Book Review: Natural Born Heroes by Christopher McDougall

I had high expectations to Christopher McDougall's new book Natural Born Heroes. His previous book was really enjoyable journey to endurance athletes and especially to ultrarunning world. I thought this book would be natural continuation to that one.

The book tells stories about human abilities that go beyond our thought of normal human abilities. So it tells stories about heroes. Heroes and especially endurance heroes looked like an interesting topic to read about.

Quite early in the book I noticed that it isn't as easy to read that I would have hoped to. The challenge with the book was that it was filled with so many stories, that it becomes almost impossible to follow all of those.

Main stories were about Greece, but even there the stories jumped from mythologies, to World War II to McDougall's own experience from there. In addition to these Greece stories, book jumped once in a while to stories from former China, UK and US. Many of the stories connected to each other, but there were so many characters in the book that it was laborious to keep track on whom was whom.

As such I liked the book and it thought some good things about humans and endurance overall. In that sense it was enjoyable. With better planning and organization the book would have been excellent. At least for my type of reading, I kept loosing track which story was being told at which time.

It is bit hard to give recommendations about the book. At least if World War II interests, then I recommend to read it. If you want something lighter about endurance once in a while, then it would be good option look into. If you expect clearly structured fact based book about endurance, then maybe there are other choices to consider.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Daniels' Running Formula

My latest reading was a sports training book for a change. I've read about triathlon and swimming training, so it was time to concentrate on running. I got my hand on, what was said to be the best running training book ever made, Jack Daniels' Running Formula.

Jack Daniels is a professor of physical education, coach of Olympic athletes and olympic medalist himself. That was proof enough for me, to take a closer look on his ideas.

For me there were two important things in this book. First one was the idea of training load. I've understood that there is different load for different type of exercises, but this book got me to understand more about it and quantify the loads to some extend. I took that part directly in to use on my training diary and will use it for this training season to know if it really works or not.

Second important thing in this book was the different running speeds and the VDOT index for those. VDOT wasn't totally new concept for me, but since it was invented for this book I got to understand all the background information behind it. Other than just running speeds, it gives pretty good tips for different type of running trainings.

Running speeds in VDOT are Easy, Maraton, Threshold, Interval and Repetition. From those, the separation between Interval and Repetition was not clear to me at all before this book. No it is much more obvious that those exercises and speeds are for different purposes; Intervals for training VO2Max and Repetitions are for speed and technique.

Big part of the book is also training programs. There are training programs from elite athletes to first time runners. Training programs also varies from short 800m runs all the way to marathons. So there are training programs for everybody, except for triathlonists. For me the best thing about training programs was to get some good ideas what kind of exercices could be done.

From content point of view, book was excellent. It's filled with good information and ideas about running training. Then from editoral point, it was bit messy. It wasn't as easy and pleasurable to read as it could have been. I blame publishers for that one. They should have put more focus on readability.

I still recommend this book to everyone who wants to understand running training. It gives such a good information about the endurance side of running training, that it is valuable to read. It's also quite quick to read, so I recommend to get it in to your hands and at least scim it through.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review - Triathletes Training Bible

For a change I read something totally different than the business related books I've read lately. I'm in a transformation process from team sports and games towards endurance sports. So I wanted to go to the master source of endurance training, so I picked up Triathlete's Training Bible by Joe Friel. I found so many good recommendations on it, I had to give it a try. And I didn't regret a minute.

Book is about training for triathlon. But it's not only about triathlon as such. It gives so much good basic knowledge about endurance training, nutrition and training planning, that it's an excellent book for anyone. I honestly learned more about endurance training from this book, than I've learned from any other sources counted together.

Big part of the book is creating a training diary. This part is quite specifically for triathlon and duathlon, but you can learn the basics of creating a training plan for any other sports. If you are triathlete or you want to become one, you have to read this book. It has something for everyone. It has tips for the most advanced guys, but also for the novices.

It's hard to say anything bad about this book. Maybe the worst thing is, that it really is like a bible; it's big and heavy. It's convenient to carry with, but there's good justifications for it's big size from pictures and tables in it. It also has lots of pages on it, but I actually felt sorry, that the book ended, not that it had too many pages.

I guess the hardest part of the book is, that it's impossible to take all the things you've learned to in action once. Managing the things presented in this book, easily takes tens of years, maybe a lifetime. It's a book I at least want to own, not borrow. I've made it full of marks on the first reading and I keep on going back and forth it all the time. It's one of the books every endurance athlete should own.
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen