WELCOME TO THE EXCLUSIVE CLUB

• By loramarie03
• 23 July, 2012
• 12 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I love reading books about running. Most of the time, I’ll read autobiography/memoir with a book on training thrown in here and there. I just finished reading Tim Catalano and Adam Goucher’s “Running the Edge” tonight on the subway. I think it’s a combination of both a biography (well, dual biography since it’s about Tim and Adam) with some training resources mixed in.

I got a lot more out of this book than I expected. Not to say I didn’t expect much, but I didn’t realize that it also had so much personality behind it. Like, running basically saved Adam from going down a “bad path,” a path that he was already going down until he found a love for running. I never imagined that was his story! Incredible.

There were a lot of passages that stuck out to me, but I really wanted to share this one with you:

Running is an exclusive club, but anybody can join. That is, you can become a runner and join the club if you possess the initiative to get off the couch and run, the responsibility to understand that there is no one else to do the work for you, the determination to conquer the hill and perservere through the hard times, the adaptability to know when to bend, and the personal integrity to be real with yourself. When you are a runner, you are one of us, a valuable part of the collective we. You are relevant. You are part of a community brought together through common experience and shared passion.

They might not understtand us. They may yell Forrest Gump cliches at us as they drive by in their cars. They might think we are crazy for the way we love a sport that seems so excruciating. But we are runners. We understand. We are all brothers and sisters in this strange world, and you are one of us. 

 

LOVE.

That’s all I can say. There are gems like this sprinkled throughout the book. I think everyone thought I was nuts on the subway because I was nodding my head and chuckling to myself throughout the book because it was like YES that is so true!!

And now, the winner of the Zipfizz giveaway! Congratulations to my fellow Sweat Pink sister, Cristina at Triathlon Mami!

Email me at bklynrunning (at) gmail.com in the next 48 hours to claim your prize!

Thank you to all who entered. If you didn’t win, no worries… another AWESOME giveaway kicks off this Thursday! Stay tuned!

Question: Is anybody interested in reading “Running the Edge”? I will ship it to the first person who comments they are and leaves their email address for me to contact. NOTE: The book is not in 100% perfect condition, it does have water stains on the top of some of the pages (so sad that this happened). And P.S., you won’t have to send it back to me… but you will have to pass it on to another distance maven (you’ll get it after you read the book).