The Long Run: A Memoir of Loss and Life in Motion Hardcover – May 23, 2017

Very interesting

I was looking forward to this book because I love to read books about running, especially memoirs! And this author is articulate and educated, and has a definite feminist point of view. She included a lot of running history I hadn't heard before, as well as some I did know, and I really enjoyed reading about the different historical perceptions of women as runners. She is from Australia, so I enjoyed hearing a less US-centric point of view!

This book is an interesting take on the classic running novel and I loved it. Her reasons for running really resonated with me. A great combination of history, political commentary, and personal anecdote.

Beautiful, beautiful memoir and history of women's running.

Enjoyable fast reading book!

Catriona Menzies-Pike came to running after a horrible personal disaster--the sudden death of both her parents in a plane crash--kicked her to the curb. Her happy life as a college student, physically active but with no interest in distance running, evaporated and eventually led to apparent depression and substance dependence. That, after ten years of suffering, the adoption of running as a hobby and then a lifestyle had the capacity to provide a focus and revolutionize her life is heartening but also no particular surprise to this runner. The physical changes which occur in a runner--and that's not just weight loss--and the friendships one may gain are well known to anyone who has ever committed to and followed a running program.Menzies-Pike's personal story is interspersed with facts about distance running history, particularly the fairly short history of women in running. Without this information, which may very well be news to younger women or to women in her Australian home, and does impart to the reader some history of women's exclusion until recently from the Boston Marathon and other competitive running, the book would probably just be a longish magazine article. The book is short and could be read in a couple of sittings, during a runner's "taper" for her first race.It is heartening that the writer is able to separate her personal journey, as a young woman runner, from the commercial interests which have invaded women's running now that it's clear many women with money for much more than running shoes are on the road. I'm also delighted that there's little discussion of running "pace", as an adult woman starting to run for physical and emotional health, unless unusually talented, has only herself as a "competitor".This book would make a good gift for a runner just starting out, including a mother or other relative. If one is already running regularly, with a group, she has no doubt heard many personal testimonies like Menzies-Pike's. (I have one, too :) )

First, I should probably tell you that I am not a runner. I know a few people who run, who run half-marathons, who want to run full marathons, but that's never, ever been me. So when I won an advanced reader copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway, I wasn't sure what to expect. Would this be a blow by blow book on how to train to run a long race? Would it be a sad tale of the grief the author dealt with after her parents died unexpectedly? Would it be the story about how she pulled herself up by her bootstraps and faced the world while running, hoping it would provide distraction from her grief? Well, it's a little bit of all of these, and a whole lot more.This book is remarkably well written and entertaining. The author doesn't take herself too seriously. The book does spend some time discussing the loss of her parents and how she felt lost herself following their untimely deaths when she was at university. She discusses how she plowed on with her education and traveled in an attempt to come to terms with the premature death of her mother and father. To a lesser degree, she touches on the connections she had with her sisters, aunts, grandparents, cousins, and friends. (To be honest, I would have like to see a little more about how she interacted with her family following her loss. She never goes into much detail about where her sisters wound up, or why there was a problem with her parents' estate. There are just brief mentions about these things, but I don't think the real focus of this book is on the author's losses. It's more about how she eventually found a way out of that darkness and the part that running played in her move back into the light.) But all of that only forms the skeleton on which this book is built. On those bones, the author layers an interesting selection of information revolving around the culture and history of women runners. She discusses why women were discouraged from running for so long, on the commitment that running requires, on art in relation to running, on running clothing and how it's evolved over the years. As the author herself says, she only scratches the surface of this history and the women who paved the way for today's women's long distance runners.Despite the fact that I received an uncorrected proof of this book, the writing is impeccable. I'm a fussy reader, and I didn't notice a single typographical, contextual, or spelling error. Not overly surprising when the author holds a PhD in literature, I guess. It's one of the best ARCs I've received from any source. One of my favorite lines form this book, and there are many:Running has a way of dragging you into the present moment of exertion.While I didn't know what I was going to get in this book, I wasn't at all disappointed at what I found when I started reading. It includes a lot of interesting and, to me, obscure history and cultural background concerning women runners. She offered just enough detail to hone my interest, but not enough to bore me. She's spurred me on to want to do more research on some of the things people and things she brought up. It's also not an overly long book. My copy has 232 actual textual pages. I suppose if I had more interest in running, I'd have zipped through this book in an evening or two.I highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever exerted themselves in any physical way, as a child, as a teenager, as an adult. It doesn't require running to understand how the author used the physical movement of her runs to help overcome her grief. And while you read, it's likely that you'll learn something about how women were restricted, for no provable reason, from fully participating in the sport until the latter half of the twentieth century.I'll be passing my copy of this book onto a young relative who enjoys running. I think it will be appreciated.

This is a very interesting addition to the ever burgeoning canon of running literature. The Australian author lost her parents to a plane crash when she was only 20 and spent the next decade combatting grief in various ways some of which were self-destructive. However taking up running at the age of 30 led her on a path of both recovery and self discovery.The book also intriguingly explores the history of women’s running and attitudes to it. One chapter recounts the Greek legend of Atalanta who only agreed to marry a suitor if he could beat her in a footrace. Sadly it doesn’t seem to be recorded what distance this race was. The only way her eventual husband could beat her though was to resort to some frankly underhand tactics to distract her but in that probably lies the fact that these mythological stories were promulgated by men.I now wish I had started my running during my year in Australia after reading descriptions of some of her races and routes but it took me a few more years to realise that running could provide some kind of solution to the problems that had begun to threaten my mental and physical wellbeing.However in a similar way to the author of this book, after suffering a significant bereavement myself a few weeks ago and in the months leading up to it, running for me became less and less about entering races and PB’s and instead it became a complex narrative of running for the sheer selfish joy of feeling alive and to work off guilt, rage and grief as if physical exertion could assuage those feelings for the duration of the run at least.Novelist and marathon runner Joyce Carol Oates is quoted in the book and it’s one I fully endorse plus I don’t think you need to be a writer for it to be applicable - “If there’s any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can’t think what it might be.”