From memoir to fiction, health to hope, here are some great reads about running.
by Becky Wade and The Runner's World Editors Updated: Mar 14, 2024 9:13 PM EDT Save Article
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If you’re passionate about running, reading, and reading about running, 2024 should be a good year for you. A handful of books are slated for publication that promise to educate, entertain, and inspire, whether you’re a front-of-pack runner like new memoirist Des Linden or a passionate participant advocate such as Slow AF Run Club founder Martinus Evans.
We cover the newest additions to the running lit space, plus all of our favorite releases from last year—and some classics every runner should have in their library.
With the 2024 Paris Olympics kicking off this July, it’s the perfect time to revisit and honor some of the great athletes of past Games. Aime Alley Card’s new release, The Tigerbelles: Olympic Legends from Tennessee State, offers an inspiring glimpse into one of the most globally successful track and field programs of all time.
Led by Coach Edward Temple, the 1960 Tennessee State University all-Black women’s track team, which included Wilma Rudolph, Barbara Jones, Lucinda Williams, Martha Hudson, Willye B. White, and Shirley Crowder, won an astonishing 23 medals in the 1960 Rome Olympics. In doing so, they challenged “the world’s perception of what a group of young Black women in the Jim Crow south were capable of” and inspired generations of track athletes to come. (January 2, 2024)
Whenever she steps onto the track for her signature event, the 400-meter hurdles, world record holder and Olympic champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone looks nothing but confident, composed, and bulletproof. What fans don’t see, however, are her chronic struggles with anxiety, perfectionism, and people-pleasing, and her lingering uncertainty about her identity and worthiness.
In Far Beyond Gold, McLaughlin-Levrone shares how her faith has helped her overcome her fears, push past her perceived limits, and accomplished more than she ever thought possible. She hopes that her story will help others do the same, in whatever realm is meaningful to them. (January 30, 2024)
Jeff Galloway’s publication count will continue to grow this year with Running: Getting Started. The latest title from the 1972 Olympian, coach, Runner’s World columnist, and prolific author is a sweeping introduction to the sport, intended “for any person, at any fitness level, looking to start running for the first time, return to running after a break, or reset their training.”
Galloway outlines what you need to start running, how to implement a training plan and fit it into your life, and everything you should know about nutrition, form, injuries, racing, and more, before you hit the ground running. (March 1, 2024)
If you’ve ever been part of a running club, collaborated with a stranger in a road race, or bonded with a training partner over your shared suffering, the thought has probably crossed your mind that runners are a special breed. But what about this sport so often brings out the good in participants?
In The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners, philosopher and ultrarunner Sabrina B. Little “asks whether running can be a laboratory for developing our character,” as it so often seems. She draws on her experiences in training, racing, and coaching to explore the relationship between athletics and virtue, offering a refreshing change of pace from the negative headlines we’re seeing more and more often. (March 21, 2024)
Many NCAA and pro running fans are familiar with the names Elvin Kibet and Shadrack Kipchirchir, Kenyan-born runners who earned scholarships to the United States, racked up several All-American awards between them, fell into a relationship, and are now chasing their dreams as part of the U.S. Army World Class Athlete Program.
But few fans are probably aware of the struggles that both Kibet and Kipchirchir overcame, including poverty, bigotry, pressure, and an entirely new culture to adjust to, to get where they are now. In All in Stride, Johanna Garton pulls back the curtain on these inspiring soldier-athletes, and sheds light on their pursuits of the American dream. (April 2, 2024)
Although she’s best known as a BBC broadcaster, TV personality, and DJ, Adele Roberts is also an accomplished marathoner, with a remarkable claim to fame that she details in Personal Best.
Just a year and a half after being diagnosed with bowel cancer, and then undergoing chemotherapy and countless other obstacles alongside her supportive partner Kate Holderness, she set a Guinness World Record for fastest marathon run by a female with an ileostomy. Roberts’s story demonstrates what it looks like to thrive in the aftermath of a major setback, and offers hope to others wondering if they have it in them, too. (April 11, 2024)
Much has been written about South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya, as much for her five global championship victories in the 800 meters as for her body, her hyperandrogenism (excess levels of testosterone), and her place in the sporting world. Through her memoir The Race to Be Myself, published last fall, Semenya sets the record straight and shares what it’s been like to live in the spotlight from her breakthrough at age 18, and what she’s gone through since then in order to keep pursuing her passion and competing at the highest of levels. (October 31, 2023)
Twice an Olympian and global medalist, Kara Goucher gained a platform with her speed and stamina. Now she’s using her voice to tell her version of the Nike Oregon Project doping scandal and to advocate for females in the running space and beyond. Her memoir, which comes out in March and is the culmination of three years of work, is called The Longest Race. “Yes, my book is about the running industry,” Goucher says, “but it can really be applied to women everywhere. I want them to know that they are not alone… that they can get through the most difficult of times and that they have power in their voices.” (March 14, 2023)
You can fill a small library with books on running, but you won’t find many that touch on queerness and feminism in the sport. Through Running (Practices), sociology professor and former NCAA Division I runner Lindsey A. Freeman wants to bring these topics to the forefront and spawn connections along the way. “Running is an attempt to write the queer and feminist book about running that I always wanted but couldn’t find,” Freeman says. Her storytelling, along with her friend Hazel Meyer’s illustrations, chronicles Freeman’s lifelong relationship with running and illuminates the “unexpected moments of connection and joy that we runners feel when we cover some distance together.” (March 14, 2023)
If you still get goosebumps remembering Des Linden breaking the tape at the 2018 Boston Marathon—the first American woman in 33 years to do so—get pumped for Linden’s forthcoming memoir, Choosing to Run, a collaboration with prolific sportswriter Bonnie D. Ford. In what she calls “an underdog story, an outsider story, and a story about the constant wrestle of fitting running into my life in a way that’s sustainable and fulfilling,” she offers a behind-the-scenes look at the training and mindset that precipitated two Olympic berths and that epic Boston victory. Not just for elites, Linden says, “I think anybody who has a passion for lacing up their running shoes and getting out the door will see a bit of themselves in my journey and hopefully be inspired to keep showing up.” (April 4, 2023)
Kenyan coach Patrick Sang guided Eluid Kipchoge to the first-ever sub-2-hour marathon and in We Share the Sun, Sarah Gearhart’s biography, runners will get a window into this living legend’s coaching philosophy and his relationship with his athletes. “I wanted to write a book that gives Coach Patrick Sang his due,” Gearhart says of the project that took her three years to complete. Through it, she also offers her perspective on the world of Kenyan distance running, and all of “the risk, sacrifice, and determination it takes to establish oneself as a championship-caliber athlete in the world’s distance running hotbed.” (April 4, 2023)
Just because running is available to all doesn’t mean that it’s welcome to all: Martinus Evans knows this as well as anyone. When he began his running journey 10 years ago in a 300-something-pound body, he says, “All I wanted was someone to talk to who had experienced exactly what I was going through.” Slow AF Run Club is intended to fill that void. A coach with an exercise science degree who has now run eight marathons, Evans calls it “a blueprint for those who may not fit the image of a ‘traditional’ runner—that is, someone who is larger in size, less athletic, out of shape, or dealing with any kind of health issue that slows them down—to feel empowered to lace up their shoes and embrace the body they have right now.” (June 6, 2023)
About a decade after he wrote the smash hit Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, Christopher McDougall is back with an illustrated training guide called Born to Run 2. A collaboration between McDougall and Born to Run coach Eric Orton (also the author of The Cool Impossible), Born to Run 2 is “a holistic program for runners of every stripe” that focuses on food, fitness, form, footwear, focus, fun, and family. Inside you’ll find a 90-day training schedule, runner-friendly recipes, corrective drills, shoe recommendations, and more. (December 2022)
Runners love to read! It stokes enthusiasm and turns an individual sport into one in which everyone is sharing their experience. Some books focus on training so you can become a better runner. Others explore the epic journeys from some of the top names in the sport, like Scott Jurek on his amazing Appalachian Trail journey or Meb Keflezighi detailing all of the big marathons in his illustrious career.
This list includes some Runner’s World favorites from the past few years, and together they have recipes, stories, training plans, and encouragement.
