Running and reading are my two favourite hobbies, so show me a tome about pavement-pounding and I'll sprint down to the bookshop quicker than Usain Bolt in the 100m. The wonderful 10,000m runner Jo Pavey is competing for Team GB in Rio (not bad for a 42-year-old mother of two, eh?) and her recent memoir This Mum Runs is inspiring stuff.
Meanwhile, American elite marathon runner Becky Wade manages to make Forrest Gump look slack in her new book, Run The World: My 3,500-Mile Journey Through Running Cultures Around The Globe . She shares secrets and tips from athletes and coaches she meets along her epic trail.
In Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human , published earlier this year, academic Vybarr Cregan-Reid examines why people get such joy from jogging, taking in literature, science and philosophy along the way.
And then there's two oldies-but-goodies: Japanese writer Haruki Murakami's classic of the genre, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running , is both whimsical and wise on the meditative appeal of whizzing down paths with only your brain for company, while newcomers must read Alex Heminsley's warm-hearted, big-sisterly manual Running Like A Girl . If that doesn't have you pulling on your trainers, nothing will.
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