Running Book Reviews with Alan and Liz

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Book overview: 

1500 Pairs of Hands is a brutally honest account of one of the most iconic ultramarathons in the world — told not by an elite athlete, but by a regular runner facing the limits of body and mind.

This is not a story about podiums.
It’s about survival.

Through extreme heat, long climbs, and endless miles of dusty singletrack, the race becomes a constant test of decision-making, resilience, and mental strength. Mistakes have consequences. Fatigue changes everything. And finishing is never guaranteed.

But this book reveals something most race reports overlook:

No one finishes Western States alone.

This is not a guide.

This is what it feels like to be there 

Author Bio and Interesting Facts:

Christian Abele Plaza is a Spanish trail and ultratrail runner with a passion for endurance challenges and the stories they create.

Over the years, he has taken part in a wide range of trail races, from local events to some of the world's most iconic ultramarathons. It was his experience at the Western States 100 that inspired him to write his first book.

Rather than telling the story from the front of the race, Christian writes from the perspective of a non-elite runner—sharing the doubts, mistakes, determination, and quiet moments that define the journey to the finish line.

You can follow Christian @Christian_Abele_Plaza on IG

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Book overview: 

The Art of Ultrarunning: Tried & Tested Strategies for Long-Distance Runners compiles coaching strategies with illustrative stories from professional ultrarunners to create a convenient resource to help you improve your running. An elite-level racer and coach, author Ian Sharman provides practical guidance for runners at all levels; whether you are at the back of the pack or are going for gold, there's something to learn from his decades of experience. 

The book is broken down into three valuable sections: part 1 breaks down training, part 2 untangles the concepts of racing and part 3 grows past the racing in shining light on sustainable growth past the finish line.

Author Bio and Interesting Facts:

Ian Sharman is an ultrarunner, coach, and journalist from the United Kingdom who lives in the trail running hub of Bend, Oregon. He founded Sharman Ultra Coaching (SUC) in 2010, bringing together a team of some of the best ultrarunners as coaches. SUC has coached hundreds of runners, from back-of-the-pack participants to winners of the most prestigious ultras in the world.

Sharman was voted as high as second for Ultrarunning Magazine’s Ultrarunner of the Year as well as fourth for Ultrarunner of the Decade for the 2010s. Some running highlights include the all-time record for the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning; four wins in the Leadville Trail 100 Run; three wins in the Rocky Raccoon 100, including setting the record; nine top 10 finishes at the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run, including being the only person to complete the race 10 times with a combined finish time of under a week; multiple top finishes at Comrades Marathon in South Africa, including a Wally Hayward Medal; and a marathon best time of 2 hours and 21 minutes.

You can find Ian @sharmanian and on www.sharmanultra.com

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Book overview:

Once a nationally ranked long-distance runner, Canadian Peter Whitby abandons his career as an engineer and moves to a small US town in the Pacific Northwest where he can train year-round and pursue his running dreams. After a chance encounter with a local entrepreneur, Peter finds himself drawn into the race of a lifetime with a substantial winner-take-all cash prize. With the help of a new training partner, a previous love interest and a coach with a dubious past, Peter has to find a way to outrun his insecurities … and beat the top long-distance runners in the world. Capturing the joy of running and the spirit of competition, Running in the Dark is a story of determination, the pursuit of excellence, and overcoming self-doubt. This book is a fictional story.

Author Bio and Interesting Facts:

Paul Walmsley is a professional engineer whose active lifestyle has taken him on numerous running, cycling, and hiking adventures across North America, the British Isles, Europe, and New Zealand. He has completed nine marathons and countless road races, providing him with the insights and inspiration for his writing.

​

Paul currently lives in Calgary, Alberta and enjoys spending his summers at a family cottage in Gananoque, Ontario.

https://www.paulwalmsley.ca/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-walmsley-67710629?originalSubdomain=ca

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Book overview:
Showing Up by Nedd Brockmann is a memoir about his incredible 3,953-kilometre run across Australia. At age 23, the former electrician ran from Perth to Sydney in 46 days to raise millions of dollars for homelessness. Written with raw humor, the book explores his "why can't I?" mindset, early discipline in sports, and the physical and mental toll of voluntary suffering to inspire readers to embrace discomfort and chase big goals 

Author Bio and Interesting Facts:

Nedd Brockmann is an Australian ultramarathon runner, author, and philanthropist named the 2026 Young Australian of the Year. A former electrician from regional New South Wales, he rose to fame in 2022 by running nearly 4,000 kilometers across Australia in 46 days to raise millions for homelessness

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In this episode, Alan and Liz welcome back frequent-flyer guest Matt Fitzgerald to talk about his rawest and most personal book yet: Dying to Run: An Athlete's Quest for One More Finish. This is Matt like you've never read him. After long COVID took away not just running but his ability to move, work, and feel like himself, he made the reckless, wonderful decision to attempt a 100-kilometer ultramarathon in record-breaking desert heat. We dig into what long COVID actually is and why it can turn exercise into something close to poison, the brutal post-exertional malaise scale Matt created for a medical case study, and why he signed up for the Javelina Jundred giving himself just a 10 percent chance of even reaching the start line. We also get into the Stoic mindset that carried him through, the art of controlling the controllables when the desert hits 99 degrees, the surprising power of simply having something to anticipate again, one very relatable wardrobe malfunction five minutes before the gun, and why he believes it does not really matter how the story ends. It is a conversation about endurance in the truest sense of the word, and about what it means to keep going when your body betrays you.

About the Book Dying to Run is Matt Fitzgerald's most personal book to date, part memoir and part meditation on survival and self-acceptance. When long COVID struck, running became a distant memory, doctors had no answers, and every day blurred into fatigue and mental fog. With no promise of recovery, Matt set his sights on an audacious gamble: finishing the Javelina Jundred, a 100-kilometer ultramarathon across Arizona's Sonoran Desert, during a record-breaking heat wave.

• The Gamble: With his body refusing to cooperate and no medical fix in sight, Matt bets everything on one more finish, chasing closure and, just maybe, redemption in the scorching desert.
• The Mindset: Drawing on Stoic philosophy, modern psychology, and hard-won experience, he learns to separate what he can control from what he cannot, and to be as wise as he is tough.
• The Bigger Question: More than a race report, this is an honest reckoning with how we find meaning, and keep moving, when our bodies fail us.

Dying to Run is published by 80/20 Publishing and distributed by Simon & Schuster, arriving in print, digital, and audio in September.

About the Author Matt Fitzgerald is an acclaimed endurance sports journalist, certified sports nutritionist, and bestselling author of nearly 40 books on running, nutrition, and mental toughness. Titles we have covered on the podcast include Running the Dream, 80/20 Coaching, The Comeback Quotient, How to Run Your Perfect Race, and Run Like a Pro (Even If You're Slow). He is the co-founder of 80/20 Endurance and head coach of Dream Run Camp in Flagstaff, Arizona, which he opened during his illness as a way to pivot into serving fellow runners.

A lifelong runner who has raced since age 11, Matt faced his hardest challenge yet when long COVID upended his life, the story he tells in Dying to Run. He lives in Flagstaff with his wife, Nataki, and their dog, Clementine.

Have you read Dying to Run, or fought your own way back from illness or injury? We would love to hear what kept you going. Reach out and let us know!

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In the running boom of the 80s the small town of Bernardsville New Jersey emerged as a magical place for the sport, producing champions at all levels of distance running. The young, passionate experimental coach of the junior program feeding a lot of the success was Mark Wetmore; before he became of the worlds best collegiate coaches. Blood Sweat and Spikes is a story of one of the runners in that town (Lyle Smith) and the people that made it unique in the history of the sport.

Lyle Smith has been a reporter,, a caddie, a grave digger, a marketing professional and a runner since he discovered the sport as a youngster growing up in Bernardsville , New Jersey. He now lives in Colorado with his wife Heather and son Aiden. You might hear him podcasting or see him running the trails of Boulder with his golden retriever Elsa.

Lyle's site, lylesmith.net, is where he can be reached, where you can learn more about him.

Lyle's IG: @nymblegram

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Here we are again with a recap of 10 running books. This time is a first with Shayan added to the usual Alan and Liz mix

Here's a list of all 10 books and and a link to the full podcast episodes in which they are featured.

Chasing the Grid by  Ken Posner

https://www.buzzsprout.com/976876/episodes/17934193

Fuel for Thought by Renee McGregor

https://www.buzzsprout.com/976876/episodes/17951831

Ultra Women by Lily canter and Emma Wilkinson

https://www.buzzsprout.com/976876/episodes/18088365

Road to Redemption by Tom Fitzgerald

https://www.buzzsprout.com/976876/episodes/18196515

Practical Fueling for Endurance Athletes by Kylee van Horn

https://www.buzzsprout.com/976876/episodes/18398279

Running the World by Robyn Godfrey

https://www.buzzsprout.com/976876/episodes/18445395

Move Rest Recover by Erin Taylor

https://www.buzzsprout.com/976876/episodes/18559534

Advanced Marathoning (4th Edn.) by Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas

https://www.buzzsprout.com/976876/episodes/18560759

Still Running after all these Tears by Lisa jackson

https://www.buzzsprout.com/976876/episodes/18723464

What I Talk About when I talk about Running by Haruki Murakami

https://www.buzzsprout.com/976876/episodes/19076029

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In One Step Forward , we follow Gene from his initial unhealthy lifestyle as he  transforms from sedentary starter to 11x Ironman finisher—with a 10-year Boston Marathon streak

During this journey Gene extracts over 100 life lessons from his running but applicable to all kinds of situations. They fall into 5 major categories

• Perseverance and Resilience
• Mental Strength and Self Talk 
• Community and Support
• Personal Growth and Transformation
• Service and Giving Back

Gene Jochen is an endurance athlete who has completed over 100 marathons including his 11th Boston in 2022 and all six Abbott World Marathons—plus 11 Ironmans. A corporate leader, sales expert and entrepreneur, he sharpened his mindset testing limits on roads trails and triathlons . He shares hard -earned insights to help others conquer doubt, build resilience and break personal barriers. He's also a songwriter and jazz/rock drummer. 

Gene's site, https://genejochen.com/, is where he can be reached, where you can learn more about his next book, and where you can find access to locations to purchase this book:

Gene's IG: https://www.instagram.com/grjochen/

Gene's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gene-jochen-bsmartinc330/

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Marathon Excellence for Everyone is a bible about marathon training and racing. It has 50 chapters divided into 8 sections (not counting the appendix):

1. First steps
2. The phases of marathon training
3. Training plans
4. Race day and beyond
5. The science of marathon performance
6. The science of fueling
7. Overcoming illness, injury, and other setbacks
8. Advanced training techniques

John Davis is a scientist, writer, and coach. His work uses modern machine learning and biostatistics to understand biomechanics, physiology, and human health. Recently, he’s focused on using these same tools to tackle problems in AI alignment and AI interpretability. 

His site, https://johnjdavis.io/, is where he puts his technical write-ups and explainers on topics like AI, ML, and biomechanics. He can also be found at https://runningwritings.com/  where you can:

Get copies of the book: https://marathonexcellence.com/

Join John's newsletter to get links to all his new content: https://runningwritings.com/news

Follow him on Instagram (or FB): https://www.instagram.com/runningwritings/

Listen to his longer form content on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RunningWritings

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In this episode, we talk with author, former professional runner for the Nike Oregon Project and current Irish national runner, and Stanford medical student Mary Cain about her memoir: This is Not About Running. We ask her about her youth, growing up in an abusive athletics system, training for Alberto Salazar as a high schooler. We also talk about her work with Atalanta NYC and The Athlete's Survivors' Assist, her growth and the many hats she wears as a survivor, leader, mentor, student and professional runner. She speaks on what she wishes for young runners today, the challenges we face and where the conversation should be going to enact concrete change.

About the Book

In THIS IS NOT ABOUT RUNNING Cain shares her whole story, offering never-before told details and perspective to shed light on the normalized abuse in sports, and advocating for a better future for athletes. Cain is fearless in her storytelling. She has a passion for writing and each short chapter of the book recounts a vignette in present tense, bringing the reader alongside her. She gains speed, notches wins, and excels in school—and encounters cruelty and abuse starting early on and becoming deeper and darker throughout her time running for Nike. 

The memoir is aptly organized into 5 gripping parts of Mary Cain’s young life and they are titled Talent, Rookie, Competitor, Professional and Champion.

This episode and book comes with trigger warnings on disordered eating, body shaming, sexual harassment, abuse, self-harm, mental health episodes and suicidal ideation.

About Mary Cain

Mary Cain is a medical student at Stanford University School of Medicine. After sharing her story with the world in a 2019 New York Times op-ed, Cain has dedicated her career to driving change in sport, with an emphasis on athlete well-being and gender equity. She is the founder of Atalanta NYC, a nonprofit that employs professional female runners to serve as mentors for young girls, and serves on the board of The Athlete Survivors’ Assist (formerly known as The Army of Survivors), a nonprofit that brings awareness, accountability, and transparency to sexual violence against athletes at all levels. She is also a runner. Cain had a record-breaking professional running career that included becoming the 2014 World Junior Champion in the 3000m and a 2013 World Championships finalist in the 1500m.

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