Running Reading

I was a bit surprised - horrified even - to see in the papers (plural) this morning that Catherine O had never heard of Lillian Board and had barely heard of Eric Liddell. After all she had been quoted in 'Athletics Weekly' as saying that she read a lot about her event! I know that any distance runner or track athlete of merit that I ever knew, read about the history of their event and tried to learn from it. Cyril O'Boyle and myself used to argue and discuss the contents of 'AW' and 'Runners World' on a regular basis and when I ran with a very good young (ie U17) runner in the 1980's we read and talked about the latest books on the subject. Biographies by Brendan Foster, Gordon Pirie, Steve Cram, Steve Ovett, Jim Ryun, Jack Foster, Emil Zatopek and many others were grist to the mill. We now have books by Bill Adcocks, Jim Alder and Ron Hill available. If you don't want to buy the stuff, borrow it or go to the Library!

If we try to work everything out in our own wee heads we will seldom improve and even then not by much. We should be better than our predecessors because we are standing on their shoulders and can see much further! What have you read recently about your event? Who is your hero from the past?