Edelweiss 14/16|Book Review: Run the World: My 3,500-Mile Journey Through Running Cultures Around the Globe by Becky Wade

Run the World by Becky Wade                                 Format/Number of Page’s: DARC, 288 pages                                                                     Other Formats: Paperback                                                                             Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks                                                                             Publish date: 05 July 2016,                                                                                 ISBN: 69780062416438, 006241643X                                                               Price: £10.99 GBP, $15.99 USD, $19.99 CAD                                                                           Goodreads: Click here to see more                                                                                                        Source: Edelweiss                                                         Reading time: 23-29 May 2016

Summary:
From elite marathoner and Olympic hopeful Becky Wade, the story of her yearlong exploration of diverse global running communities from England to Ethiopia—9 countries, 72 host families, and over 3,500 miles of running—investigating unique cultural approaches to the sport and revealing the secrets to success of runners the world over, Fresh off a successful collegiate running career, Becky Wade was no stranger to international competition. But after years spent safely sticking to the training methods she knew, Becky was curious about how her counterparts in other countries approached the sport to which she’d dedicated over half of her life. So in 2012, as a recipient of the Watson Fellowship, she packed four pairs of running shoes, cleared her schedule for the year, and took off on a journey to infiltrate diverse running communities around the world.
  Over the next 12 months—visiting 9 countries with unique and storied running histories, logging over 3,500 miles running over trails, tracks, sidewalks, and dirt roads—Becky explored the varied approaches of runners across the globe. Whether riding shotgun around the streets of London with Olympic champion sprinter Usain Bolt, climbing for an hour at daybreak to the top of Ethiopia’s Mount Entoto just to start her daily run, or getting lost jogging through the bustling streets of Tokyo, Becky’s unexpected adventures, keen insights, and landscape descriptions take the reader into the heartbeat of distance running around the world.Upon her return to the United States, she incorporated elements of the training styles she’d sampled into her own program, and her competitive career skyrocketed. When she made her marathon debut in 2013 she became the third-fastest woman marathoner under the age of 25 in U.S. history, qualifying for the 2016 Olympic Trials and landing a professional sponsorship from Asics.
From the feel-based approach to running that she learned from the Kenyans, to the grueling uphill workouts she adopted from the Swiss, to the injury-recovery methods she learned from the Japanese, Becky shares the secrets to success from runners and coaches around the world.
Author Bio(s)

Becky Wade is a professional long-distance runner who competes for Asics. At Rice University she was a four-time All-American and the winner of the Joyce Pounds Hardy Award, Rice’s highest athletic honor, and the Conference USA honoree for the NCAA Woman of the Year award. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Rice with a triple major in history, psychology, and sociology, Becky traveled the world on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and visited 22 countries to explore long-distance running cultures.

In her 26.2-mile debut in December 2013, Becky won the California International Marathon, qualifying for the 2016 Olympic Trials. Currently, she is fulfilling her dream of running professionally and chasing Olympic aspirations, while coaching and working part-time at a shelter for homeless youth.

My Thoughts

Thank you very much to both the Publisher and Edelweiss for allowing me to read this fantastic book in exchange for an honest review. This was the first book about running that I have read as well as the first book by this author. I loved the book it was well written and really interesting.

The book captured the beauty of the sport as well as the desire to chase your goals, forming life long bonds, learning resilience as well as both eating and preparing delicious food. I thought it was an inspired idea of Becky’s to include a recipe from each of the countries she visited in the book, as it meant that if you want to make them to experience what she ate you can.

It was fascinating to find out about all the different ways long distance runners around the world train The way the author wrote about the people, places and training methods she encountered during her travels really made me want to read about them. It also made me want to read more about the famous runners and the places she talked about in the book.

I loved Becky’s writing style as it made the book an easy and compulsive to read as well as it being almost lyrical in places. In the book she also made reference to Born to Run by Christopher McDougall which is a book that I have wanted to read for a while and her having mentioned it in this book has made me decide that I have got to read it by the end of the year.

I gave this book a five star rating because:

– I loved the fantastic, captivating and lyrical writing in the book.                   – I would recommend this book to anyone whether they have a specific         interest in running or not as it may interest someone who’s not                     interested in running but loves learning about other <br> countries and     cultures.                                                                                                                     – I will buy it for anyone I think will enjoy the book. <br>

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