Strides: Running Through History With an Unlikely Athlete

Strides is wonderfully creative. Using the act of running, the author takes us on an unforgettable ride. A lifetime of different cultures and the many ideas therein are expressed in such a natural tone that the experience is as if from memory. Excellent prose is easy to recognize. This is excellent prose, describing a vibrant life well lived. It fills the reader with hope and understanding... Reading it might not make you a better runner but it will inspire your better nature. You will feel the need to strive against your own limits, to make your own strides.

I'm sorry Mr. Cheever doesn't have a personal website to where we could direct fan mail, so maybe this will do. This likable literary sextagenerian has composed/compiled a marvelous collection of personal essays on recreational running that will honor and touch all of us who lace up our shoes most mornings. Touching, inspiring, thought provoking and (most importantly) identifiable tales of the recreational runner and all he/she endures in the mutually identifiable compulsion for personal achievement. Such a nice book for the runner's collection. Thanks, Ben!

This is one of the best running books I have ever read! Mr. Cheever is an average, dedicated runner but he is a superb writer. He mixes his personal history with running with the history of the sport. He shares his personal journeys both physical (Kenya, France, Greece, Boston, etc) and emotional. I think one of the reasons I enjoyed this book so much was that we are about the same age and have traveled similar paths in our running lives (but he's a lot better runner). This book is thoroughly researched and he draws on a wide variety of material. A plus is the book's Appendix which includes a list of his favorite 26.2 running books of all time. This a book for the runner and non-runner alike. It moves to the top of my best running books list. A GREAT READ!!!

Benjamin Cheever's Strides: Running Through History with an Unlikely Athlete will turn out to be one of the enduring classics of the sport, placed on any serious runner's bookshelf right beside Jim Fixx's Complete Book of Running and John L. Parker's Once a Runner. Although Strides is, in part, a memoir -- a lyrical and funny meditation on how a sport has transformed one individual's life -- it is also an entertaining and exhaustively researched history of the human being as a running animal. Starting when our remotest ancestors evolved the ability to run long distances in order to hunt for meat, Cheever's history takes us to Pheidippides' first marathon in 490 BC, to foot-races in Renaissance Italy and early America, even to a seemingly impossible 19th-century supermarathon from Constantinople to Calcutta. The sweep of Cheever's book is not only historical but also geographical: starting with his own comically self-effacing recollection of his first jogs in suburban New York, Cheever's account of his metamorphosis as an "unlikely athlete" includes his first marathon in Boston, his runs with soldiers in Germany and in war-ravaged Baghdad, and finally his runs in Kenya - the "University of Champions"-- where he hobnobbed with the likes of Kip Keino, Paul Tergat and Lornah Kiplegat. But this is a book that wears its glories easily -- leisurely enough to observe the odd historical detail, undogmatic in its informed discussion of health issues, generous in it democratic celebration of the sport, and always taking time for the many people met along the way.

This is a book that runners and nonrunners who like narrative nonfiction will enjoy. It explores various facets of the experience of running from historical, physiological, and personal perspectives. It covers a variety of topics including the author's transition from his bottom-of-the pack attempt to be a high school athlete to his transforming into a dedicated runner as he approached his thirties. Some of the topics I most appreciated were the debate over the healthiness of running, the Kenyan community, the role of running in the Army, and the author's experience serving as a volunteer in the New York marathon. I did not care for the chapter about the marathon in Medoc, France which offended my sensibilities about what runners should strive to be. Nonetheless, the coverage is justified by showing another aspect of the running experience. Most of the material is set around the marathon distance although other distance running is covered. The book is very well written and thoughtfully organized. The author is fairly humble about his running abilities but is actually very good at it. It is good that he applied his writing talents to a book that covers an important part of his life.