Recently on a round trip to Boston, I listened to The Incomplete Book of Running, by Peter Sagal. In the car with me was my adult daughter, who is not interested in running. Nonetheless, she found the book interesting and entertaining, as did I. And even if you don’t intend to run so much as a city block, you will enjoy and be inspired by it.
Peter Sagal, as you might know, is the host of Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, the funniest news program in the history of news programs. It airs weekly on NPR (National Public Radio) and takes a satirical look at current events. It’s in the form of a quiz show, with a panel of three celebrity guests, plus non-celebrity contestants.
Having listened to the show for years, something I’ve noticed is that occasionally when Sagal is away and there is a guest host, the show is still funny, but not as funny as when he is there.
Listening to Sagal read The Incomplete Book of Running was a hoot.
By his own admission, he was a short, fat kid. As a portly teenager, he began to run and restrict his food intake. He lost 40 pounds, becoming thin and fit. However, it was not without a cost. Though he wasn’t eating much, he became obsessed with food. He would read cookbooks, salivating as he did so. When watching TV, he would wait impatiently for food commercials.
As life went on, he ran less, ate more, and regained the weight, returning to his former portly self. His ups and downs continued until he was about to turn 40.
At 5-foot-7 and 200 pounds, he decided, as people tend to when turning 40, that he should do something about his weight and lack of fitness. For him, that something was to run a marathon. And he did. And that’s how Peter Sagal became a marathoner, finishing more than a dozen of the 26.2-mile races. And eventually writing a book about running.
Why Sagal chose to name his book The Incomplete Book of Running is worth noting. Back in 1977, a guy named James Fixx wrote a book called The Complete Book of Running. This book inspired Sagal, along with hundreds of thousands of other people (including me), to start running.
The cover of Fixx’s book showed the legs of a fit male runner in mid-stride. The cover of Sagal’s book, published in 2018, shows his own legs, not running, but falling down, with a shoe flying off of one foot.
What was there about Sagal’s book that inspired my daughter, who has no desire to become a runner? The same thing that inspired me. It’s a book that pretends to be about running, but is actually about facing and overcoming (or in some cases, failing to overcome) the challenges in our lives.
The book is funny and engaging (like Sagal himself) and chock full of simple, deep wisdom.
Read it yourself. Buy it for a friend.
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