running novels
Question:
I have read some novels about running but they are hard to find. Does anyone have any suggestions. I have read the Purple Runner and Boston Or Bust(?). Also do you know any authors that write about runners (mostly novel type books).
Response:
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – I have read some novels about running but they are hard to find. Does anyone have any suggestions. I have read the Purple Runner and Boston Or Bust(?). Also do you know any authors that write about runners (mostly novel type books).
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From – Sat Oct 26 18:08:00 1996
X-Mozilla-Status: 0801 X-Mozilla-News-Host: news2.ibm.net Organization: None. I am a Country Squire X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (Win16; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.running Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I have read some novels about running but they are hard to find. Does anyone have any suggestions. I have read the Purple Runner and Boston Or Bust(?). Also do you know any authors that write about runners (mostly novel type books).
Probably the best novel about running that I have read is <Once A Runner by John L. Parker Jr. Parker was a training partner of Frank Shorter’s and wrote a brief biography of Shorter for a Runner’s World booklet. Probably the second best is Patricia Nell Warren’s <The Front Runner. It has sold ten million copies. She once was publicity director for the New York Marathon and a marathoner herself. She wrote a column for Runner’s World called Women’s Wanderings back in the early 1970s. The book is about three gay runners who get thrown out of the University of Oregon. One is a World Class distance runner that is training for the 1976 Olumpics. If you have a "problem" with descriptions of explicit gay sexual acts, you might want to avoid a few pages of the book. The coach of the gay Olympian is also gay. Warren recently wrote another book, <Harlan’s Race. It is about the coach in <The Front Runner 20 years later. He by then is a serious masters (over 40 age-group runner.) This book still has some running, but deals mainly with gay life in the time of AIDS — which was unknown when <The Front Runner came out — so to speak — in 1974. There is some road running in the book. As in <The Front Runner, the running scenes are authentic — especially the road race scene in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park. There is a very good book on sprinting in the Wild-West — 100 to 150 years ago. It’s title is <The Fast Men. I do not remember the author’s name. In those days running was strictly a pro sport. The sprinters would travel from town to town, much like a pool huster in the big cities. They would do some sandbagging and set up a race with the local big gun. The townsfolk would come out and lay their money on the local hero. An elite runner back then aimed for "even time" — 100 yards in 10 seconds flat. Races were run down the dirt main drag of the frontier towns. That’s just about all the novels that are memorable to me. There are many biographies that read almost like novels. Roger Bannister’s <First Four Minutes. W.R. Loader’s <Testament of a Runner Herb Elliott’s <The Golden Mile — Herb set a 1,500 meter world record in an Olympic final. Bruce Tulloh’s <Four Million Footsteps He was a British Olympian who ran across the USA. <Best Efforts A collection of pieces on runners by Sports Illustrated’s Kenny Moore — who finished fourth in the Munich Olympics. Murray Halberg’s <A Clean Pair of Heels — another Olympian. <Ted Corbitt by John Chones. Corbitt was an ultra runner was represented the USA in the Olympic marathon. He once held the American record for 100 miles (13:33?) and 24 hours on the track. He set both records when close to age 50. Corbitt is an African American. Chones was a Broadway play writer who often acted as Corbitt’s second. —Al Hromjak
Response:
I have read some novels about running but they are hard to find. Does anyone have any suggestions. I have read the Purple Runner and Boston Or Bust(?). Also do you know any authors that write about runners (mostly novel type books).
Probably the best novel about running that I have read is <Once A Runner by John L. Parker Jr. Parker was a training partner of Frank Shorter’s and wrote a brief biography of Shorter for a Runner’s World booklet. Probably the second best is Patricia Nell Warren’s <The Front Runner. It has sold ten million copies. She once was publicity director for the New York Marathon and a marathoner herself. She wrote a column for Runner’s World called Women’s Wanderings back in the early 1970s. The book is about three gay runners who get thrown out of the University of Oregon. One is a World Class distance runner that is training for the 1976 Olumpics. If you have a "problem" with descriptions of explicit gay sexual acts, you might want to avoid a few pages of the book. The coach of the gay Olympian is also gay. Warren recently wrote another book, <Harlan’s Race. It is about the coach in <The Front Runner 20 years later. He by then is a serious masters (over 40 age-group runner.) This book still has some running, but deals mainly with gay life in the time of AIDS — which was unknown when <The Front Runner came out — so to speak — in 1974. There is some road running in the book. As in <The Front Runner, the running scenes are authentic — especially the road race scene in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park. There is a very good book on sprinting in the Wild-West — 100 to 150 years ago. It’s title is <The Fast Men. I do not remember the author’s name. In those days running was strictly a pro sport. The sprinters would travel from town to town, much like a pool huster in the big cities. They would do some sandbagging and set up a race with the local big gun. The townsfolk would come out and lay their money on the local hero. An elite runner back then aimed for "even time" — 100 yards in 10 seconds flat. Races were run down the dirt main drag of the frontier towns. That’s just about all the novels that are memorable to me. There are many biographies that read almost like novels. Roger Bannister’s <First Four Minutes. W.R. Loader’s <Testament of a Runner Herb Elliott’s <The Golden Mile — Herb set a 1,500 meter world record in an Olympic final. Bruce Tulloh’s <Four Million Footsteps He was a British Olympian who ran across the USA. <Best Efforts A collection of pieces on runners by Sports Illustrated’s Kenny Moore — who finished fourth in the Munich Olympics. Murray Halberg’s <A Clean Pair of Heels — another Olympian. <Ted Corbitt by John Chones. Corbitt was an ultra runner was represented the USA in the Olympic marathon. He once held the American record for 100 miles (13:33?) and 24 hours on the track. He set both records when close to age 50. Corbitt is an African American. Chones was a Broadway play writer who often acted as Corbitt’s second. —Al Hromjak
Response:
I have read some novels about running but they are hard to find. Does anyone have any suggestions. I have read the Purple Runner and Boston Or Bust(?). Also do you know any authors that write about runners (mostly novel type books).
The Purple Runner, which happens to be my personal favorite, is unfortunately out of print. It’s the story of four people and the London Marathon, written by Paul Christman. Long Road to Boston, written by Bruce Tuckman, is the story of one man’s struggle to rehabilitate himself after an accident and ultimately to run the Boston Marathon. It was out of print, but it’s now available again. The plot is "fanciful" to put it mildly but it’s very entertaining nonetheless. There are several novels about milers. John Parker’s Once A Runner is a perennial best-seller, and very enjoyable. The second, another "long-out-of- print" book just re-released, is The Other Kingdom, by Victor Price. It’s an Irish novel about a runner trying to break the four-minute barrier and the Irish national record as well. The Olympian, by Brian Glanville, is also about track, as is Patricia Nell-Warren’s The Front Runner. Not to be forgotten is the Runner’s Literary Companion, with excerpts from many of the above and many more (e.g., Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner), and the Quotable Runner. I can’t resist mentioning one more book, which is not a novel, but reads like one, and that’s Don Kardong’s delightful Hills, Hawgs, & Ho Chi Minh. It’s the story of his adventures running around the world, and, although every word (I suppose!) is true, it’s every bit as much a page-turner as any novel, and very funny as well. Need I say that all of the above are available online through The Athlete’s Bookstore <http://www.stevenscreek.com/books ? Steve Patt Stevens Creek Software/The Athlete’s Diary/The Athlete’s Bookstore
Response:
This is entirely off-subject, but try "Water Dancer" by Jennifer Levin. It’s about swimming, a very intense book.
Response:
try the runners literary companion
Response:
I have read some novels about running but they are hard to find. Does anyone have any suggestions. I have read the Purple Runner and Boston Or Bust(?). Also do you know any authors that write about runners (mostly novel type books).
A couple come to mind, both of which are also movies: Marathon Man is a thriller where the main figure is an amateur marathon runner caught up by accident in a life and death struggle. The dentist office theme will change your view of dental hygenists forever! "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" was a short story made into a movie. The movie script was a significant elaboration of the short story. It’s about a young man in a reform school in Britain and describes his struggle against an oppressive and alienating family and school life. Running becomes his way to seize back some sense of self, but then he discovers that the school headmaster hopes to ‘own’ the pride in his running. I’ve watched this film with non-runners and they don’t like it, but it’s one of my favorite. jd
Response:
Filed under: Loneliness
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