This Is Not About Running: A Memoir

by Mary Cain

By one of the fastest runners of her generation, an affecting, brutally honest memoir of elite sports gone wrong—and a clear-eyed call for how parents, coaches, and young athletes themselves can build a healthier youth sports culture.

Few women have ever run 800 meters in under two minutes. Even fewer people have taken on running’s abusive training culture and won. Mary Cain has done both.

She emerged as a running phenom at age 12, a straight-A student obsessed with Greco-Roman mythology and the freedom she felt when she ran fast. Like any middle-schooler, she just wanted to fit in, so she learned to run through the discomfort of hard training sessions, and the confusion of her coaches’ and teammates’ bullying. And she was overjoyed when, at 16, Alberto Salazar called to invite her to train with the famed Nike Oregon Project.

Cain was poised to transform the sport, Salazar told her. She resolved to hold on to his favor, even as he insisted she lose weight and push through the pain of emerging injury. For years, she excelled, setting records against elite runners twice her age. The Olympics were in her sights.

But off the track, Cain was crumbling. She snuck granola bars in the middle of the night and sank into a deep depression as injury after injury set in. Finally, she left the Oregon Project, telling herself she just needed a break. A chorus rang out across the running  What happened to Mary Cain?

Now, with her suit against Nike behind her, Cain is ready to share her side of the story—and to flip the script on abuse in youth sports. She draws on her diaries from this wrenching period of abuse to show, with clarity we rarely see, how young minds respond to the win-at-all-costs culture that pervades youth sports today. By turns raw, wry, and impassioned, This Is Not About Running is a fierce memoir of the damage wrought when we prioritize competition over mental health. 

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Sports

336 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication April 28, 2026

Reviews

[kaitziez · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Abuse is quiet. Abuse is insidious. Abuse happens behind doors that stay closed too often. To stop abuse, safeguarding practices need to be put in place. Companies, schools, teams, brands, and so forth need to put their people first, before the vague concept of their brand name."

As someone who has experienced abuse in the sport of cross-country and track by my own coaches, I connected deeply with Cain's experience. There were many times where I wanted to give Cain a hug. She tells it like it is, no sugar-coating. The chapters of her describing the sport as cliquey, how girls will outcast other girls because one is better or a possible threat to be better, was something that made me think back to my high school days and realize how true it is.

Reading about when Cain was forced to increase her workload even though she was injured and everyone just saying it is because she's "weak" or "on her period" was both shocking that doctors and coaches said it, and also angrily hit close to home. Not everyone needs the same amount of running mileage, because not everyone's body is the same. I hope this memoir helps change the world.

What I loved most, though, was Cain's fearsomeness to call out Nike for what they have done, even after the lawsuit ended. I absolutely love that she stands by what she believes in. Cain is a force to be reckoned with -- and I can't wait to see where her medical journey takes her!

Thank you, Mariner Books, for providing me with this ARC. I am eternally grateful!

"I wrote my New York Times piece out of fear. But not fear for myself. And Nike did not seem to realize that I wasn't at all scared about coming forward. I was not scared to talk about my mental health. Not scared to talk about cutting myself. Not scared to talk about how they were culpable. I was not scared of Nike." -- #SLAY! You go girl!!
_____________________________
pre-read:
as someone who also have experienced abuse from my college xc/tf coaches, i am an excited bean to read this 🤩 Mary Cain is an inspiration!

[Amy Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am completely gutted after reading this book.
In her memoir, "This Is Not About Running", elite distance runner Mary Cain shares her story. When Mary first reached the national stage as a young high school distance running star, her future looked bright and exciting. She left high school running early (we find out in the book was mostly due to the bullying and treatment she received by her school teammates and coaches) to run professionally. Things went horribly downhill from there. Mary bravely shares her story with brutal and heart breaking honesty.
The book begins with her middle school and high school years, and progresses chronologically. Mary's voice, as she tells the story in first person, is haunting, as she perfectly uses the voice that she was at each stage. When we read her thoughts and viewpoints of what is happening, we get amazing insight into how a young girl might process her coach's hurtful critique and accept what he, along with so-called doctors and psychologists are demanding of her. As horrifying and disgusting as it was to read about the
abuse and neglect from those entrusted to guide and support her, it broke my heart to see the many others surrounding her (teammates, competitors, other coaches, etc ) just watch on and do nothing.
This book is important. If you care at all about sports, young athletes, and fixing a broken system, this is a must read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Mariner Books for the advance read.

[Charlotte Gullion]

im sat.

[Cheryl Marks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I flew through this book. Very well written. I’m not a runner but my daughter is and she encouraged me to request this ARC from Netgalley. So thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read it.

If you enjoy a memoir, you will enjoy this book. You don’t have to be a runner. It really speaks to abuse behavior in the sporting world.

Mary’s story is sad and really made me angry. People took advantage and mistreated a young girl with talent. I wanted to slap her high school coach and strangle the parents of her teammates who treated her so bad. I think this speaks to a larger issue about parents trying to live through their kids. The kids themselves behaved badly and should be ashamed of their behavior but the parents should be doubly ashamed.

I had high hopes when she moved on to Nike and a professional coach but that coach was abusive as well. It’s a shame that she was told a lot of her problems were in her head. Clearly she needed help. It’s disturbing that so many people turned a blind eye.

The book also speaks to the double standard of the way women are treated versus men. Even the female doctor that treated her from the project basically ignored her concerns and instead listened to what her coach was saying. This coach not only gave her running instructions but health instructions that were to her detriment.

Thankfully she was able to stay on track with her schooling and is continuing her education. I think we will see great things from Mary in the future.

[Kara| Bringing Back the Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

One thing about Mary Cain is that she is not afraid. She is not afraid of Nike. She is not afraid of dropping names. She is not afraid to tell her story. Cain goes into great detail of the bullying, mind games and abuse that she felt from coaches, parents and fellow runners along the rise of her career and what is painfully apparent throughout this book is how young she was when this was occurring. Instead of being protected by this sport as she should have been as a child she was used and abused by people wrongly in power. I am glad she was brave enough to tell us about it.

Thank you to the publisher for this ARC.

[Brittany Katz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. Thank you Mary Cain for the brave, heartbreaking, honest recounting of your time as a high school and professional runner with Nike. The present tense form of the book is unique and adds such a touching perspective. It makes me want to reach through and give young Mary a big hug. 10/5 stars. 🫶🏼

[Greg Zimmerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2019, runner Mary Cain penned a shocking and revelatory piece in the NYT detailing her physical and mental abuse in the Nike Oregon Project under coach Alberto Salazar. She has expanded that piece and turned it into this book.
This Is Not About Running (out April 28) is now the third book about Salazar and the abusive culture at Nike in the 2010s. Runner Kara Goucher's book The Longest Race also details Salazar's abuse, pseudo-scientific coaching practices, and his penchant for coming up with "creative" ways for athletes to dope without getting caught. Win At All Costs by journalist Matt Hart is based on the US Anti-Doping Agency's investigation and report on Salazar, as well as interviews with some of his former athletes. They're both enraging reads -- not just regarding how such a shitty human could have been in charge of coaching athletes for so long, but also how Nike constantly defended him.

Mary Cain's book, though, is especially damning, because Mary was a teenager during her time with Salazar. The fastest 1,500m runner in the US at age 17, Mary moved cross country from her home in New York to train with Salazar in Portland. She was Salazar's next prodigy -- a can't-miss phenom who would smash world records.

But it didn't happen. And this book explains why. The book, written in present tense so, as Cain explains, you feel like you are right there with her as Salazar is calling her fat, as she cuts herself, as he thinks about suicide, is, in a word, shocking.

Salazar became obsessed with an arbitrary weight target, which even starving herself, she couldn't hit. In running, confidence is just important as peak fitness, and Salazar (and his shady "sports psychologist" whom Mary had to see) absolutely destroyed her confidence. She got to the point where she couldn't get through a workout without breaking down in a fit of sobs because she was terrified Salazar would scream at her. He often did. Her teammates were mean to her and she had few friends. Salazar even made her stop talking to her parents, not wanting them to "meddle" in her training. Just all absolutely horrific.

Salazar has since been banned for life from coaching for both doping and abuse, which is justice, but also real justice would be him rotting in jail. Just as infuriating as Salazar's abuse, though, is Cain's details of how Nike treated her after she quit the Oregon Project. As she says, it would've cost very little for a multi-billion dollar company to do the right thing. Instead, when she sued them, they fought her tooth and nail at every turn, trying to make themselves the victim, or blaming Cain as the actual victim.

Don't read this if you don't want to be angry. Don't read this if you're a Nike apologist. But definitely read if you're a runner or anyone else interested in the very, very bad culture at Nike.

[Read_with_Beans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Mariner Books for the ARC of This Is Not About Running, A Memoir by Mary Cain.

I had never heard of Mary Cain until I read her opinion piece in The New York Times titled, I Was The Fastest Girl In America, Until I Joined Nike. This piece was published in November 2019 and was followed by an incredible YouTube video produced by Lindsay Crouse and Alexander Stockton. My heart broke for her when I heard about her experiences, but at the same time, I was incredibly inspired by her. She had experienced things as a young woman and athlete that no one should have experienced, but she is reclaiming her voice, her power, and confidence. This book is a product of how far she has come and how inspiring she continues to be.

I loved this book. It is written incredibly well, and she can describe her experiences in such a way that it doesn’t invoke emotions that other memoirs may not. I am a runner, and therefore I had a personal interest in this book and her experiences, but this book, as the title says, Is Not About Running. She details exactly what happens when coaches, parents, or whoever put their fierce competitive compassion and their need to win over the health and well-being of the child athlete. She also speaks to the damage experienced by the child athlete, sometimes permanent, that is a result of the behaviors and actions of the very people she looked up to and sought guidance and approval from. This book invoked the same emotions I felt when I read her opinion piece nearly seven years ago.

Mary Cain should be exceptionally proud of herself for having written this memoir, as it will be a wakeup call for parents and coaches who see competition and athletes, not children. It would be beneficial for high school athletes to read and understand what is healthy, normal, motivational coaching, versus what is too far. This book shows the detrimental outcomes of being put in horrific situations by coaches when there is no one there to help. I hope her suit against Nike, public speaking engagements, and now this book will help to protect others and bring Mary Cain peace.

I strongly recommend this book to high school athletes, their parents, and coaches of young athletes. I already have a list of people I want to gift this book to.

[Faith J · Rating 3 out of 5]

​Thank you to the publisher for this ARC!
Please note that since I read an advanced copy, some of the repetitive phrasing or editing issues may be smoothed over before the final publication.

​Memoirs are difficult to rate. I always go in with an open mind, making a conscious effort not to judge or psychoanalyze the author. It is clear Mary wrote this to reveal "the dark uncomfortable truths." Though still young, she is brave while remaining understandably hurt, naive, and angry. The insider look at her professional training with Nike was fascinating. While I would have loved to hear more about the positives in her life or seen more self-reflection, that clearly wasn't her intent for this book.

​The prelude and intro carry an angry tone (valid), and she lists several trigger warnings: disordered eating, body shaming, sexual harassment, abuse, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. Her mission to expose the "train more, eat less" culture is an important one.

While I didn't care for the way she and others spoke about one another, her honesty regarding body dysmorphia, bulimia, and self-harm was incredibly moving and raw. Those were the most honest chapters in the book and were articulate and polished.

​I don't critique an author's personality, but I did struggle with the execution. I found several "holes" in the narrative... for instance, why her parents (both doctors) never viewed her MRI imaging themselves. The support from her parents and sports psychologists felt inconsistent, leaving me with questions about the full story. The writing was often repetitive; certain phrases were overused, and several grievances were mentioned so frequently they lost their impact. She also mentions the wealth of others without acknowledging her own privilege.

​The narrative could be unclear at times, making it hard to distinguish between internal monologue and actual dialogue. The final chapters felt a bit clunky, but ultimately, any reader will walk away wishing Mary happiness. I know she is in med school now and I truly hope she thrives.

[Janine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not put this memoir down from the moment I read the first two sentences. I knew nothing about the author but after I finished the last sentence of her amazing book I was so in awe of this woman’s courage and resilience after years of sports abuse.

Mary Cain was one of the fastest runners of her generation in middle distance events. From middle school on she was outperforming girls older than her. At the age of 16, she was recruited to be coached by Alberto Salazar at the Nike Oregon Project (NOP), a program designed to cultivate young runners. While the abuse in that program is horrific, her life as a young runner in middle school wasn’t much better. There while she was not physically abused by dieting and other things, she was bullied by her coach, her teammates and their parents. Jealousy is the key ingredient for that - and even later in competitive racing where opponents snubbed her. In NOP, staff were not qualified like the sports psychologist who only brought on Mary’s troubling self loathing as she struggled to lose weight and lost races (usually not placing high enough to make the cut). By the time she left the program she was a shell of who she had been when she first arrived. But due to a NY Times article she helped write, she helped expose the program, regained her dignity, went in to sue Nike, and establish an advocacy group for young girl runners.

While this is a fairly long book, the chapters are short and the language is clear, precise and sharp, making the reading fast. Truly I was mesmerized in the read. This is such a tragic story but told with such honesty. It’s a must read for parents who are considering or seeing their children as championship material.

I’d like to thank NetGalley and HarperCollins for allowing me to read this wonderful ARC.

[kellymross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Before picking up this book, I had never heard of Mary Cain and wasn’t a follower of track and field, but I was deeply disturbed by what I read. I have so much respect for Mary’s courage in writing this, though from the strength of her tone, she hardly needs my kudos, she is clearly a powerhouse in her own right.

This book takes a magnifying glass to the world of elite running, and the view is far from pretty; in fact, it is often traumatizing. We tend to put athletes on pedestals without any real appreciation for what it takes to compete at that high level. I was especially struck by the portrayal of her high school teammates, their parents, and coach. It is a sobering reminder that parents living their own athletic dreams through their children is completely uncalled for.

While it is an emotionally difficult read, the short chapters and fast pace make it incredibly engaging. I hope Nike, the sport of track, and everyone who supports elite athletics takes the time to read this and seriously consider their actions.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an early copy.

[Nick Babbitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an eARC of this book from Net Galley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I went into this book thinking I knew a decent amount about Mary Cain’s story and man was I wrong.
This book is a brave and heartbreaking story of a girl that was severely mistreated by everyone around her other than her family and her struggles with that abuse.
This book was extremely disturbing to read at times due to the brutal honesty of the author detailing the mental anguish she dealt with during her high school years and her time on the Nike Oregon Project.
While I knew a bit about the scandal involving Alberto Salazar, this in depth look at the way he mistreated and abused his athletes was nauseating.
Mary Cain’s experience as a young athlete is an example of everything that can be wrong with youth and professional sports and serves as a cautionary tale about who we let lead our children.

[Janene Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a difficult time readig this book. It made me angry that the author endured what she did. I had no prior knowledge about the author, Mary; however, the more women I talk to about it in my running community, they knew of her and her plight. They have seen Nike trying to change their image and embrace women runners by hosting a big run this past summer that some participated in. I appreciated Mary's honest recount of her experience. I was angered by her fellow classmates who were brutal to her, and her manipulative coach. I thought it was an excellent account of how much still needs to be done to protect our talented youth athletes as they excel and reach for their dreams. I am thankful to Netgalley for the ARC. I thoroughly enjoyed this read and can not wait to recommend it to my running club's book club in 2026.

[Kelly smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing and impactful book. The abuse was difficult to read about and I found myself getting emotional, so I had to take breaks every once in a while to absorb what I was reading, but I really think everyone should read this if they’re in a good headspace for it.

Mary’s story was so sad to read about, it seems like a lot of women coming out of Nike have similar poor experiences. It’s so disappointing that there’s not better oversight into how athletes, especially young female athletes, are treated. And everyone’s obsession with low weight really hits a nerve and pisses me off. It feels like we are starting to point in a direction where strong healthy bodies are celebrated instead of just being stick thin but I know there’s still a long way to go. I’m glad Mary was able to come back from this crazy shit and is doing better.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a hard book to read, as it details Mary Cain's heartbreaking experience with abuse, and I couldn't stop thinking about how impossibly hard it must have been to live out this story. Cain's approach to share her story in the present tense, is an effective one, as readers are shown how the slow progression of abuse can normalize what's happening for those involved. And while she writes the book in the present tense, she clearly decided to share her story through the lens of ample reflection on these events. This is an important read for those who care about running, young athletes, and the broken systems that allow abuse to happen and grow. Mary Cain does not hold back in this account of her experience as an elite runner, and her honesty will likely make you deeply uncomfortable at times, which is exactly the point and power of this book.

[Rory Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is insightful to see what’s “behind the curtain” in elite sport for girls and women and how even the best in sport can get the worst when it comes to sport experience, coaching, healthcare, and team dynamics. Moreover, Mary Cain gets vulnerable and real to help the reader (or at least me) better understand what change needs to occur to promote health and wellbeing as well as peak performance on an individual (athlete, teammate, parent, coach or other athlete support personnel, competitor, sponsorship contact, agent) and systems level. She openly shares her advocacy work interwoven with her healing process, illustrating the impact high profile athletes can make and the personal and professional cost that can result from this work. Must read for anyone involved or invested in sport.

[Bianca Hillier · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book had my attention from the first sentence of the preface. The present tense storytelling takes you on a serious journey and is a fascinating choice by Mary. Highly recommend to anyone but perhaps especially to athletes of any age/gender/sport, parents of young athletes, and those in advocacy nonprofit spaces.

[Chrissie]

ARC

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a casual runner, but I love following elite running as a sport. Mary Cain's memoir is a little bit around running but a lot about how we treat young, talented athletes (particularly female athletes) and the ways in which they are abused by coaches, systems, and armchair experts posting opinions online. Mary tells her story in short vignettes and it is compulsively readable. I found that I just kept turning the pages.

Thank you to NetGalley for sharing an ARC of this with me.

[Rhianna Hensler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full review will be posted closer to publication.

Enormous thank you to Mary Cain, the publisher, and NetGalley for an early copy of this story.