Alert readers may have noticed that I use this blog mainly to complain -- about me, you and whatever garbage lies between. I've made every effort to eviscerate myself and my own pitiful endeavors in the same unflinching, corrosive language I've devoted to other broken and failed people, places and institutions. This a challenging balance to strike, because many of my targets have proven so dismal that I struggle to find instances in which I -- even at my most malicious, ignorant and incompetent -- have performed as badly as they have.
Part of my silence lately is owed to having a discouragingly low quantity of irritants in my midst. Car issues made the long drive to the Appalachians stressful, but I got that stuff taken care of and am now ready to drive in a fully damaging way again, and burn as much gas as I can in the process.
As a result, while I continue to add to a post to sum up my road trip with Rosie (we're on day 33, happily winding up the Virginia leg of the journey at my cousins' place), I feel as if this is a good time to emphasize some things in the running world I like a great deal, or at least did back when I was misguided enough to consider anything in the running world important enough to actually rank on quality lists.
RUNNING BOOKS
On the Wings of Mercury, by Lorraine Moller. I would never have thought that I would put a biography at the top of my list of favorite running books, but this one is just too good to not lavish with as much praise and as many invented honors as possible. Few people, whatever their story, would be capable of writing a true account that manages to balance disclosure with the nominal need to limit unflattering comments toward others even when they have earned it. But anyone who knows Lorraine, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting a few times in Boulder, would probably tell you that she is the sort of deeply sensitive yet determined person capable of doing more or less anything she wants to. I won't say anything more about this four-time Olympian's book other than urging you to read it.
How to Train for and Run Your Best Marathon, by Gordon Bakoulis. I read this in 1994 while prepping for my first 26.2-miler, and this was perhaps my first vivid realization of the fact that it's possible to be a reading junkie and obsessive runner without really knowing fuck-all about marathons. I would love to go back and re-read this one now that we're in a different age, with GPS data and social media contributing far more noise than signals for most people. Gordon was also the first magazine editor to accept a pitch from me, and is largely responsible for me having any sort of side career as a running writer.
Advanced Marathoning, by Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas. In addition to sneaking a neologism into the title, Pete and Scott manage to thread the needle between "too casual to be extraordinary" and "too data-driven for the average dolt"; Daniels' Running Formula suffers from being a little too technical at times. (Scott told me that one of his main editorial tasks with this book was eliminating all of the New Zealand English that Pete, who didn't leave for NZ until he was around 40, heroically tried to include.) This is not an entertaining read by most standards, not is it meant as one. If you want what the essentials for becoming a faster marathon runner, this is the only book you really need.
I could be accused here of playing favorites because of the working relationship I had with Pete starting in 2002, but I was already deeply in love with both him and Scott, or at least their work, by that time.
Endure, by Alex Hutchinson. Alex, whose profile received a well-deserved boost when he became a major media player in the Nike Sub-2 effort in 2017, is simply the best there is in the world of endurance sports, although he could write just as capably about farting contests if he chose to. Here, he grapples with an elusive but vital question: What really limits most people's running effort? The quality of the wordsmithing alone is reason enough to get this one, but Alex also happens to be among the best communicators of scientific research imaginable. You'd know he was Canadian event if you didn't, or even if he wasn't.
Running Is My Therapy, by Scott Douglas. I reviewed this one last June. If I weren't feeling so down in the dumps, I would explain how this book helped me put depression in the rear-view mirror, but what the hell would be the point of that? Or of anything else? Fuck it.
RUNNING SHOES
Training: It's hard for me to definitely say what my favorite all-time training shoe is; for one thing, I can run in a wide variety of shoes and styles without much difficulty (or at least once could), and for another, the kinds of things that tend to bias such choices are especially rampant in running (e.g., "I usually wore Keds in the three months before my marathon PB, so Keds it is"). Still, I have to go with the Asics Gel Exult ES here.
I started running in the Asics Gel-Lyte series when I was in college, in 1989 or 1990. (It just now occurred to me that my college coach never said one word about running shoes to me or, as far as I know, anyone else. It's funny to consider now how awful and plain lazy he was. This wasn't the reason I sucked, but it didn't help.) By 1994, when I was training for my first marathon, Asics had come up with this model. In its own way it felt pleasantly "outsized," as some people report with respect to Hoka's less-moon-boot-style offerings. I actually raced that marathon in the Exults too. The shoe was discontinued a few years later, and for over 20 years, I was profoundly depressed about this. Then I read Scott's book and got over it.
Racing: For a while, adidas had a very popular racing flat called the Cubato. It weighed about 5 ounces. The company stopped making it shortly before the 2003 Boston Marathon, compelling me to run in some New Balance flats I wasn't thrilled with. As a result, it was too hot to run effectively, my feet got fucked up, I dropped out, and I was depressed for a very long time until I found Running Is My Therapy by Scott Douglas.
I have long held the suspicion that people who can run effectively marathons in racing flats could probably train every day in flats if they wanted to, whereas some people should never wear them and probably should stay away from marathons entirely. Those are two topics unto themselves, though, and frankly I'm too beat down by life to write any more shit today.