Run Fast - How to Beat Your Best Time Every Time (Book Review)

Run Fast: How To Beat Your Best Time Every Time by Hal Higdon is a good primer on running that is worth taking a look at. It has a lot of the basics that somebody new to running or that has had a lay off for quite a while could benefit from.If you have had a formal competitive coach, then much of the information in the book may be a little too basic or redundant, but even if you only take away one nugget of wisdom you will have well spent your time reading.If you have not had a formal competitive coach then you would probably benefit from reading this book. One of the best things that the book does exceptionally well is explaining where all of the words in a runner's vocabulary came from so that a new runner can pick up the jargon quickly and in such a way that you will not be overwhelmed.Some other strengths of the book are the various tips on subjects such as:

Stretching


Different types of workouts


Pacing yourself


Development of a good workout schedule in races between 5k and the marathon


What you need to do to run your first raceEven though I have a good idea what I am doing and have had many different coaches, I found a few good tips in there that have either fallen by the wayside or that I had never had relayed to me.I especially enjoyed the stories that told about how different coaches and athletes used types of training to get themselves ready for specific events and to break certain records. These sections were both informative and motivational.The biggest problem that I have with the book is the chapter on weight lifting. There are some good basic exercises in there, but his analysis of free weights versus lifting machines is very different than what I teach my own athletes.Higdon thinks that lifting machines are safer than free weights, whereas I believe that you are more likely to have a higher risk of getting injured while getting less benefit if you use a machine that constricts you to an unnatural range of motion and takes away the need to engage s
econdary muscles.This is not really the place to discuss those differences; suffice it to say that anybody new to weight lifting should join a gym and take an introductory class on how to use all of the different equipment no matter what type of workout they want to do.The chapters in the book are an easy read and laid out in such a way that you can read a bit and then set the book down for a few days or weeks only to come back where you left off without being any the worse for wear.You can also easily skip around through the book to sample just the sections that are of interest without having to rely on context from any other sections of the book. The table of contents and index are both useful for that and the few things that I checked seemed accurate enough.If you haven't read Run Fast yet, then it might be worth checking out of the library and at least thumbing through no matter what your level of skill.

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