Mary Cain to Release Memoir on Her Time with Nike and Salazar

Mary Cain, once hailed as the future of American middle-distance running, is set to publish her memoir This Is Not About Running on April 28, 2026.

The book, announced this week by HarperCollins, promises a raw, intimate look at what happened when a teenage prodigy was pushed to the brink inside one of the most powerful training systems in sport.

Cain, now 29, was just 16 when she was recruited by Alberto Salazar to join the Nike Oregon Project, a program that promised to turn her into an Olympic champion.

At the time, she was breaking high school records, running sub-2-minute 800s, and widely considered the fastest teen runner in the country. But by the time she left the program a few years later, she was battling depression, injuries, and a shattered sense of self.

The memoir draws from Cain’s personal diaries and years of silence following her 2019 New York Times op-doc, in which she alleged that Salazar and others at the Oregon Project emotionally and physically abused her.

She spoke of being told to lose dangerous amounts of weight, skipping periods for years, hiding granola bars in her room, and falling into a downward spiral of disordered eating and psychological distress. “I was the fastest girl in America,” she said in the now-viral video, “Until I joined Nike.”

The Oregon Project was officially shut down in 2019, and in 2021, Salazar was handed a lifetime ban by the U.S. Center for SafeSport for separate allegations of sexual and emotional misconduct. Cain sued both Salazar and Nike in 2021, reaching a confidential settlement in 2023.

While the exact terms of that agreement have never been made public, her upcoming book appears to be her way of reclaiming the narrative.

HarperCollins describes the memoir as “raw, wry, and impassioned,” and calls it “a fierce account of the damage wrought when we prioritize competition over mental health.” The publisher emphasizes that Cain is not just telling her own story, but aiming to flip the script on abuse in youth sports.

Cain’s allegations, when first made public, ignited a long-overdue reckoning within elite running. Other former Oregon Project athletes, including Olympians Kara Goucher and Amy Yoder Begley, backed her claims and added their own stories of mistreatment.

Goucher, in her own 2023 memoir The Longest Race, described being weighed publicly and silenced when she raised concerns about unethical behavior.

In the years since, Cain has stepped away from professional competition, but not from the sport. She’s worked in sports advocacy, media, and nonprofit consulting. Her focus has remained on creating a safer, healthier model for youth athletics, one that doesn’t destroy the very people it claims to build.

This Is Not About Running is now available for preorder on Amazon in hardcover ($29.99), Kindle ($14.99), and audiobook formats. The official release date is April 28, 2026.