The Incomplete Book of Running

by Peter Sagal

William had set his sights on Boston a few years before as many runners do—as his personal Olympics, the one prestigious athletic event that is both selective and attainable.

every time you run you leave a little something on the road, and you pick up something to replace it.

We have our brains, but protohumans developed and thrived for a million years before the “great leap forward” of fifty thousand years ago, when a small band of Homos in Africa truly became sapiens and rapidly spread all over the world with their tools and culture to dominate the planet and eventually invent the Snuggie.

If you do not occasionally involuntarily expel something from your body while running, you’re doing it wrong.

Run Less, Run Faster and created at the Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training (FIRST) at Furman University, applies an essential insight to running: too much of anything is bad.

running every other day, you allow the body to heal, and by cross training on off days—biking, swimming, or any other cardio—you maintain fitness while avoiding burnout. The three training days were hard—track work on one day; fast, mid-distance tempo runs on the second; long, slow distance on the third—but the cumulative effect was impressive, and the lower weekly mileage and rest days helped make sure

To simply run makes excellent sense. To run a marathon is to go beyond sense, to risk something, maybe everything.

Joggers wait to finish; we runners expect to get somewhere.