The Endless Summer—& Beyond In the tradition of many magazines before us, our July/August issue is our Summer Reading issue, which means we save a lot of longer, more casually-paced features for this issue. It is also our annual Adventure Running issue, which means that we also save a lot of the more outré stories for this issue. Combine the two, and this issue contains a lot of longer, more off-thewall stories than our usual issues do. That means that the stories are usually easier to read because they don’t dwell all that much on the scientific side of running, but they take longer to read because they typically have an enormous number of words. I’m something of a sucker for such special issues because they harken back to somnolent summers as a kid, where we would spend the mornings doing a few chores, then play some pickup ballgames, and when the day began to swelter we would crawl down into the borough’s big, cool, damp drainage pipes and read comic books and The Hardy Boys before emerging later in the day to put in our several hours working on the Mauch Chunk Bakery Company delivery truck for 25 cents an hour . . . which allowed us to buy even more comic books and more Hardy Boy books and expand into Rick Brant Electronic Adventure novels.

Summers in those days used to spool out to forever. They had a beginning: the last day of school. But until they slipped right up against September, June/July/August was like one big month swollen with warm breezes and sweaty chests and knocking around doing nothing that amounted to lots of little things stitched together to complete a typical day. As we age, of course, some evil spirit creeps up behind us and extracts a day out of each month so that months flit by as though they were weeks and the once-magical month of June/July/ August is gone in a minute. That is why we have Summer Reading/Adventure Running issues: to slow down the forced march of months toward New Year’s Eve so that as we cut our running training back to accommodate the hotter days, we have something to fill the void. The fact that some of these stories involve racing in the summer is beside the point; they just happen to be Summer/Adventure Running Reading, the kind of stories that raise the question of whether we could do such a thing. It’s never whether we should do such a thing, but whether we could do such a thing: like running in Death Valley in the middle of summer, or running across the country during the winter, or running 51 marathons in 50 states

in 50 days. Or, on more of a fantasy level, racing across the United States from Los Angeles to New York, as Tom McNab had his characters do in Flanagan’s Run, the serialization of which commences in this issue. Flanagan’s Run was first published in the United States in 1982 by William Morrow and Company. It takes the perennially popular Bunion Derbies of 1928 and 1929 and moves them into the Great Depression era to increase the motivation of amateur runners to cross the dusty United States in order to save their families from economic disaster. Of course, the original Bunion Derbies were peopled by mostly poor amateurs who weren’t benefiting greatly from the Roaring ’20s era of excess before the Great Fall occurred. The original Bunion Derbies, promoted by the scalawag C. C. Pyle (sometimes referred to as “Cash and Carry Pyle”), were originated in part to promote the then sort-of-new Route 66 (the Mother Road) that ran from Los Angeles to Chicago. Today most of Route 66 is a thing more of legend than of reality; in 1928, most of it was dusty dirt roads scratched into reluctant earth that turned to quagmires when it rained and that choked the lungs with gritty particulate matter when it didn’t. Tom McNab is a man who knows his stuff, so even though he moves the running derby several years into the future, the details and the characters he creates are based (pretty much) on real runners of the time, one of whom was still alive when Tom was doing research for the novel and who spent time

relating to Tom some of the particulars of doing a stage race across a muchdifferent-from-today United States. Tom was a brilliant English coach who enjoyed Olympic success, he was the technical director of Chariots of Fire, and he is an inspiring author. (Roger Robinson, in his Running in Literature, ranked Tom’s novel Fast Men as the best running novel ever written. Roger ranks Flanagan’s Run as the fifth-best running novel ever written. Some experts on such matters claim that Flanagan’s Run is the bestselling sports novel ever written.) We hope you enjoy sharing some of your summer days with our authors and that their stories inspire you on to greater—and crazier—things in the future. And we hope that you manage to somehow squeeze more out of this summer than you otherwise would by spending some laid-back, high-quality time with our writers. *

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M&B publisher Jan Seeley and I had an opportunity in late March to do a little dog and pony show for attendees at the 50th annual Road Runners Club of America convention in Chicago. The presentation involved 50 things in running that have changed dramatically over the past half century. It was a lot of fun to put together the 50 areas, which included everything from running shoes to personal portable-entertainment devices (from listening to your own heartbeat to BONEfones to Sony Walkmans to iPods). We managed to go off on enough tangents that we didn’t

get through all 50 of the areas. We’re considering expanding the PowerPoint presentation and putting it on our Web site. Stay tuned. One byproduct of researching and unleashing the presentation was the realization of how far long-distance running has come over the past half century and of what a significant role the RRCA has played in that progress. The RRCA began as a result of the sometimes benign but often belligerent neglect the higher-ups of the AAU laid on long-distance running participants. The long-distance runners were the pariahs of the running world, the orphans, the oddballs, the losers, the “ham-andeggers,” as they were referred to in the early days of the Boston Marathon. Even as late as 1977, when I returned to running, the AAU was adamant that runners of road races join the AAU even though none of the membership money was used to improve the lot of road races and road racers. The money generated from road racers who were AAU members was pumped back into the elitist track and field sports—this in the face of the enormous and turbocharged increase in road running participation. Fortunately, as the AAU morphed into TAC and later into the USATF, a great deal of the gulf between track and field athletes and officials and those organizing and participating in road races was bridged until today there is genuine cooperation between the two groups. It is impossible to understate the importance the RRCA has played in the growth of our sport.

Certainly the organization has had its ups and downs. One of its lowest ebbs came less than a half-dozen years ago when it looked as though there was a good chance the RRCA would become moribund. The executive director refused to move from the Boston area to the D.C. area to physically work in the RRCA offices, the finances were a shambles, and competing groups were gnashing at the limping carcass of the RRCA. But through unrelenting work, dedicated leadership, and some hard decisions, the RRCA today is financially sound and healthier than it has ever been. It boasts more than 780 member clubs and events, has a dozen programs in place (including the Roads Scholar and Run@Work programs), a membership of over 180,000, and plays a significant role in American running. If you are not familiar with the RRCA, it would be worth your while to visit it at www.rrca.org. The quarterly journal, FOOTNOTES, is posted on the Web site, and updated information on its programs is available. If you don’t already belong, consider joining. And if you already belong, consider taking an even more active role in growing the RRCA and in growing our sport. * * * As I write this, the 111th Boston Marathon is a mere 10 days away. At M&B we just finished up with the May/June issue, which went to the printer at the end of last week. This is the last major piece of editorial content that I need to send in to the Champaign, Illinois, office for the July/August issue. I don’t have

People just getting into running— people from both sides of the sexual divide—have no idea of the growing pains that long-distance runners went through over the past half century, not just technologically, but politically and socially: from long-distance road racers trying to wring some respect and recognition from the stiff AAU, to women trying to make their way in the running world, to the country—and eventually the world—accepting postcollegiate adults running around the countryside in their underwear for the good of their hearts, their heads, and their physical self-esteem. It is propitious that Kathrine’s book comes out the same spring the Road Runners Club of America celebrated its 50th anniversary. Kathrine’s career and the RRCA parallel each other to an extent that is almost preternatural. For those of us who were there for some or all of the territory Kathrine maps and dissects, our reading of her book had best be in private, because an observer watching us nod our heads vigorously or laugh for no apparent reason

my baggage packed yet for my flight to our headquarters in Champaign, where I get to drive the van with M&B’s Boston expo materials to Beantown. And what plops into my mailbox this past Monday like a bombshell that’s preventing me from washing my underwear so I can pack my bags for the Boston trip but Kathrine Switzer’s newest book, Marathon Woman. Need I tell you how little essential work is getting done this week because I can’t stop reading the book? But in true marathoner/delayed-gratification mode, I’m dedicating mornings to cleaning and packing clothes, finishing up deadlines, getting issue planning finished, and working on my own next book so I can leave afternoons open to devouring Kathrine’s book. I’ll be indelicate with it right up front: this is the most important running book of the last decade, at least as far as putting the sport and lifestyle of running in perspective. And what makes it doubly significant is that it’s a damned good read, so good that the pages nearly turn themselves.

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would call the boys in the white jackets for a trip to the local loony bin. Marathon Woman is Kathrine’s story, and a very personal story it is—and one in which she spares no dark alley or wrong turn—but it is also the story of an era, a struggle, a journey at once difficult yet enormously fulfilling. If struggle builds character, in several years of her life, Kathrine used cinder blocks instead of bricks. She is brutally honest about the turns she made in her life, the anguish and doubts she faced at certain crossroads, and the exhilaration of just being alive enough to experience all of it. The struggle of women to make their place in the running world was so intimately woven with Kathrine’s life that halfway through the book I tried to come up with a suitable term for the character I saw as Zelig with gravitas. You’ll remember Zelig as the Woody Allen character who turned up on the edge of virtually every important event in history. Look at a photo of the Yalta conference, and there was Zelig in the background; see Willie Mays go twoout-of-three in the last game of the season in his to-the-wire batting title battle with Richie Ashburn in 1958 (Ashburn went three-for-four), and Zelig is sitting in the stands behind home plate. Kathrine was there for all of it but wasn’t merely an observer of the evolution of women in running (and in sports in general), she was one of the spark plugs, from taking up running as a young college girl, to practicing with the Syracuse University men’s cross-country team, to pirouetting out of the way of a charging Jock Semple

at the 1967 Boston Marathon—and beyond . . . way beyond. The title of the book is apt. Marathon Woman, indeed. Following Kathrine’s full-time job, her volunteer work on behalf of running, and her hard training on top of that are simply exhausting—even if you’re sitting under a tree sipping a beer. Her dedication and enthusiasm and passion leap out of every page, as does the lesson: when you encounter someone on a mission, get on board or get out of the way. This is a book that will inspire runners and that will put them in awe of the cadre of dedicated personalities, of both sexes, who moved long-distance running so far, so fast. It will also help put an end to some of the insidious revisionist history that has been injected into running discussions over the past several years that claims that women like Kathrine had to battle Neanderthal attitudes in male runners. “Again and again in interviews and appearances, I tried to defuse that story and explain that we had a lot of homework to do to educate the powerful decision makers,” Kathrine writes. “Yes, it was true they were all male, but most men, particularly the runners, were strongly in support of us.” And we still are. But we singleminded guys are even more in awe of that multitasking thing women seem to be able to do. This could well be a textbook on the definition and proper execution of multitasking. Oh, yes. And the good news: Kathrine’s book takes us up to only 1984, when the first women’s Olympic

marathon was held, which means a second volume is still to be written. Let’s hope it won’t come dashing in on the heels of Marathon Woman, because we need time to recover from this first long run before attempting a second. Appropriately, the book makes its debut at the 2007 Boston Marathon, exactly four decades since Jock Semple made the mistake of messing with the wrong broad. * * * Fortunately, if you’re depleted on several levels after reading Kathrine’s book, another female pioneer is standing by to help bring you back around to stasis, at least as far as your dietary needs are concerned. Nancy Clark, one of the pioneers of dietary applications for active people, has a bright, easily accessible new book out titled Nancy Clark’s Food Guide for Marathoners. This is an evolution of a similar book Nancy published a few years ago, brought up to date with the latest information on where carbohydrates stand as a fuel in the marathoner’s arsenal, how important protein is, why pasta is often overrated, and how marathoners can lose weight or gain weight, depending on which is necessary and appropriate. The new edition of Nancy’s book is published by Meyer & Meyer Sport, the German-based book publisher that has released a slew of books by the always-energetic Jeff Galloway. Meyer & Meyer does a wonderful job of creating graphically pleasing and

easy-to-access books. The book is rich with color graphics, is laid out in an easy-to-follow format, and is extremely reasonable at $16.95. Of course, the meat of any diet book—sorry, couldn’t resist—is the substance, and Nancy’s book has plenty of that. Probably the most important chapter in the book for marathoners is chapter 5: Carbohydrate Confusion. “While

carb-bashers have long established sugar as a dietary demon, starches have also gotten a bad rap thanks to Dr. Atkins and his high-protein diet,” Nancy writes. “Some marathoners, who had been happily enjoying bagels, pasta, and pretzels as the foundation of their sports diet, are shunning these excellent sources of muscle fuel. Instead, they choose egg whites, cottage cheese, soy shakes, and protein-based foods. They also experience needless fatigue due to poorly fueled muscles.” Nancy puts the whole controversy into perspective and performs a tremendous service for newbie marathoners who, like trusting pilgrims, put their faith in the first prophet who comes down the pike—a prophet often steeped in the arcane and the obscene and deficient in the practical and workable. When it comes to tweaking and customizing your diet to fit your marathon lifestyle, keep Nancy’s new book in your gym bag the same way you keep your owner’s manual in your glove compartment. Trust her in this; she knows of what she speaks. —Rich Benyo