Table of Contents
Every runner has a book that changed how they run, or got them started in the first place. If you don't have yours yet, it's probably on this list. These ten are all true stories, from Olympic champions to ordinary people who started late and kept going, and each one is hard to close once you open it.
1. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
Christopher McDougall is a journalist and runner worn down by injuries when he goes looking for answers in the Copper Canyons of Mexico. There he finds the Tarahumara, a reclusive people who run enormous distances deep into old age, on thin sandals and almost no gear, and who barely seem to get hurt.
The heart of the book is an eccentric American drifter called Caballo Blanco and the wild 50-mile race he stages in the canyons between the Tarahumara and a small group of American ultrarunners.
It reads like an adventure story, because it was one.
More than any other book here, this is the one runners name when you ask what got them hooked. It kicked off the whole barefoot and minimalist movement, and even if you never touch a pair of thin-soled shoes, it's hard to finish it and not want to run.
If you only read one book here, this is the one we'd hand you first.
2. Marathon Woman by Kathrine Switzer
In 1967, Kathrine Switzer is a 20-year-old college student who signs up for the Boston Marathon as "K.V. Switzer," at a time when the race is closed to women.
A few miles in, a race official spots a woman on the course, sprints after her, and tries to tear the bib off her back. Her boyfriend and teammates shove him away, and she keeps going and finishes. The photos of that moment are among the most famous images in the sport.
The book is her whole life, not just that one morning. Switzer spends the decades after it opening the sport to women, and helps get the women's marathon added to the Olympics in 1984. It's history told by the person who lived it.
3. Let Your Mind Run by Deena Kastor
Deena Kastor is one of the best American distance runners ever, an Olympic marathon medalist and record holder. Early on she is talented but stuck, until her coach pushes her to change the way she talks to herself.
The book is about that shift, from a habit of doubt to a stubborn kind of optimism, and how much it changed her running.
If the mental side is where your races fall apart, this is the one to read.
4. The Perfect Mile by Neal Bascomb
In the early 1950s, three runners on three continents chase the same goal that everyone says is impossible: to be the first person to run a mile in under four minutes. Roger Bannister in England, John Landy in Australia, and Wes Santee in the United States.
Bascomb tells all three stories at once, building to Bannister's famous run in 1954. It moves like a thriller, and it opens a window on an era when this was the biggest question in sport.
5. Running for My Life by Lopez Lomong
Some Olympic stories begin on a track. This one begins in a church in what is now South Sudan, where six-year-old Lopez Lomong is taken by armed rebel soldiers.
He escapes with a few older boys and runs for three days to cross into Kenya, where he grows up in a refugee camp. He watches his first Olympics on a television in the camp, and decides on the spot that this is what he wants to do.
Resettled in the United States as one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan," he becomes an American citizen and a two-time Olympian, and carries the flag for his new country at the 2008 Games. Few running stories travel this far.
6. 26 Marathons by Meb Keflezighi
Meb Keflezighi built one of the great American marathon careers, capped by an Olympic silver and wins at both Boston and New York. Here he draws a single lesson from each of his 26 career races, about racing and about lasting in the sport.
His 2014 Boston win, the year after the bombing, is worth the read on its own.
7. Finding Gobi by Dion Leonard
Somewhere in a brutal multi-day race across the Gobi Desert, a small stray dog starts running beside the ultrarunner Dion Leonard and refuses to stop, keeping pace over sand and rivers for days.
He names her Gobi and decides to take her home. Then she disappears in a Chinese city while he sorts out the paperwork, and the search that follows becomes its own story. This is the feel-good pick of the list.
8. Running on Empty by Marshall Ulrich
At 57, an age when a lot of runners are winding down, Marshall Ulrich runs across the entire United States, just over 3,000 miles from California to New York in under two months. He's an accomplished ultrarunner with plenty of hard miles behind him, but this run is the centerpiece.
It's a raw look at what that kind of distance does to a body and a mind.
9. Running with the Kenyans by Adharanand Finn
The reasons Kenyan runners dominate the distances have been debated for years. The British writer and runner Adharanand Finn goes looking in person, moving his whole family to Iten, high in the Rift Valley, to train alongside them for six months.
What he finds is part training camp and part study of a culture, and he ties it together while chasing his own goal of a faster marathon.
If you've ever wondered what makes the Kenyans so good, this gets closer than most.
10. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Before Louis Zamperini is a war hero, he is a runner, fast enough to reach the 1936 Berlin Olympics as a teenager. That is where the book begins.
Then his bomber goes down in the Pacific, and the story turns into 47 days on a raft and years in a brutal prisoner-of-war camp. The running is where it starts, not where it stays, but it's one of the most gripping survival stories ever written. If you'd rather watch it first, it's also a film.
Related: 8 Unforgettable Running Movies Based on True Stories
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