Hello, my name is Rignold and I'm a running bookaholic...
well, not entirely confined to running books. I read a lot, and when I get interested in a subject I tend to read everything I can get my hands on on the subject. Not quite obsessively, but almost. And so it has been with running/fitness/fitness nutrition etc. There are, after all, only so many hours in the day you can spend running, so how better to fill the rest of your time than reading about it? If you can't being increasing the volume of your miles, you can at least be perusing volumes about other people's miles.
I think it was Elvis Costello who said that writing about music was like dancing about architecture, and if you had asked me a year ago I would have said the same applied to running only more so. Now of course I know different.
The running books I have read tend to fall into three categories: How to run/ run better/eat for running; Runner biogs and autobiogs (which further split into the 'elite runners' category (Pre, Jurek etc) and the redemptive "how I got from being an obese chain-smoking alcoholic drug addict to running ultramarathons" ones - a category I may add to one day, assuming I prgoress to the ultramarathon bit and do not relapse to the former state); and Running Philosophy.
There are a few more specifically medical type ones about injuries. physiology, but I count them in cat 1. There are a couple of novels (both by John L Parker) but they fall into cat 3.
On the whole , almost all of them have been good. Not many duffers in there. Although a couple of the highly rated running bestsellers on Amazon left me cold, I confess. Some have been excellent, a couple are up there in my all time favourite books full stop. Surprisingly several of the best ones I had to track down secondhand from overseas as they are long out of print.
I was thinking I might start writing some thumbnail reviews of the better ones over the next few weeks (and warnings of the stinkers, although one runner's stinker is another's classic). If anyone else wants to pitch in with recommendations and reviews, please do.
Attached photo of my bedside bookshelves which are now heavily biased towards running and associated literature. Not sure how Rob Lowe's biog has crept in there. Suspect overflow from Mrs R.
happy reading!
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Determined 
