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Two Hours – by Ed Caesar – book review

Two Hours – by Ed Caesar – book review

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Though I’ve considered myself a runner for more or less my entire life, well before I broke out my running shoes, I buried my nose in books. In fact, as I think I’ve said elsewhere somewhere on this blog, I have distinct memories of being young (elementary school-aged), and when I’d put out my clothes for school each night, I’d also put out which bookS I was going to bring with me that day. Avid reader is an understatement.

Anyway, it probably comes as no surprise then that for as much as I love to run, I also enjoy reading about running. I recently came upon a new-to-me book, published in 2015 by first-time author Ed Caesar – Two Hours: the Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon. No one sent me this book; I’m not under any obligation to talk about its merits or demerits; I just simply like to talk about running … and books … and books about running.

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The thirty-second synopsis is this: it’s a book about the possibility of a human being – specifically, a male – being able to run 26.2 miles (a marathon) in under two hours (specifically, again, 1:59:59). If you’re not a marathoner and you don’t know how that math computes, allow me: that’s 4:34 minute miles for 26.2 miles.

That’s, really fucking fast.

Like really fucking fast.

More broadly speaking, Two Hours is about the limitations – self-imposed, psychological, physiological, biological, or hell, even socially – of humanity and our potential to overcome them. To say that running a marathon that effing quickly is an exercise in the serious pursuit of a serious unicorn, or an exercise in pushing the bounds of humans’ endurance, is a serious, if not offensive, understatement. This book explores the history of the modern-day marathon as we know it, following along a historical trajectory beginning at what we understand to be the birthplace of the marathon and culminating in modern-day, at the Berlin and NYC ’14 marathons.

Much of the book follows along the fella whom Caesar regards as a prime candidate to come close to that coveted 1:59:59, Kenyan Geoffrey Mutai, who has (among other accolades) the seriously impressive attribute of having run the world’s fastest marathon at Boston ’11 (2:03:02). The heartbreaking caveat here, of course, is that Boston is ineligible for record times (because of the course’s point-to-point setup and because of its net downhill), and to add insult to injury, Mutai also had what some consider an unfair advantage the day that he ran and won Boston – a tailwind for almost the entire 26.2 journey from Hopkinton to Boston.

Caesar expertly intertwines Mutai’s biography with the trajectory of the marathon and its contenders over the years. Included in the story of the marathon of course are other key players over the years – Haile Gebrselassie chief among them, as well as the late Sammy Wanjiru – and how they have influenced the sport and, either directly or indirectly, Mutai, himself. I love this type of writing because it doesn’t really matter if you’re a marathoner or hell, even a runner; it’s just fantastic, seamless, “human interest” type of writing that just so happens to be to the backdrop of marathoning.

Being that it is about running, after all, the book also spends a little bit of time exploring some physiological aspects inherent to running and why, exactly, these details matter – things like an athlete’s VO2 max, altitude-based training, and dietary differences. Even with this “scientific” information, which might immediately turn people off who aren’t in the sport, Caesar still writes about it in a way that makes understanding these aspects’ importance completely accessible to the average reader. In other words, fear not: you’re not reading a double-blind, peer reviewed, scientific journal article about the molecular biology of the world’s best marathoners. Yes, you’re reading about what forces interplay to make two-oh-three-ish guys (marathoners who complete the distance in about 2 hours and 3 minutes)on the biological level but – more than anything – on the societal levels. This key fact is what makes this book so compelling and interesting.

The elephant in the room (book?) here that Caesar didn’t even touch until chapter 8 (of 10) is everything surrounding doping that has engulfed the world of professional running. I can understand this, and at the same time, I don’t. It is horrible that so many professional runners have doped during some of the biggest matches of their lives – cheating themselves but more importantly, the clean athletes who should have won – and unfortunately, more often than not, these allegations don’t appear until years after competition. What really sucks is when an athlete’s country has been riddled with doping allegations and confirmations – as in the case of Kenya – because it implicates clean athletes, perhaps athletes like Mutai, who rightfully earned their wins. Caesar’s chapter on doping illuminates this point head-on as he details how Mutai has been accused over the years of doping – and especially once he became successful year after year at some of the World Marathon Majors.

As a reader, I was expecting Caesar to delve into the doping issues much earlier than he did because like many other running fans, I am unfortunately suspect of amazing, maybe-too-good-to-be-true winning times. Doping sucks for the athletes, no doubt, but it also sucks for fans because it’s no longer easy to just accept our athletes and their talents being the result of hard work and genetics. My point here is just to say that I was surprised that Caesar took as long as he did to talk about doping in the marathoning world, but at the same time, I don’t know if expounding upon the issue any earlier in the book would have made any difference. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, I guess.

Here’s the biggest takeaway about Two Hours. Yes, it’s a sports book; yes, it’s a book about marathoning; yes, it’s a book about how and when and if a human male, probably Kenyan or maybe Ethiopian, will ever have the biological, physiological, and psychological wherewithal to successfully race 26.2 miles in under two hours, but really, it’s a book about the human condition and experience and how we voluntarily challenge ourselves.

We, as a species, tend to think things are impossible to overcome – we simply can’t fathom it – until one day, we finally do.

The best example: for the longest time, it was impossible – against any sort of scientific or logical knowledge or spiritual feeling – that a male human could run a mile in under four minutes.

A sub-4 mile was impossible until one day, it wasn’t (props, Sir Roger Bannister). And once this suddenly became possible, we as a species started to do it … again. And again. And again.

So many of us, myself included, place self-imposed limitations on what we can do in our running or athletic capabilities (but also probably in other life pursuits, too), and in the process, we shortchange ourselves.

We write our story that says that we can’t do this or we can’t hit this pace, and for worse – not better – that’s what we believe; the story that we ascribe to ourselves is the story we subscribe to, day in and day out.

Though it may be mind-boggling to fathom a human male covering 26.2 miles in under two hours, we are doing ourselves a serious disservice to discount the possibility of it ever happening. It’s like believing that today’s professional marathoners are the fastest and best that they’ll ever be for the rest of time, that there will be no advances in training methodologies, technologies, or any other useful aspect to marathoning in the future that will allow humans to get faster.

We have to be kidding ourselves if we think that humanity is already in its finest and fastest hour.

In case it’s not totally evident, I really enjoyed reading Two Hours in the throes of my marathon training – my first postpartum and thus, my first in over a year – because it leaves me excited for both humanity’s potential performance at the distance and more personally speaking, my own. I have neither the desire nor the talent to ever try to run a sub-2 marathon, but hitting a sub-3 sometime in my life is definitely on my list of big, exciting, scary-ass goals (though I’ve got some work to do first!).

Two Hours is a fast read. Go pick it up, and tell me what you think.

Krissy Moehl’s Running Your First Ultra – book review

Krissy Moehl’s Running Your First Ultra – book review

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I’ve eventually learned that if I don’t record obligations in my calendar, it is highly likely that I will forget about them. Unfortunately, that was the case with helping to promote top female ultrarunner Krissy Moehl‘s new book, Running Your First Ultra, and her tour that landed her in the Bay Area a week ago. Though I wasn’t able to attend any of Krissy’s events, I wanted to still share my impressions of her book. (And yep, her people sent it to me for free – disclosing those sorts of details are good – but my thoughts are my own).

I immediately noticed that Krissy’s book is impressive, not just in the sundry details that comprise ultrarunning and appropriate training for an event that goes beyond 26.2 miles, but also in the book’s sheer aesthetics. It’s nearly 250 heavy pages – the type of book that stays open and is “hands free” (think recipe books) – and is replete with tons of charts, graphs, workbook-type of note-taking sections, and beautiful – beautiful – photographs of Krissy on her runs and races. It’s not exactly a coffee table-style of book about running, but dammit if it isn’t effortless to just turn page after page to look at all the pretty pictures and charts.

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Readers of my little corner of the internet know that my running is entrenched in the roads/marathon realm, but at the end of 2014, shortly before I got pregnant (and apparently thereafter as well), I trained for and ran my first trail 50k over in Woodside. It was awesome, I enjoyed the training and the racing and the whole ultra vibe, and when my kiddos are older, I’d love to return to the ultra distances. I followed the Relentless Forward Progress training for my 50k, read a ton of stuff from accomplished ultra runners online, and heeded much of the advice and wisdom from my friends who had run ultras. I preface my review of Krissy’s book with all this information simply to show that while I consider myself a decently experienced marathoner, my amateur expertise (that’s a thing, right?) doesn’t lie in the ultra world – though I have what I consider to be a solid working knowledge of the training, nutrition, and gearing aspects inherent to the sport.

Let me just say this: if you want to dabble in the quixotic world of ultras, Krissy’s book has your back. Aside from the fact that she’s got a 15 year career in the business, she also has run more than 100 races, has 55 F wins, 2 OA wins, and has run and record-broken at some of the world’s most grueling ultras (think HURT 100, Hardrock 100, and more). When I taught writing, rhetoric, and discourse, we often talked about authorial ethos, the credibility (or lack thereof) that a writer/rhetor brings to a piece of writing. When writers don’t know what they’re talking about – when they are lacking in credibility – it undermines everything they say in their writing; they leave their readers questioning at best, challenging at worst, every argument they put forth. On the flip side, when writers actually know their subject matter, it’s evident. Mini WRD lesson over … Suffice it to say that Krissy has imbued her book with page after page of authorial ethos. She knows her stuff.

Running Your First Ultra has the typical stuff in many books about ultrarunning – info related to training plans (including week-by-week plans), injury prevention, mental training, race day prep – but also specialized information related to being a female ultrarunner. This is really the only area of the book where I think readers could benefit from some elaboration or clarification. Being that Krissy is a) a woman and b) devoted an entire chapter, albeit a short one, to women running ultras, she talks about the implications of (ultra) running through pregnancy. She makes it clear that her judgement isn’t coming from personal experience and instead, just from observations of and conversations with other female ultra runners. Krissy discourages women from running ultras while pregnant for all the obvious reasons – imploring readers to consult with their practitioners to develop a safe running plan while pregnant to maintain fitness – and reminds pregnant runners to continuously listen to the feedback their pregnant bodies give them. I totally agree with everything she says in this section.

Where she loses me a bit though is when she gives pregnant runners the tip to exercise at a conversational pace (right on, totally agree) and/or with a heart rate monitor (oh no) and try to keep the HR below 150 (no no no), noting that of course, this HR number will depend on the pregnant woman’s fitness level in the first place. Though she obviously hedged her recommendation with the “keep it conversational” and “your HR will depend on your fitness” pieces, I think she would have done a greater service to her readers to not include the HR number, simply because runners often are very detail-driven and fixate on numbers; I’m sure all of us know or can identify with trying to exactly hit our metrics and not go an inch above or below them. She says 150, so I bet there are runners out there who will strive for exactly 150.

I’m not faulting Krissy here – again, she says up front that this is coming from observations and conversations, not from her personal experiences – but I’m surprised that more people don’t know that HR-based training during pregnancy went out the window some time ago. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) is pretty explicit in their recommendations of using a 15-point perceived effort scale to guide a woman’s training while pregnant – not heart rate – and detail their opinion here. Regardless, the faulty HR recommendation isn’t enough for me to lose interest or discredit this otherwise descriptive and thorough book – a manual, even – for how to plan for, train, and run your first 50k to 100 miler.

Rambling aside, I enjoyed reading through Running Your First Ultra and would recommend it to anyone considering venturing down the rabbit hole that is ultra running. If you’re not in that camp (yet … wink) and know someone who is, I think this book would make an excellent gift, too. Fair warning though: if you’re on the fence about making the jump to the ultra world, this book will probably seal the deal… and then you can come back and tell me all about how awesome your first ultra was.