was off to see the Wizard. The little dude trotted fast on his abbreviated limbs. He held his head high—as high as you could hold a head on legs only about four inches tall. He wore a harness with a camo design, and his leash had rhinestones on it. His mini-legs were going like crazy.The guy took graceful strides and did not seem like someone who would have a little dog dressed in camo at the end of a sparkly leash. Toto dogs go with blue-haired old ladies who smell like Cashmere Bouquet body powder and maybe the faintest hint of pee. People and their animals usually look right together. These two didn’t.The guy was around my age. He was attractive. He was so attractive Jenni, a small girl of big appetites, would have referred to him as a tasty morsel. He glided along, his head straight, his arms tucked in neat by his sides.I struggled to try to keep up with them and did. For about ten seconds. Then they pulled away.I had been chilly when I left the house, but my body soon equilibrated (yes, I paid attention in honors chem), and I sweated through my layers. I stopped for a second to wrestle out of the sweatshirt and tie it around my waist, and looked up to see another pair of runners coming toward me, a guy and a girl. The girl had her hair pulled into a long ponytail and as she ran it swung from side to side, a blond metronome. She was smiling and he was smiling too and he said something and she laughed and she turned and socked the guy with a playful punch to the belly, and he bent over—all while they were still running—and when he stood up straight again I saw the sweatshirt he wore.It said, “YALE.”The burn rose from my stomach and settled in my throat. I could feel my face flush. I choked up.The happy couple passed by me without a wave, without even noticing me, and I thought: Right. In some ways, I am invisible. I am nothing.I slowed to a walk. My nose was full of snot and I didn’t have a tissue. I felt like throwing up. On this day, January 1, I had kept my New Year’s resolution and gone for my first run ever.It was over in eight minutes.For about seven and a half of those minutes, around 450 seconds, when I had been concentrating on running—on how much my body hurt, on what other people saw when they looked at me, and even on wondering what that hot guy was doing with a Toto dog—I had been able to forget that I, Alice Evelyn Davis, top student in my class at Charleston High School, champion taker of standardized tests, favorite of teachers, and only child of two achievement-focused parents, had been rejected Early Action from Yale University, the only college I ever wanted to go to.About the Author
Rachel Toor is the author of three previous books. She was an admissions officer at Duke University, a high school cross country coach, and a teacher of SAT prep classes. A senior writer at Running Times magazine, she teaches at Eastern Washington University in Spokane.Website: http://racheltoor.com © 2014 Mac Teen Books. All Rights Reserved.Website by Outbox OnlineHomeBlogBookseShortsChapter SamplersFeatured Book

Scenes of Love

I was asked to contribute tips for writing loves scenes to Galley Cat. It's the only Valentine's message I got to compose this year.

On the Road to Find Out author Rachel Toor: “I think love scenes are better with farts—or fear of farts, worries about bad breath, wondering about the state of one’s underthings, concerns about parts left too long ungroomed. On The Bachelor it’s all roses and swoons, but in life getting jiggy entails the incredible and terrifying act of coming thisclose to another person, a reality that can be messy, smelly, and often, pretty darned funny. I like fiction that’s more like life.”

Here's the link.

Oh how I love libraries

Thanks to Ben Franklin, we have these amazing places that will loan us books! For free! My novel has been named a spring selection of the Junior Library Guild, a kind of book club for libraries. My editor, Wes, says he thinks of it kind of like the Good Housekeeping Seal. (It's not like I'm ever going to get approval for my domestic skills, as the friends who come over and wash my dishes before they'll use them will attest.)

Nice news from my publisher

PUB ALERT
Bill Rodgers, the godfather of the American running scene since the 1970s, has given us an amazing quote for Rachel’s book:
“Rachel Toor gets it about running; this is the book I’d like my daughters to read, and I suspect a lot of young people would like their parents to read. Rachel can write like hell—she’s got the firepower and understands how the simple act of becoming a runner changes lives for the better.”     —Bill Rodgers, four-time winner of the Boston and NYC marathons, author of Marathon Man : My 26.2-Mile Journey from Unknown Grad Student to the Top of the Running World 
ON THE ROAD TO FIND OUTBY RACHEL TOORTC: 978-0-374-30014-2Farrar Straus GirouxOn Sale 6/10/14