Athletic contests in running, walking, jumping and throwing are among the oldest of all sports and their roots are prehistoric. Athletics events were depicted in the Ancient Egyptian tombs in Saqqara, with illustrations of running at the Heb Sed festival and high jumping appearing in tombs from as early as 2250 BC. The original and only event at the first Olympics in 776 BC was the stadion, a stadium-length running event. The turn of the century was a time of renewed interest in the sport, with the foundation of the Amateur Athletics Association in 1880, the first modern Summer Olympics in 1896 and the International Amateur Athletics Federation in 1912. In this classic guide, Montague Shearman traces the evolution of athletics and shares his expertise in training and discipline.

In Games Colleges Play John Thelin chronicles the history of intercollegiate athletics from 1910 to 1990 from the early, glory days of Knute Rockne and the "Gipper" to the modern era of big budgets, powerful coaches, and pampered players. He describes how "extracurricular" sports programs seldom accorded equal prominence with teaching and research in mission statements or annual reports have become central to the life of many universities. As administrators search for a proper balance between athletics and academics, Thelin observes, this "peculiar institution" in American higher education grows increasingly powerful and controversial. Looking past the playing fields and lavish facilities into board rooms and administrative suites, Thelin finds disturbing patterns of abuse and limited reform and explores the implications of these patterns for today's college presidents, faculty, and students. He examines the 1929 Carnegie Foundation Report, the formation of major athletic conferences, the national college basketball scandals after World War II, the dissolution of the Pacific Coast Conference in the 1950s, and the Knight Foundation Report of 1991. Games Colleges Play provides historical background that will inform current policy discussions about the proper place of intercollegiate athletics within the American university. "Intercollegiate athletics has been a perennial source of opportunity and temptation", concludes Thelin, "as the American campus has worked and re-worked its relations with American culture".

In the summer of 1912 Hopi runner Louis Tewanima won silver in the 10,000-meter race at the Stockholm Olympics. In that same year Tewanima and another champion Hopi runner, Philip Zeyouma, were soundly defeated by two Hopi elders in a race hosted by members of the tribe. Long before Hopis won trophy cups or received acclaim in American newspapers, Hopi clan runners competed against each other on and below their mesas-and when they won footraces, they received rain. Hopi Runners provides a window into this venerable tradition at a time of great consequence for Hopi culture. The book places Hopi long-distance runners within the larger context of American sport and identity from the early 1880s to the 1930s, a time when Hopis competed simultaneously for their tribal communities, Indian schools, city athletic clubs, the nation, and themselves. Author Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert brings a Hopi perspective to this history. His book calls attention to Hopi philosophies of running that connected the runners to their villages; at the same time it explores the internal and external forces that strengthened and strained these cultural ties when Hopis competed in US marathons. Between 1908 and 1936 Hopi marathon runners such as Tewanima, Zeyouma, Franklin Suhu, and Harry Chaca navigated among tribal dynamics, school loyalties, and a country that closely associated sport with US nationalism. The cultural identity of these runners, Sakiestewa Gilbert contends, challenged white American perceptions of modernity, and did so in a way that had national and international dimensions. This broad perspective linked Hopi runners to athletes from around the world-including runners from Japan, Ireland, and Mexico-and thus, Hopi Runners suggests, caused non-Natives to reevaluate their understandings of sport, nationhood, and the cultures of American Indian people.

A memoir of addiction, body image, and healing, through the lens of a long-distance runner. Emily Pifer's debut memoir, The Running Body, wrestles and reckons with power and agency, language and story, body dysphoria and beauty standards, desire and addiction, loss and healing. Pifer employs multiple modes of storytelling-memoir, meditation, and cultural analysis-interweaving research, argument, and experience as she describes how, during her time as a collegiate distance runner, she began to run more while eating less. Many around her, including her coaches, praised her for these practices. But as she became faster, and as her body began to resemble the bodies that she had seen across start-lines and on the covers of running magazines, her bones began to fracture. Pifer tells her story alongside the stories of her teammates, competitors, and others as they all face trouble regarding their bodies. Through the lens of long-distance running, Pifer examines the effects of idolization and obsession, revealing the porous boundaries between what counts as success and what is considered failure. While grounded in truth, The Running Body interrogates its relationship to magical thinking, the stories we tell ourselves, and the faultiness of memory. Fractures, figurative and literal, run through the narrative as Pifer explores the ways bodies become entangled in stories. The Running Body was selected by Steve Almond as the winner of the 2021 Autumn House Nonfiction Prize.

Any runner can tell you that the sport isn't just about churning out miles day in and day out. Runners have a passion, dedication, and desire to go faster, longer, and farther. Now, "The Art of Running Faster" provides you with a new approach to running, achieving your goals and setting your personal best.

Whether you're old or young, new to the sport or an experienced marathoner, this guide will change how you run and the results you achieve. "The Art of Running Faster" challenges the stereotypes, removes the doubts and erases the self-imposed limitations by prescribing not only what to do but also how to do it. Inside, you will learn how to

-overcome the obstacles that prevent you from running faster, more comfortably, and with greater focus;

-rethink conventional training methods, listen to your body, and challenge traditional running 'norms';

-customize your training program to emphasize the development of speed, strength, and stamina;

-shift gears, reach that next level of performance, and blow past the competition.

In this one-of-a-kind guide, former world-class runner Julian Goater shares his experiences, insights and advice for better, more efficient and faster running.

Much more than training tips and motivational stories, "The Art of Running Faster" is your guide to improved technique and optimal performance. Let Julian Goater show you a new way to run faster, farther and longer.

The RunnersWorld.com article "How to Make Yourself Poop," was one of the most popular web pieces on the site with more than 5M page views too date. Inspired by the article's success, this book is a fun, humorous reference guide for runners written by the magazine's senior editor Meghan Kita. In contrast to more serious advice on running, the tone is lighthearted and ideal for quick reference for runners on-the-go, with quirky design and illustrations that make it a perfect gift for runners of all levels. Sections of reliable facts are delivered with humour and clarity and include different hacks, such as 'The 2 Best Ways to Lace Your Shoes" and, of course, "3 Ways to Make Yourself Poop" (one tip: warm up near a toilet - the motion can help bring on a bowel movement). The hacks will cover the full spectrum of runners' needs, including training, nutrition, gear, motivation, recovery, injury prevention, and racing.

If you are a triathlete, coach, or someone interested in participating in an upcoming triathlon, Sport Psychology Library: Triathlon holds many answers to establishing and maintaining the mental discipline needed for what is certainly one of the most grueling and psychologically challenging events in all of sport. Guided by the expertise of Dr. Joe Baker and Dr. Whitney Sedgwick-both experienced, successful athletes and triathlon competitors - Sport Psychology Library: Triathlon summarizes current research and offers invaluable mental exercises to improve mental performance during triathlon training and competition.

RUN WITH POWER is the groundbreaking guide you need to tap the true potential of your running power meter. From 5K to ultramarathon, a power meter can make you faster-but only if you know how to use it. Just viewing your numbers is not enough; you can only become a faster, stronger, more efficient runner when you know what your key numbers mean for your workouts, races, and your season-long training. In Run with Power, TrainingBible coach Jim Vance offers the comprehensive guide you need to find the speed you want. Run with Power demystifies the data and vocabulary so you can find and understand your most important numbers. You'll set your Running Power Zones so you can begin training using 8 power-based training plans for 5K, 10K, half-marathon, and marathon. Vance shows you how you can compare wattage, heart rate, pace, and perceived exertion to gain the maximum insight into your performances, how you respond to training, and how you can train more effectively. Run with Power will revolutionize how you train and race. Armed with Vance's guidance, you can train more specifically for races, smooth your running technique, accurately measure your fitness, predict a fitness plateau, monitor injuries, know exactly how hard you're training, get more fitness from every workout, recover fully, perfect your tapers, warm up without wasting energy, pace your race on any terrain, know when to open the throttle, and create an unprecedented picture of yourself as an athlete. If you're just glancing at the number on your wrist or computer monitor, you've got a lot more speed potential. Knowledge is power and understanding your power numbers can open the gate to new methods and new PRs. Run with Power introduces the use of power meters to the sport of running and will show you how to break through to all-new levels of performance. Key concepts explored in Run with Power: 3/9 Test, 30-minute Time Trial Test, Running Functional Threshold Power (rFTPw), Running Functional Threshold Pace (rFTPa), Averaged and Normalized Power (NP), Intensity Factor (IF), Peak Power, Variability Index, Efficiency Index (EI), speed per watt, Vance's Power Zones for Running, Training Stress Score (TSS), and Periodization with Power. Includes 6 testing methods and 8 power-based training schedules and workouts for 5K, 10K, half-marathon, and marathon.

Tony Robinson-Smith could hardly imagine that he, his wife, ten Bhutanese college students, and a stray dog would end up running 578 kilometres (360 miles) across the Himalayas. In early 2006, he arrived in the Kingdom of Bhutan to work as a university lecturer. A casual conversation with his wife led to the creation of the "Tara-thon," a sponsored run to send village kids to school for Tarayana, the Queen Mother's non-profit foundation. In Bhutan-the country that originated the concept of Gross National Happiness-Robinson-Smith discovered he had much to learn. His memoir portrays Bhutan and its people in rich detail at a transformative moment of the Kingdom's history. Touching and insightful, The Dragon Run is the perfect book for inveterate explorers, adventure sports enthusiasts, and armchair travellers alike.

Racing Weight is a proven weight-management program designed specifically for endurance athletes. Revealing new research and drawing from the best practices of elite athletes, coach and nutritionist Matt Fitzgerald lays out six easy steps to help cyclists, triathletes, and runners lose weight without harming their training. This comprehensive and science-based program shows athletes the best ways to lose weight and avoid the common lifestyle and training hang-ups that keep new PRs out of reach. The updated Racing Weight program helps athletes: Improve diet qualityManage appetiteBalance energy sourcesEasily monitor weight and performanceTime nutrition throughout the dayTrain to get-and stay-lean Racing Weight offers practical tools to make weight management easy. Fitzgerald's no-nonsense Diet Quality Score improves diet without counting calories. Racing Weight superfoods are diet foods high in the nutrients athletes need for training. Supplemental strength training workouts can accelerate changes in body composition. Daily food diaries from 18 pro athletes reveal how the elites maintain an athletic diet while managing appetite. Athletes know that every extra pound wastes energy and hurts performance. With Racing Weight, cyclists, triathletes, and runners have a simple program and practical tools to hit their target numbers on both the race course and the scale.

The greatest athletes in the world today are not the Olympic champions or the stars of professional sports, but the "marathon monks" of Japan's sacred Mount Hiei. Over a seven-year training period, these "running buddhas" figuratively circle the globe on foot. During one incredible 100-day stretch, they cover 52.5 miles daily-twice the length of an Olympic marathon. And the prize they seek to capture is the greatest thing a human being can achieve: enlightenment in the here and now.

This book is about these amazing men, the magic mountain on which they train, and the philosophy of Tendai Buddhism, which inspires them in their quest for the supreme. The reader will learn about the monks' death-defying fasts, their vegetarian training diet, their handmade straw running shoes, and feats of endurance such as their ceremonial leap into a waterfall. Illustrated with superb photographs, the book also contains the first full-length study in English of Mount Hiei and Tendai Buddhism.

John Stevens lived in Japan for thirty-five years, where he was a professor of Buddhist studies at Tohoku Fukushi University in Sendai. Stevens is a widely respected translator, an ordained Buddhist priest, a curator of several major exhibitions of Zen art, and an aikido instructor. He has authored more than thirty books and is one of the foremost Western experts on aikido, holding a ranking of 7th dan Aikikai. Stevens has also studied calligraphy for decades, authoring the classic "Sacred Calligraphy of the East." Other John Stevens titles that are likely to be of interest include "Extraordinary Zen Masters" and "The Philosophy of Aikido."

Rachel Toor was a bookish egghead who ran only to catch a bus. How such an unlikely athlete became a runner of ultramarathons is the story of Personal Record, an exhilarating meditation on the making, and the minutiae, of a runner’s life. The food, the clothes, the races, the injuries, the watch (and Toor loves her watch) are all essential to the runner, as readers discover here, and discover why.              A chronicle of Toor’s relationship with the sport of running, from her early incarnation as an Oreo-eating couch potato to her emergence as a hard-bodied marathoner, this book explores the sport of running, the community it brings into being, and the personal satisfaction of pursuing it to its limit. Alternating with Toor’s account of becoming a runner are the stories—meditations, examinations, celebrations—of how runners become a pack. An homage to running, a literary take on how an activity can turn into a passion, and how a passion can become a way of life, this book runs all the way from individual achievement—a personal record—to the world of friendship and belonging, the community that runners inevitably find.

The training diary that gives you that extra push to hit your stride.

This new, spiral-bound journal is just the ticket to help runners track and monitor their training progres. It features a 52-week calendar that you can customize to your own schedule and needs, plus expert advice on many health-related issues.

Eric Liddell was the British athlete who gave up his chance of an Olympic gold medal in 1924 because he would not run on a Sunday. He then riveted the world by unexpectedly winning gold in a different race altogether.

Back home he abandoned fame and sporting glory to become a missionary in China, where he braved the frontline perils of one of the world's ugliest wars and died in Japanese internment. He inspired the Oscar-winning movie Chariots of Fire and is still revered in China today.

In this revised and updated edition of her best-selling biography, journalist Sally Magnusson asks: 'What are we to make of a life that comprehended both drive and serenity, will to achieve and the grace to give in, absolute principles and utter humanity, charisma and ordinariness?'

In pursuit of the answer, she uncovers a story which has everything: sport, war, romance and faith.

After World War II, the United States used international sport to promote democratic values and its image of an ideal citizen. But African American women excelling in track and field upset such notions. Cat M. Ariail examines how athletes such as Alice Coachman, Mae Faggs, and Wilma Rudolph forced American sport cultures—both white and Black—to reckon with the athleticism of African American women. Marginalized still further in a low-profile sport, young Black women nonetheless bypassed barriers to represent their country. Their athletic success soon threatened postwar America's dominant ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and national identity. As Ariail shows, the wider culture defused these radical challenges by locking the athletes within roles that stressed conservative forms of femininity, blackness, and citizenship. A rare exploration of African American women athletes and national identity, Passing the Baton reveals young Black women as active agents in the remaking of what it means to be American.