Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Required reading for runners

Like any sport, runners have their own sub-culture and information portals. You will not see any serious discussion of running on ESPN or any other mainstream media outlet. Non-runners don't care. They can't fathom why runners run and they don't want to. The T-shirts that say " our sport is your sport's punishment" sums it up pretty succinctly. There is also a lack of interest because the sport is dominated at the moment by athletes from east Africa.

However runners do care and the amount of information on current events has never been greater or easier to access. I have tried to help by listing a number of the better running books that are still in print over on the right. If you click on the links it should take you right to the order screen. Also I have posted a number of links to web sites that collect news about running. The two best sites are Flocast and Lets Run.

Flocast posts daily video interviews with current runners and coaches that are incredible, you should book mark them. They also have an archive of famous races that is nothing short of stunning.

"Lets Run" is a pure news aggregator. They collect running news from all over the world and update the links and headlines daily. This is a fantastic resource. For example, they have a series of reports from the world championships being run in Japan this week. In particular there is an article about an Ethiopian girl (21) who won the 10,000m. She stopped half way and got a drink of water because of stomach cramps and then came back to win the race. She ran the last lap in 60 seconds. The link is here http://www.letsrun.com/2007/worlds/dibaba0825.php . You have to be a runner to truly appreciate how impossible that is which is why it's not on ESPN.

Finally, the local and national high school news is collected on Dyestat. There is a message board for Wisconsin runners that used to be pretty good. It has gotten pretty lame recently so I no longer recommend it except for results after major events like State.

Running is a great sport with a rich history... get reading.

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