In
the pursuit of speed and endurance we often subscribe to running magazines or
peruse training manuals. For inspiration, we can turn to the many available
books on popular races or exceptional athletes. However, for running junkies
like myself, who get their motivational fix from fiction, quality running
novels – actually, any running novels – can be hard to find.
With
the demands on everyone’s schedules, time to read can be as elusive as the
running novels themselves. So, before wasting time reading bad books, we should
examine how the available titles stack up as competitors.
THE FRONT RUNNERS
Recognizable marquee names include John
Parker's Once a Runner, Dan
Middleman’s Pain, Brian Glanville's The Olympian, Bruce Tuckman's Long Road to Boston, and the dark horse
entry – Loneliness of the Long Distance
Runner by Alan Siltoe.
The story of college miler Quenton Cassidy,
Once a Runner is considered the
preeminent running novel. The writing is eloquent, presenting deep insight such
as, “…running to him was real…the way he did it, the realest thing he knew. It
was all joy and woe, hard as a diamond; it made him weary beyond comprehension.
But it also made him free.” The reputation of Once a Runner has been established through word of mouth. Battered
copies are often handed from runner to runner to runner, which does little for
the author's royalty statements, but testifies to the power of his creation.
The one area Once a Runner glosses over is the head-banging edge of modern
college life. This experience is better served in the lesser known Pain, written by 10,000 meter and
Olympic athlete Dan Middleman. Pain
covers much of the same ground as Parker’s book, but in a much more irreverent,
R-rated, and finally darker manner – a portrayal possibly closer to the truth
for many collegiate athletes.
Also insightful, but characteristically
snobbish in its approach, Brian Glandville’s The Olympian is a solid race entry. Glanville's highbrow writing, more
often connected with the soccer world, takes us into the world of British
athletics as long shot Ike Low prepares for the Olympic marathon.
First published in 1969, the novel is a
Faustian tale filled with brutal training techniques and the type of tortuous
race expected as the finale of a running novel. The greatest strength of The Olympian, however, is its dissection
of the relationship between Ike Low and his coach, Sam Dee. As with its Big Race finish, The Olympian’s runner/coach
relationship provides an often copied template seen even in films such as Chariots of Fire.
Another long shot marathoner is the focus
of Bruce Tuckman’s Long Road to Boston. Locating
a copy of this novel is the bibliophile's version of Heartbreak Hill, but it is
certainly worthwhile. Tuckman's love of running imbues his writing with the
same sense of physical effort and interior mysticism found in Once a Runner.
Tuckman’s main character, Bradley Townes,
is a former Olympic caliber swimmer trying to mentally obliterate a major life
disaster. He is a driven mass of guilt and grief, and is using his obsession to
run Boston as a form of exorcism (having
run Boston myself, I know this obsession well). The transformation Townes is seeking, however, demands he not
only run, but also win (which certainly
didn’t happen in my case – and to be clear, not even close). Told in
alternating scenes of the race and flashbacks, Tuckman intertwines real runners
into the story, adding a certain reality missing from many other running tales.
While the focus on the physical demands of
a runner’s exterior life can be fascinating, it is a runner's interior life
where the more interesting drama often takes place. This internal battle – the
mental war with self – is notoriously hard to capture, but in Alan Siltoe's
seminal Loneliness of the Long Distance
Runner it is portrayed with incredible skill.
Sent to an inhumane English reformatory for
committing a burglary, the novel’s main character, Smith, is an extraordinary
runner with major anti-social behavior patterns. The novel's final haunting,
futile, and infuriating scenes leave the strongest impression of any writing in
running fiction. Once read, Loneliness of
the Long Distance Runner is never forgotten. Instead, it lingers in the
subconscious, your inner Smith waiting to emerge whenever the stresses of life
gang up on you.
THE CHALLENGERS
The second tier of running novels consists
of some good efforts. Best known as a consultant on the film Chariots of Fire and a coach of the
British Olympic team, Tom McNab’s first novel Flanagan’s Run is a sprawling epic of heroic proportions. Set in
the 1930’s, and based on an actual 1929 Trans-America footrace, Flanagan’s Run follows a diverse group
of runners as they suffer the physical and mental anguish of the ordeal – 3,000
miles for $30,000, fifty miles a day…day after day after day.
Flanagan, a P.T. Barnum-like character, is
the unflappable promoter of the race who has as much to win or lose as any of
the competitors. While McNab gets the running aspects exactly right, Flanagan’s Run misses the first tier of
running novels as soap opera elements dominate major parts of the book. Lively
and readable, Flanagan’s Run, is the
most commercially successful running novel, reaching a mainstream audience with
its blockbuster appeal.
More focused on running, but lacking the
depth of Flanagan’s Run, Mark Kram’s Miles to Go follows three international
runners as they prepare to set a record shattering pace in the 1983 Boston
Marathon. The runners, American, Japanese, and East German, share a history of
animosity driving them to huge physical and personal sacrifices.
Like many running novels, Miles to Go leads up to the Big Race. The training sequences along
the way are mildly interesting, and the interplay among the runners well
designed. But while the action in the Big
Race is the best written sequence, the thought of runners in 1983 breaking
the two hour marathon barrier – especially in Boston – is enough the blow apart
a knowledgeable reader’s suspension of disbelief.
The marathon is again the focus in Huge
Atkinson’s The Games. Another
blockbuster-style novel with all the associated pitfalls. The Games is again the story of three runners (this seems to be the
magic number) preparing to do battle in a marathon, this time at the Spain (!)
Olympics. Scott Reynolds is the American running at the risk of his own life. Sunny
Pintubi is an Australian aborigine with the gift of speed, but a naïve target
for ruthless promoters. Harry Hayes is a quite English runner torn between
loyalty and love.
Yes, all the clichés are here mixed
together in a readable recipe borrowed from the many other running novels that
established the clichés. Not a bad book, but nothing exceptional to break it
away from the pack.
THE SPRINTERS
While marathoners and milers get the most
attention in running fiction, there have been several forays into the drama of
the sprint.
Not quite up to the standard of his first
novel Flanagan’s Run, Fast Men by Tom McNab is notable for
creating a new fiction genre – the sports western. In the 19th century
West, fleet-footed con-men Billy Joe Speed (creator of the kangaroo start) and
Buck Miller (proponent of the English Method of training – purging, sweating,
and a diet of beef and ale) make their way from Kansas City to Mexico establishing
their reputation for speed – not with their guns, but with their feet. The duo
take on local champions in feats of pedestrianism.
They never cheat at racing, but they aren’t above hiding their true identities
from opposing bettors and runners.
With coverage of a world-record sprint in
England, a climatic men-and-horses competition in 1878 Arizona, and its focus
on running’s physical and psychological warfare, Fast Men is the most unusual of running novels – Chariots of Fire meets The Sting via Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
In a more traditional vein, Split Seconds - Tales of the Cinder Track
by Jackson Scholz is a collection of sprinting stories loosely connected by the
character of a wise, but unnamed track coach at a mid-western university. Published
in 1927, the stories are timeless in their positive portrayals of running and
sportsmanship.
An Olympic gold medalist in Paris in 1924
(captured peripherally in Chariots of
Fire), Scholz is the only sprinter in history to compete in the final events
of three consecutive Olympics (1920, 1924, and 1928). He raced all over the
world before turning to sports writing for a major metropolitan daily. He wrote
over three hundred short stories for the sports pulps of the 30’s and 40’s,
many of them about track. Of his over thirty young adult sports novels, Split Seconds is the only track title
among the football and baseball stories that were his specialty.
Split Seconds
begins with the story of the Winning Bug,
which has been anthologized more often than any other track story. However, The Booby Squad, in which a young
sportsman trains the general physical education class to take on the varsity
track team, is actually much more fun and inspiring.
THE CHEATERS
Unlike many other sports, running presents
limited clever opportunities to use cheating as fictional fodder. There are two
novels, however, which use the dark side of performance enhancing in a
satisfying fashion.
When Golden
Girl was written in 1977 by Peter Lovesy (under his pseudonym Peter Lear),
its use of human growth hormones to help create and package an American Olympic
superwoman was ahead of the curve. At the time, HGH was not a banned substance,
and athletes were not tested for usage despite its dangerous side effects. The
book, was ultimately derailed by the American boycott of the Moscow Olympics in
1980, the setting for the story. The boycott also killed the feature film, best
remembered for Susan Anton as the classic Golden
Girl, dooming it to occasional appearances on late night television.
Prophetic in tone and consequence, Golden Girl has recently been reissued
with a short, but insightful introduction by the author. Read with hindsight,
the novel’s cautionary tale is outdated, yet still remains an intriguing slice
of running science fiction.
Another novel centers on a questionable
performance enhancing system possibly still in current use. Runner’s Blood by James J. Fischer is a
fascinating expose of the lengths athletes, coaches, and countries are willing
to go to ensure victory. A serious recreational runner and cyclist, Fischer
based his plot on discoveries made in his own laboratory while researching
cancer cures. Produced by a very small publisher, the book needed an editor
with a sharp blue pencil who could have cut the manuscript by a third to keep
the story moving. Despite this flaw, the science in Runner’s Blood has the ring of reality provided by the author’s
expert background. This authority makes up for the slow pace, which turns the
story from a middle distance read into a marathon.
Golden Girl and Runner’s Blood both bring a unique layer
of depth to their storyline. For a change these novels go beyond the Big Race finish of most running fiction.
As such, they deserve a readership.
THE RELATIVE NEWCOMERS
Then there are four relative newcomers to
keep the field on its toes.
Sharp writing and real insight give Life at These Speeds by Jeremy Jackson a
definite edge on the competition. Star 800 meter runner and golden boy Kevin
Shuler rides home with his parents after a local track meet. Following behind
on the team bus, his entire track team is wiped out in a traffic accident. Numb
with loss, Kevin suddenly changes from running star to running phenom as his
single minded obsession with being perfect threatens to destroy him. A
knock-your-socks-off book as much about the quest to be a runner as it is about
the cost of being human.
For something completely different try
Geoff Wightman’s Sports Armageddon. Carrying
review quotes from running stars Paula Radcliffe and Sebastian Coe, Sports Armageddon is a timely look at
running crossed with the hype of reality television. This tale of a junk sport
endurance event gone very bad requires participants to swim Lake Okeechobee in
Central Florida, then cycle around the state before running from Jacksonville
to Atlanta. It is a harrowing page turner of murderous competitors and
television ratings driven by the constant threat of death.
Robert Kellogg’s Murder on the Run is a lighthearted look at a group of Hash House
Harriers involved with exotic poisons and murder and bizarre sex. The portrayal
of the harriers and their antics is affectionate and funny, making you wish the
murder plot had been left on the editor’s desk.
Robert Douglas Spetta gives us another
outsider in High Tide, Low Moon Running.
Against the backdrop of the Big Race,
the story of the main character’s life unfolds in flashbacks as he seeks new
direction through training and running marathons. A first novel with the usual
flaws, High Tide, Low Moon Running
does hold the promise of the writer running a better novel length race in the
future
RUNNING FICTION’S CURIOSITIES
In every major race there are always a few runners dressed up in silly costumes to
support political agendas, university japes, or to boost their flagging egos
with momentary attention. Running fiction also has its share of these flashy
curiosities.
The Marathon Murder, by once
renowned paperback hack James Moffatt, began when he was challenged, on a late
night English television show in 1972, to back up the claim he could write a
book in a week. The talk show provided the opening line for the novel, and
Moffatt wrote the first paragraph on live TV. Seven days later, he delivered
the manuscript to the publishers. In another two weeks, the novel was selling
briskly over British bookshop counters. While the story hook is serviceable,
the slim volume suffers from Moffatt’s lack of knowledge regarding training,
racing, marathons, and any other aspect of running. Moffatt completed his task
of producing a book in a week. The challenge, however, should have been to
produce a good book in a week.
While The
Marathon Murder is a passing curiosity at best, The Truth About Wilson is the most unique curiosity in running
fiction. It features the first superhero track star, and while totally
unbelievable, its sense of tongue-in-cheek fun makes it an outstanding addition
to running fiction.

A slight, wiry figure in an old fashioned,
black running costume that would be very stylish today, Wilson appeared out of
nowhere to run races, participate in track events, and generally defend the
standards of the British Empire against all-comers. At the end of whatever
record crushing track event he completed, Wilson would virtually collapse
before slinking off to again rejuvenate himself secretly on the vast English
moors.

From the 40’s through the 70’s, British
comics Rover and Victor also carried stories about a track star. Alf Tupper – The Tough of the Track was
not a super hero like Wilson. Instead, Tupper was a poverty level working lad
who ate fish and chips and could run the legs off of any toffee-nosed opponent
from the privileged class.
Similarly to Wilson, Alf’s adventures were
first serialized short stories before transforming to illustrated comic strips.
Alf’s stories, however, were never collected in book form. To check out
episodes of Alf’s or Wilson’s adventures hop on the web at www.britishcomics.20m.com/
THE REST OF THE
PACK
Rounding out the field of running novels
are a scattering of lesser known running titles of questionable quality. The
best of the bunch is The Other Kingdom
by Victor Price. The story of struggling Irish miler Colin Wornock, the story
is hampered by far ranging musings on the nature of heroism and overcoming
yourself.
Author Paul Christman throws women runners
into the mix in Purple Runner, as a
New Zealand woman marathoner tries to shake off her baggage of never finishing
quite high enough in a race. Involving herself with a facially disfigured male
marathoner, whose workouts would put the fittest Kenyan to shame, the woman
trains madly as both characters aim toward the Big Race climax at the London Marathon.
In The Long Run by Tim Van Wagoner gives us a somewhat successful
running as metaphysical journey
story. Josh Chamberlain is the great-great-grandson of an acclaimed Civil War
hero. As Josh prepares to run his first 26.2 miler, the Marine Corps Marathon
in Washington D.C., he finds himself getting into the zone.
In this metaphysical state, brought on by
the classic endurance test, Josh communes with his Civil War ancestor and contemplates
the meaning of life and love. Notable for its portrayal of small town America, In The Long Run doesn’t quite pull off
its triple act as a contemporary running story, a historical novel, and a love
story. It would have done better concentrating on one event.
Though Tom McNab scored with both Flanagan’s Run and Fast Men, his third running novel, Rings of Sand, squanders its premise on characters nobody cares
about. Attempting to hijack the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics by creating a professional Olympics backed by Arab oil
money to be held at the same time, is an interesting topic for sports column
commentary, but tough for something novel length. Unfortunately, McNab gets so
busy trying to fill the holes in his concocted plot, he forgets what made his
other books special – the running.

Slinger Sanchez Running Gun by Bruce Glikin should be commended for
taking on racism and family abuse issues against the backdrop of Jesse
Sanchez’s attempt to become a top 800 meter runner. Unfortunately, far-fetched
athletic performances, a men’s magazine romance, and several the political
plotlines turn the story from a sprint into a never ending steeplechase over an
unmarked, potholed course.
FINAL KICK
There may be a running novel or two that
didn’t make it to the starting line here, but they obviously weren’t ready for
the competition. For those of you wanting a wider sample of many of the above
stories, check out The Runner’s Literary Companion by Garth Battista. The
collection is comprised of twenty-four running short stories/novel excerpts and
a selection of running inspired poetry. It is a great way to find an author or
a novel you want to explore further.
Okay, running fiction junkies, get your
checklists ready and put on your racing shoes. It’s time to hit the new, used,
and cyberspace book stores for titles and tales. Unlike drinking and driving, running and
reading do mix. So, enjoy, but be sure to watch where you’re going.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Novelist,
screenwriter, and television personality, Paul Bishop spent 35 years with the
Los Angeles Police Department, where he was twice honored as Detective of the
Year. He continues to work privately as
a deception expert. His fifteen novels include five in his LAPD Homicide
Detective Fey Croaker series. His latest novel, Lie Catchers, begins a new
series featuring top LAPD interrogators Ray Pagan and Calamity Jane Randall.
www.paulbishopbooks.com
www.fightcardbooks.com
Twitter @bishsbeat
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www.paulbishopbooks.com
www.fightcardbooks.com
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Is it safe? ... to mention Marathon Man? It's not really about running, but marathon running does sort of illuminate the protagonist's persistent character.
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