Ipeaked: A Reluctant Runner's World is about my 30+ years and over 30,000 miles of running. It's not your typical runner's book since my passion is more about quality of life than running. I am truly a reluctant runner who embraces and enjoys the benefits of the world of running rather than the act. So if you're starting to run or are a seasoned runner or bicyclist: meet my guardian angels, race and train with me, share my life with family and friends, and learn a few things about running (run walk method, paying forward, training schedule, how not to run a marathon and more), cross training (biking and swimming), first triathlon, beginning road biking, and runner gift suggestions. I have mastered the balance of being competitive while adhering to a ?don't hurt yourself? training regimen. It seems to have worked since I'm still at college weight, my butt hasn't fallen off yet, and most of my family and friends are still talking to me.

'Run Therapy: A Bitter Sweet Guide to Running, Evolution and Ice Cream' is a short, personal parody of the 'zen and the art of.....' genre that doesn't quite succeed in not taking itself seriously. It's a tonic for all those who had hoped to get more out of running than they did. It wanders about, not entirely aimlessly, along one ordinary person's journey on foot through the lessons of history, evolution, quantum mechanics and ice cream. At times humorous, at others poetic, this small book tackles the big questions, and offers hope, encouragement and reasons to persevere with that seemingly indefensible folly: running. At the end, there is not just guiltless ice cream, but redemption, salvation and an invitation to some of life's greatest adventures.

"We are different, in essence, from other men. If you want to enjoy something, run 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon." --Emil Zatopek For a decade after the Second World War, Emil Zatopek--"the Czech locomotive"--redefined the sport of distance running, pushing back the frontiers of what was considered possible. He won five Olympic medals, set eighteen world records, and went undefeated in the 10,000-metre race for six years. His dominance has never been equaled. In the darkest days of the Cold War, he stood for a spirit of generous friendship that transcended nationality and politics. Zatopek was an energetic supporter of the Prague Spring in 1968, championing "socialism with a human face" in Czechoslovakia. But for this he paid a high price. After the uprising was crushed by Soviet tanks, the hardline Communists had their revenge. Zatopek was expelled from the army, stripped of his role in national sport, and condemned to years of hard and degrading manual labor. Based on extensive research in the Czech Republic, interviews with people across the world who knew him, and unprecedented cooperation from his widow, fellow Olympian Dana Zatopkova, journalist Richard Askwith's book breathes new life into the man and the myth, uncovering a glorious age of athletics and an epoch-defining time in world history.