Friday Favourites – Running Book part 1
If I haven’t mentioned it before, I have a degree in English Rhetoric and Professional writing. That means I love, love, love, love books. I try to read as much as I can, though sadly with two little babies, one who is up really late eating, usually means I don’t get too much time to read. I usually can manage to read magazines but that is another blog entry. So my Friday favourite this week will be a review of my favourite book for marathon training. Overall I enjoyed the book and plan to start reading it again to help me train for my half marathon in 2011.
Title: Advanced Marathoning -2nd edition
Authors: Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas
How I found it: I bought this book when I started running in early 2010. I wanted a book that was scientifically informative and not so much fluff. I actually sat on the floor of chapters for a good half hour going through all the books on the running shelf to pick it. Lillian was in her stroller and I kept pushing the stroller with my right arm and flipping throw books with the left. I considered one that focused on women running but I wanted one that my hubby could use too. So this one was a great fit.
Summary: This book is very knowledgeable about many things. It details the importance of nutrition and taught me a lot about hydration which I was very worried about. It also focuses on training and recovery. The first chapter Elements of Training explains a lot about the science behind running, and goes into detail about VO2max oxygen, the importance of glycogen. It also has a large portion of the book dedicated to training programs. These programs, are divided into number of miles you plan to run per week.
Likes: I really found a lot of the information about glycogen, hydration, iron, and protein helpful. I have issues with iron so getting a bit of knowledge about what running does to your iron levels was helpful. I also like the VO2max information since I wonder whether I could be a better short distance runner if I managed to get my lungs to keep up with my legs when I run. Usually I feel the pain in my legs first on a long run, but my lungs give up on a hard short run. I also like the race day strategy chapter, as I read it a few times before my first race and it helped me feel less nervous.
Dislikes: Half the book is training plans, which are great, but I have a living trainer who helps me, and I felt like the book ended too soon. I wanted to read more about the nutrition or science of running and it just seemed to end too quickly. A lot of the chapters have little blurbs about famous runners, and I felt like they were breaking up the chapter a bit. When they were discussing the nutrition and levels of things in the body, they used a lot of more scientific terms and sometimes it was a bit harder to understand.
Facts and/or Wishes: I was amused to find out that my running BFF has the same book in the first edition. I loved the fact that it tries to teach you how to grab water while running. I wish the book was longer, and that it went a bit more into detail about differences in how women and men run, how things change with age, and other topics that effect the people who are reading the book.