You opened this book for a reason.
Maybe you like the cover and wanted to see if there were more photos inside—there are, about four hundred of them, comprising the most comprehensive photo instruction guide for workouts, exercises, and drills available in a running book. That was by design. I’ve always wished that running—with its associated drills, plyometrics, resistance training, stretching, foam rolling, and other exercises—had an illustrated training manual like those for weightlifting, aerobics, martial arts, and practically every other sport on the planet. Now it does.
But I’m guessing that you opened this book for more than photos.
You want to get serious about a new running program (or improve an old one), and you’re wondering if this book will help you achieve your fitness goals. You also want to know if there’s something about Build Your Running Body that sets it apart from other running books. And you want to know if you can trust the training program in this book, if you can be confident that the authors aren’t pushing yet another running fad or get-fit-quick scheme.
The answers are: Yes, yes, and yes.
Whether you’re a beginner looking to train for the first time or an experienced runner hoping to improve a 5K or marathon PR, Build Your Running Body’s unique training approach will help carry you to your goal. That’s because your authors recognize that every runner is different, that we all bring a slightly different body type, exercise history, and performance goal to our training. So instead of being asked to follow a generic prescription for mileage and speedwork (the top-down approach of most training programs), you’ll build your fitness from the ground up, learning to target the individual components of your running body—your muscles, connective tissue, cardiovascular system, nervous system, hormones, and more—and to focus on those components that are most relevant to your goals. There is no guesswork. You will never be asked to train on faith.
When I began outlining Build Your Running Body in the spring of 2012, I envisioned a training manual for the twenty-first-century runner, a book that treats its readers like members of the fitness-savvy population we’ve become. Before 1972, before Frank Shorter broke the finish-line tape in the Munich Olympic Marathon and ignited the running boom, running was limited to a handful of perceived oddballs competing in cross country and track. But by 2013, fifty million Americans were lacing up their running shoes, while an equal number belonged to fitness clubs. And these days, we don’t just run. We participate in weightlifting, aerobics, spinning, Pilates, yoga, swimming, kickboxing, and more. We utilize personal trainers, nutritionists, and physical therapists. We watch our cholesterol, choose sports drinks based on carbohydrate and protein content, and purchase supplements to the tune of $30 billion a year. We embrace studies on exercise, nutrition, health, and longevity, and we expect our training programs to reflect the cutting-edge science that drives innovation in the sport. But we also expect those programs to be tempered by the experience of coaches and athletes who’ve tested those innovations, who’ve embraced the good and weeded out the bad. It’s this combination of science and experience that has fueled my own training and coaching. And it’s what I wanted this book to convey.
Build Your Running Body will take you on an amazing journey through your running body. You’ll begin with the microscopic fibers that comprise your running muscles, and then you’ll tour every other running-related component of your body—traveling along the 60,000-mile superhighway of your body’s blood vessels—before finally concluding your trip in the incorporeal mission control center that resides in your brain. You’ll learn exactly how each component of your running body contributes to your running, and you’ll be shown how to train those components on three different levels:
Of course, Build Your Running Body offers more than workouts and schedules. As a runner and coach for four decades, I’ve learned firsthand that running is much more than exercise; it’s a lifestyle. And successfully building that lifestyle requires practical, real-world advice on all aspects of our sport. That’s why Part One of the book offers chapters on motivation, running’s history (the better to understand and embrace the training innovations of the past century), running gear, and running vocabulary—this last chapter supplemented by an appendix glossary defining more than 250 running terms. And that’s why Part Three includes a whole chapter devoted to injury prevention, and a corresponding table in the back of the book that lists exercise-specific prevention and rehabilitation guidance for more than forty common running injuries. And why Part Four offers six chapters on diet and nutrition. And why Part Five gets down to the nitty-gritty, detailing proper race preparation and tactics for the competitive runners among us. The book also includes pace tables for every conceivable run, calorie-burn charts for most workouts, and expert discussion throughout on topics from running fads to PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs) to sneaky sugars that manufacturers slip into your food.
You’re encouraged to skim through the book as a prelude to reading it. Flip through the photo instruction. Read a few training recommendations. Glance at the tables. Check out the recipes in the diet and nutrition chapters. Build Your Running Body is designed to be a one-stop source for everything a twenty-first-century runner needs to know about training, the sport, and the running lifestyle. It will guide you from your first purchase of running shoes to your ultimate performance achievement.
Improved running performance and whole-body fitness aren’t unsolved mysteries. Coaches, athletes, and exercise physiologists have been working on both for decades, and the giant leaps forward in fitness participation, race results, and health awareness speak for themselves. The trick lies in utilizing advances in training to achieve your own fitness goals. It’s tempting to embrace magic-bullet solutions—to believe that running success can be had by filling your training log with a certain number of miles or by counting your strides per minute or by embracing a fad diet. But the truth is that your body is an incredibly complex biological machine with hundreds of working parts, and good training demands that you target all of them.
Build Your Running Body is dedicated to a simple principle: If you want to become a better runner, you must begin by building a better running body.
Good luck!