Once a Runner: A Novel
Posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Product Description
Once a Runner captures the essence of what it means to be a competitive runner; to devote your entire existence to a single-minded pursuit of excellence. It has become one of the most beloved sports novels ever written.
Originally self-published in 1978 and sold at road races out of the trunk of the author’s car, the book eventually found its way into the hands of high school, college, and postgraduate athletes all over the country. Reading it became a rite of passage on many teams, and tattered copies were handed down like sacred texts from generation to generation. It ranked as the number one most sought-after out-of-print book in the United States in 2007.
Once a Runner is the story of Quenton Cassidy, a collegiate runner at fictional Southeastern University whose lifelong dream is to run a four-minute mile. He is less than a second away when the political and cultural turmoil of the Vietnam War era intrudes into the staid recesses of his school’s athletic department. After he becomes involved in an athletes’ protest, Cassidy is suspended from his track team.
Under the tutelage of his friend and mentor, Bruce Denton, a graduate student and former Olympic gold medalist, Cassidy gives up his scholarship, his girlfriend, and possibly his future to withdraw to a monastic retreat in the countryside and begin training for the race of his life: a head-to-head match with the greatest miler in history. This book is a rare insider’s account of the incredibly intense lives of elite distance runners; an inspiring, funny, and spot-on tale of one man’s quest to become a champion.
If you are not someone who runs, this book will read like a poorly constructed novel in which the author places far to much emphasis on the act of placing one foot in front of another. You will wonder, ‘is 4-minutes a fast time for a mile?’, ‘why does this runner train 20 mile days if his race is only four laps of a track’, and ‘who cares about he Wannamaker mile’. This is only a good runners book because so few authors have created passable books on the subject. And it has a happy, but not completely care-free ending. The book addresses all the questions runners have, but only those that elite runners have. Elite male runners, a select few in the United States. But mixed in with this running theme, the author attempts to dramatize the main character, Quentin’s, life to include love, boyish pranks, an early drowning death as a child, and a fight against the annoyingly strict rules of a football focused college. It’s as if the author were reliving what he wished was his college experience, mixing an amalgum of what he actually did in college, what he heard about being done in college, and what he wished he had done in college. Taken together this leads to a barely believable novel. I was offended by the minor role women play. Many women run now, making up the fastest growing segment of the running population. On the elite level, female runner fare better than the men. So why are the only females completely in the dark about what their crazed men do? I suppose it’s what would be expected from a male author, but I hoped for more. A good read, for runners, but only the aging, male distance coach, with starry eyed remembrances, and could-have-beens, will really love it, perhaps even sleep with it under his pillow at night. Sweet dreams.
Rating: 4 / 5
Bad way to train. Running 60 400 meter intervals so that you pee blood and sleep for days is horrible. The younger, more impressionable runners who read this are going to think “no pain, no gain” and go out and hammer it every day, taking little recovery. This will hurt them simply because they’ll be going at anaerobic paces, producing lactic acid, and over a few days, their blood will become so acidic that vitamins can’t function in it. The effect is that your body isn’t getting what it needs when you’re still pushing it hard, so not only do you hinder development, your immune system is weakened, and your risk of injury goes up because your muscles are weakened. Your body needs real recovery after hard days to get its blood pH back to normal rather than acidic, and to allow your muscles to develop fully from the day before. This book is telling runners to train completely wrong. The psychological aspect of racing is fine, but what’s that if you never did the right work to get you into real shape?
Rating: 1 / 5
This book is always advertised, yet NEVER in stock after you pay for it. I’ve tried to order it from 4 different people and all 4 didn’t actually have it.
Rating: 1 / 5
After reading Running with the Buffaloes I searched for more running-related books and came across this one. The title alone should have been warning enough as to just how awful this book is. Anyone who has sat through a creative writing class will recognize this: it’s written by the guy in the class who just read Catcher in the Rye and decided that he could write something like it.
The characters in this book, all of them, and their relationships are unbelievable. The smart people are too smart; the dumb people too dumb. The dialogue and description made me wince.
One shouldn’t love a running novel merely because one loves running – the only explanation I can think of for all the exceptional reviews I see here on Amazon for this book. (Geez, one person exclaimed it was the best book he’d ever read!)
I noticed that the author has another book out titled, Runners and Other Dreamers. Now that sounds good.
Rating: 1 / 5
This book is not only poorly written, but annoying as well. Weak plot, poor character development, and a portrayal of runners as self-obsessed egomaniacs results in a book of marginal quality. “Runners World” is more inspiring, uplifting, interesting, and better written than this book. The author should stick to running or writing non-fiction.
Rating: 2 / 5