Personal Record

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Personal Record

A Love Affair with Running

Rachel Toor

184 pages

Paperback

September 2010

978-0-8032-3426-0

$18.95 Add to Cart

About the Book

Rachel Toor was a bookish egghead who ran only to catch a bus. How such an unlikely athlete became a runner of ultramarathons is the story of Personal Record, an exhilarating meditation on the making, and the minutiae, of a runner’s life. The food, the clothes, the races, the injuries, and the watch are all essential to the runner, as readers discover here, and discover why.
 
A chronicle of Toor’s relationship with the sport of running, from her early incarnation as an Oreo-eating couch potato to her emergence as a hard-bodied marathoner, this book explores the sport of running, the community it brings into being, and the personal satisfaction of pursuing it to its limit. An homage to running, a literary take on how an activity can turn into a passion and how a passion can become a way of life, Toor’s book runs all the way from individual achievement—a personal record—to the world of friendship and community.
 

Author Bio

Rachel Toor teaches writing at Eastern Washington University and is a columnist for the Chronicle of Higher Education and a senior writer for Running Times. She is the author of The Pig and I (available in a Bison Books edition) and Admissions Confidential: An Insider’s Account of the Elite College Selection Process. A graduate of Yale University, she received an MFA from the University of Montana and currently lives in Spokane.

Table of Contents

Toeing the Line
1. The Body
2. Reasons Not to Run
3. The Routes
4. One Runner's Beginnings
5. The Closet
6. The Coach
7. The Magazine Rack
8. Ride and Ties
9. Weekend Mornings
10. The First Marathon
11. Speed Goggles
12. The Fast Young Man
13. Boston
14. Becoming a Marathoner
15. Racing
16. The Western State
17. Injuries
18. Ultras
19. The Watch
20. The Coach
21. The Fuel
22. On the Road
23. The Hospital
24. Pacing
25. The Break Up
26. The Curtain Rod
0.2 Getting to the Finish

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