My Running Addiction

We asked runners and running coaches to recommend their favourite running books while compiling this list we came across so many new books that we love but we manage to compile the Top 4 books for you to read in the first quarter of 2020

FOR Motivation

The Runner’s Guide to the Meaning of Life by Amby Burfoot

The Runners Guide to the Meaning of Life reveals as much about reaching your full potential as it does about sport Boston Marathon winner Amby Burfoot one of the runnings wisest voices presents 15 life lessons about passion courage materialism failure and regeneration all learned during his more than 35 years of experience in running He discusses a runners essential traits-qualities necessary for everyone striving to reach a long-term goal as well as the writing music and quotes that have continually inspired him Most important Burfoot explains that winners are not those who cross the finish line first but those who discover more about themselves with every step

Rating: ★★★★☆

Shop Here: https://amzn.to/36GWYYF

FOR Inspiration

The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen

When Jessica is told she’ll never run again, she puts herself back together—and learns to dream bigger than ever before. The acclaimed author of Flipped delivers a powerful and healing story.

Jessica thinks her life is over when she loses a leg in a car accident. She’s not comforted by the news that she’ll be able to walk with the help of a prosthetic leg. Who cares about walking when you live to run?

As she struggles to cope, Jessica feels that she’s both in the spotlight and invisible. People who don’t know what to say act like she’s not there. Jessica’s embarrassed to realize that she’s done the same to a girl with CP named Rosa. A girl who is going to tutor her through all the math she’s missed. A girl who sees right into the heart of her.

With the support of family, friends, a coach, and her track teammates, Jessica may actually be able to run again. But that’s not enough for her now. She doesn’t just want to cross finish lines herself—she wants to take Rosa with her.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Shop Here: https://amzn.to/2tN8QtJ

FOR Training

Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance by Alex Hutchinson

The capacity to endure is the key trait that underlies great performance in virtually every field—from a 100-meter sprint to a 100-mile ultramarathon, from summiting Everest to acing final exams or completing any difficult project. But what if we all can go farther, push harder, and achieve more than we think we’re capable of?

Blending cutting-edge science and gripping storytelling in the spirit of Malcolm Gladwell—who contributes the book’s foreword—award-winning journalist Alex Hutchinson reveals that a wave of paradigm-altering research over the past decade suggests the seemingly physical barriers you encounter are set as much by your brain as by your body. This means the mind is the new frontier of endurance—and that the horizons of performance are much more elastic than we once thought.

But, of course, it’s not “all in your head.” For each of the physical limits that Hutchinson explores—pain, muscle, oxygen, heat, thirst, fuel—he carefully disentangles the delicate interplay of mind and body by telling the riveting stories of men and women who’ve pushed their own ultimate limits in extraordinary ways.

The longtime “Sweat Science” columnist for Outside and Runner’s World, Hutchinson, a former national-team long-distance runner and Cambridge-trained physicist, was one of only two reporters granted access to Nike’s top-secret training project to break the two-hour marathon barrier, an extreme quest he traces throughout the book. But the lessons he draws from shadowing elite athletes and from travelling to high-tech labs around the world are surprisingly universal. Endurance, Hutchinson writes, is “the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop”—and we’re always capable of pushing a little farther.

Rating: ★★★★★

Shop Here: https://amzn.to/2Ny3MAv

FOR Nutrition

Run Fast. Cook Fast. Eat Slow. by Elyse Kopecky and Shalane Flanagan

Figuring out how to optimally nourish your body for an active, happy, and healthy life is surprisingly challenging. We live in a culture that both celebrates food and fears it. We know we should eat better, but health food has a reputation for being bland and boring. Nutrition science and the media are constantly fluctuating on what’s good versus bad for us.

This book explains how to eat healthy without counting calories, why you should ignore the latest diet trends, and how to get back in tune with listening to your body’s hunger signals. We’ll debunk the big fat myth around fat (bring on the butter!). And we’ll teach you how to celebrate real food for the wealth of benefits it provides for both your body and mind.

Rating: ★★★★★

Shop Here: https://amzn.to/2Nhwqpi

Thanks

Got a book to recommend us to read and review on? Do leave a comment or drop us an email at myrunningaddict@gmail.com