The Art of Running Faster: Improve technique, training, and performance by Julian Goater and Don Melvin
‘Don’t practice plodding,’ the key takeaway from The Art of Running Faster. And running is an art – just watch Paula Radcliffe or Mo Farah at their best if you haven’t already.
The Fat Girls’ Guide to Marathon Running by Julie Creffield
Ah, the excitement of marathons. It’s hard not to get caught up. If you’ve ever had that crazy thought ‘I want to run a marathon’ but feel too fat, too old, too unfit, or indeed have naysayers in your life laughing at you for the mere mention of it, the Fat Girls’ Guide to Marathon Running is for you. Or indeed, if you’ve had someone say, ‘You’ll never run a marathon’, this book is for you.
Footnotes: How running makes us human by Vybarr Cregan-Reid
Have you ever looked at a landscape painting or photo and wondered what it would be like to run through it? The crunch of leaves and gravel underfoot, the smell, the birdsong, the feel of the air on your skin? … Running has changed me and changed how I see the world.
Running Free: A runner’s journey back to nature by Richard Askwith
You know you’re a runner when you wonder what non-runners dream about. Running Free is about freedom and liberation from the commercialisation of the sport we love so much. Askwith’s writing is a thing of beauty, his passion for the sport evident from the first page…
Running like a girl by Alexandra Heminsley 
For the uninitiated, running can be a bit of a mystery, all that lycra and those sports stores. Why would anyone want to run a marathon, or even a 5k? As the author points out, running can really suck….
Running with the pack by Mark Rowlands
Mark Rowlands has been a runner for most of his life and is a professional philosopher. For him, the two – running and philosophy – are intimately linked. At the heart of Running with the pack, he is seeking to answer the question: why do we run?
Two Hours: The quest to run the impossible marathon by Ed Caesar
The world record for the marathon stands at 2:02:57. It was set in Berlin in 2014 by Kenyan runner, Dennis Kimetto, and it was the first time a marathon was run in under 2:03:00. While this might not mean much to non-runners, it’s an extraordinary achievement. Now the race is on for the first runner to beat 2:00:00. To read Two Hours comes at a fascinating juncture with the fanfare and secrecy around Nike’s Breaking2, the Sub2 Project, and Adidas also being part of the race. But will we ever see a sub-2?