Running Book Reviews with Alan and Liz Alan and Liz

If you've been following our social media accounts (mainly FB and Instagram... we're not as good about posting to X or Threads...) then you'll have seen that Alan went to Boston this year. Before the Boston Marathon, we reviewed The Boston Marathon Handbook buy Marc Pollina, and it turned out that Alan and Marc ran very similar finish times. That's why we invited him on for this bonus episode! 

Marc and Alan grade their Boston experience based on the Boston report card on page 114-119 of the book. This was a fun chat and we hope listeners get as much out of it as we did. 

Big thanks to Marc for spending even more of his valuable time with us!
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All In Stride is the story of two Kenyan born athletes who have competed at the highest levels in running, and one US athlete and Olympian in the modern pentathlon. The bond that the three characters share is that they have all been in the Army’s world class athlete program (WCAP).
The book is divided into two parts:
Part 1: Kenya – which is about Elvin and Shadrak’s upbringing in Kenya and their journey into running.
Part 2: United States of America – which is Elvin and Shadrak’s life when they arrived in the US, how they met, and how they ended up in the Army and the WCAP. Sammy was introduced in this section and we learn about her upbringing, how she got into modern pentathlon, and her decision to join the Army and the WCAP.

Author Johanna Garton began running on the dirt roads surrounding her family’s farmhouse in Wisconsin at age seven. She continued through college, where she competed for Syracuse University as a walk-on. She has since run more than 20 marathons including 5 Boston’s. Prior to this book, Johanna also authored two other books:
Awakening East, the story of the adoption of her two children from China and her family’s decision to move to China to live for one year to immerse the family in the culture
Edge of the Map, which shares the story of American high altitude mountaineer Christine Boskoff, and is currently being developed into a feature film.
Johanna was not always an author. Her career started as an immigration lawyer, she worked in nonprofit management and taught college. She now also coached high school cross country.

Our second guest in this episode, and one of the subjects of this book, was Elvin Kibet. Elvin was born a twin in rural Kenya. Her family was poor and her parents had 9 children so Elvin and her twin sister Ivy were caring for their younger siblings by the age of 9, including worrying about how they would have enough food to eat. Elvin loved school and was good at it. She also had a grandmother (Gogo) who pushed her to leave the village if she could and always believed Elvin had potential to do great things. Through a series of opportunities, Elvin started running and received a full scholarship to study at the University of Arizona, moved to the US where she met and married her husband, completed a degree in public heath, served in the army and became a US citizen. Elvin was also the first woman, and for while the only women, on the WCAP running team.

If you would like to get a copy of this book for yourself, you can find it on Amazon here (in case you don't have a local book store that can order it for you): https://a.co/d/eHf3XaW
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The Boston Marathon Handbook is part of the Falcon Guides series, which cover the entire spectrum of outdoor activities. This book covers everything about Boston from what makes Boston so special, to getting in and training, and even what to do after the race and more!
There are 12 chapters that make up the book:
Chapter 1 - Why Is The Boston Marathon Special?
Chapter 2 - There's Only One Boston
Chapter 3 - Getting In
Chapter 4 - Training
Chapter 5 - The Course: A Step-by-Step Guide to Towns and Cities Along The Way
Chapter 6 - Pre-Race
Chapter 7 - The Race
Chapter 8 - Post-Race
Chapter 9 - Now What?
Chapter 10 - Beyond Boston
Chapter 11 - Hall of Fame
Chapter 12 - The Boston Lexicon
Marc W. Pollina is a writer, runner, and entrepreneur. He has completed 26 marathons, including 18 Boston Marathons as a bandit, a charity runner, and a sub-3 qualifier. Pollina earned a BA in English Literature from Hampden-Sydney College and studied digital transformation at MIT. Marc survived a near-death childhood accident, recovered his soul from the cold grip of the financial services industry, and founded an innovative cyber-media startup prior to penning his non-fiction debut.

If you would like to follow Marc, his website is https://marcwpollina.com/. You can also find links to his social media and the book. 
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Any feedback or suggestions on this review or any of our other podcast episodes would be greatly welcomed. Leave us a review using your favorite podcast player or contact us on social media.
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In The Spell Of The Barkley tells the story of the Barkley race in Tennessee with its history and traditions, how the author discovered it and became determined to finish the “fun run”, and explores the reasons why participants keep coming back despite being almost guaranteed to fail. The book is a mix of the authors experience and stories of the people he met in the ultrarunning world. A few people he talks about in the book are:
Frozen Ed; the author of the book Michiel read, and the person who invited him to come watch his first Barkley.Jared Campbell; 3-time Barkley finisher.Gary Robbins; Canadian ultrarunner who missed the cutoff by 6 seconds when completing the Barkley and so doesn’t count as a finisher.Gideon; an ultrarunner and friend who crews Michiel through several races which he ended up finishing in part due to the Gideon’s help.Michiel Panhuysen is a Journalist and ultrarunner. He is a multiple-time Barkley entrant, having fallen under the spell of this event in the early 2010s when he read Frozen Ed's book Tales From Out There. On each occasion that he entered, the Barkley won, but not because Michiel came unprepared. He ran many grueling races and events including:
Tor des Geants; a 330 km race with 24000 m of D+.Petite Trotte a Leon (on 3 seperate occations); a team event that is far from being a little jaunt through the mountains and requires navigation skills.The Legends Trail; a 250 km race through the Ardennes.If you're interested in getting a copy of the book for yourself, you can find it on Amazon:
https://a.co/d/hQbSVNB  
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Any feedback or suggestions on this review or any of our other podcast episodes would be greatly welcomed. Leave us a review using your favorite podcast player or contact us on social media.
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There Is No Wall is ultrarunner Allie Bailey’s brutally honest and sometimes shocking account of alcoholism, depression and severe mental breakdowns which almost cost her her life. Told with disarming vulnerability, heartbreaking depth of feeling and dark humour, this isn’t a story about how running saved her – she was already running and at the height of her struggles sometimes even winning 100-mile-plus races. But somewhere between the darkest excesses of the music industry and the simple beauty of the ultrarunning scene, Allie found space to listen, learn and put into practice techniques that would go on to save her life and change it for the better. There Is No Wall is a story about how doing something you love can lead you to achieve things you never thought possible. Running won’t save you, but it might buy you the time to save yourself.

Allie Bailey is an ultrarunner, coach, speaker and podcaster who has run in some of the most extreme places in the world. She was the first woman to run 100 miles across frozen Lake Khövsgöl in Mongolia and to run the full length of the Panama Canal. She has crossed the inhospitable Namib Desert three times, run the length of the Outer Hebrides and completed a 1,000-mile off-road version of the classic Land’s End to John o’Groats route in just thirty days. Allie has finished over 200 marathons and ultramarathons all over the world, but the most remarkable thing about all of these achievements is that she accomplished most of them while battling depression and alcoholism. Although running ultimately became the vehicle that helped buy Allie the time to recover from a number of severe mental health breakdowns, it did not save her. In fact, there were times when it made her battle all the more difficult. After a seismic mental health crisis in 2021, Allie finally admitted to herself and those around her that she was an alcoholic and started her recovery. She left behind a dream career with major record labels and adventure companies and now works as a coach with a broad range of runners and endurance athletes, helping them unlock their full potential. In 2022, she was named as one of the most inspiring female adventurers in the UK by the Guardian, and she has appeared on numerous mainstream TV programmes including The One Show and Lorraine. She lives in Yorkshire with her rescue dog, Pickle.

If you'd like to read Allie's blog or get a copy of her book, both are available on her website (as well as links to her social media if you'd like to follow her): http://www.alliebailey.co.uk/about
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Becoming a Sustainable Runner is a guide written by two environmental advocates, Tina Muir and Zoe Rom, who love running. This book teaches us about the impact running has on the environment, but also how to be a lifelong runner and how to contribute to the running community in a way that is positive and inclusive.
The book has 3 parts:
Sustain Your Runners Mind and Body
Sustain Your Running Community
Sustain Your Planet 

Tina Muir is the founder and CEO of Running for Real, a support network and community for runners; a mother of two; and a former elite runner for Great Britain and Northern Ireland. She hosts the Running For Real podcast, a collection of conversations about running, the climate emergency, and social justice, which has amassed over 6 million downloads; and Running Realized, a podcast that provides a space to explore difficult subjects and offers insights to create meaningful change in the running world and beyond. Her articles have been published in The Guardian, Runner’s World, SELF, and Women’s Running. Tina is known for her environmental activism, having worked with the United Nations on campaigns related to climate change and humanitarian affairs, and has written for the UN Chronicle. The New York City Marathon, Chicago Marathon, and AJC Peachtree Road Race have all brought her onto their sustainability teams. Voted as one of the 17 women changing the world of running by Women’s Running, she has inspired many others to speak out about their own passions.

Zoë Rom is the editor-in-chief at Trail Runner magazine; managing editor at Women’s Running; and an award-winning journalist whose work has been featured in Outside, Backpacker, Trail Runner, Women’s Running and Discover magazines; NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered; and Threshold, a Peabody-Award winning, long-form environmental podcast. She is also the writer, host, and producer of the DNF podcast, which has been called the “This American Life of running podcasts,” by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Zoë is an elite trail runner, with a master’s degree in environmental journalism from the University of Colorado Boulder. She has covered everything from sled dog racing in the Alaskan bush and arctic sea ice exploration in Norway to morel hunting in northern Arkansas and competitive alpaca racing in the Colorado Rockies. Her running accomplishments include first place at the Crested Butte 100k and Athens Big Fork Trail Marathon, and two consecutive wins at the War Eagle 50k.

If you would like to get a copy of the book, you can find links to all the places where it's available online here: https://becomingasustainablerunner.com/
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