Received the Hal Higdon Journalism Award, recognizing serious journalism about running from the Chicago Area Runners Association (CARA, 2007). The first book-length study of the city’s great annual contest In The Chicago Marathon, Andrew Suozzo reveals this citywide ritual as far more than a simple race. Providing a full-spectrum look at the event’s production and participants, Suozzo shows how the elements that comprise the marathon also reflect modern Chicago’s politics, it’s people, and the ways the city engages with the wider world. The book encompasses all of the forces that come together to make the race the spectacle it has become today. Beginning with a brisk history of the marathon, Suozzo leads readers from its origins in Greek mythology to its modern reality, and also along its rocky road to international prominence. He investigates the roles of sponsorship, small-business support, and the city’s intervention on behalf of the marathon, as well as the alliances the event has forged with the media and charity fundraisers. He also discusses race management and the grassroots support that ultimately make it possible, with a special perspective on the aid station directors and volunteers. Finally, The Chicago Marathon features numerous interviews with the runners themselves, ranging from world-renowned professional athletes to amateurs with diverse backgrounds and abilities.

On Saturday, September 23, 1905, fifteen determined runners bolted at the sound of the starter's gun to begin an amazing journey of distance and endurance: the first Chicago Marathon. Huge crowds witnessed a thrilling race that had it all: action, disaster, suspense, a fallen favorite, and a cliff-hanger ending. It was epic, defining a new chapter in Chicago's athletic history. More than a century later, each year Chicago welcomes nearly 40,000 inspiring runners-from the world's best to complete novices-who will start, discover, battle, and ultimately finish something they once thought impossible, even ridiculous: the Chicago Marathon, all 26 miles, 385 yards. This book takes the reader into the marathon experience, including the sights, sounds, emotions, challenges, and achievements.

On September 29, 2018, before a live audience at Navy Pier in Chicago, international curator Hans Ulrich Obrist conducted his first US Marathon interview session as part of Art Design Chicago, a yearlong celebration of Chicago's art and design legacy initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Obrist, who has undertaken a life-long project of interviewing cultural figures, spoke with more than twenty of Chicago's most innovative and influential artists, designers, architects, writers, and other creatives. In their interviews, this diverse group of creatives provided insights into their artistic processes, influences, and ideas about and hopes for their shared city of Chicago. Among the participants were social-practice artist/developer Theaster Gates, architect Jeanne Gang, writer Eve Ewing, Hairy Who artists Art Green and Suellen Rocca, performance/installation artist Shani Crowe, and the city's cultural historian Tim Samuelson. Creative Chicago: An Interview Marathon serves as documentation for this event, including edited transcripts of the interviews, biographies of the participants, photos of the event, and images of the artists' work.

Shave minutes off your time using the latest in science-based training for serious runners. Advanced Marathoning has all the information you need to train smarter, remain injury free, and arrive on the start line ready to run the marathon of your life. Including marathon-pace runs and tempo runs, Advanced Marathoning provides only the most effective methods of training. You'll learn how to complement your running workouts with strength, core, flexibility, and form training; implement cutting-edge nutrition and hydration strategies and recovery techniques; and taper properly to reach peak performance. With easy-to-understand day-by-day training schedules for 18- and 12-week preparation for weekly distances of 55, 55 to 70, 70 to 85, and 85-plus miles, Advanced Marathoning is simply the most comprehensive and efficient approach to marathoning. If you're ready to achieve your personal best, this book is for you.

Peter Sagal, the host of NPR’s Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me! and a popular columnist for Runner’s World, shares “commentary and reflection about running with a deeply felt personal story, this book is winning, smart, honest, and affecting. Whether you are a runner or not, it will move you” (Susan Orlean). On the verge of turning forty, Peter Sagal—brainiac Harvard grad, short bald Jew with a disposition towards heft, and a sedentary star of public radio—started running seriously. And much to his own surprise, he kept going, faster and further, running fourteen marathons and logging tens of thousands of miles on roads, sidewalks, paths, and trails all over the United States and the world, including the 2013 Boston Marathon, where he crossed the finish line moments before the bombings. In The Incomplete Book of Running, Sagal reflects on the trails, tracks, and routes he’s traveled, from the humorous absurdity of running charity races in his underwear—in St. Louis, in February—or attempting to “quiet his colon” on runs around his neighborhood—to the experience of running as a guide to visually impaired runners, and the triumphant post-bombing running of the Boston Marathon in 2014. With humor and humanity, Sagal also writes about the emotional experience of running, body image, the similarities between endurance sports and sadomasochism, the legacy of running as passed down from parent to child, and the odd but extraordinary bonds created between strangers and friends. The result is “a brilliant book about running…What Peter runs toward is strength, understanding, endurance, acceptance, faith, hope, and charity” (P.J. O’Rourke).

Don’t think you can run a marathon? This book is for YOU! Through her own experience completing over 100 marathons and from transforming hundreds of first-timers into many-time marathoners, Coach Denise Sauriol, a.k.a., the Marathon Whisperer, equates training for a marathon to taking a class. When you sign up for a class, you get a syllabus (training plan), you do your homework (training runs) and then you take your final (run the marathon), right? Training for a marathon is as methodical as taking a class. You just have to add heart! Signed up for a marathon and feeling SCITED (Scared + Excited)? This book is also for YOU! This book is all you need for running your first marathon. The chapters are laid out into 26 miles and kick off with a personal story of inspiration from a first-timer that Denise has coached. She has coached runners from 18 to 82 years old and she can help you too! Within each mile, she shares her tips, tricks and lessons learned from competing in over 250 races across 6 continents. Following these insightful and inspirational miles, you will find your syllabus for Marathoning 101. When was the last time you did something that you were SCITED about?! YOU too, can do 26.2!

Seven days a week, year in and year out, Amy Dickinson has taken on life’s greatest and smallest questions. Her readers ask her about their relationship dramas, parenting dilemmas, and workplace complaints, offering a glimpse into the everyday and offbeat struggles we all sometimes confront. Amy responds with bracing honesty and gentle humor, presenting clear-eyed solutions to sometimes confounding problems. Her insights—and the weekly look into the lives of strangers—have kept readers turning to her column for almost two decades now. Ask Amy: Essential Wisdom from America’s Favorite Advice Columnist collects some of the most intriguing questions and incisive responses from the Ask Amy column. Have you ever wondered whether your spouse was having a phone affair? Or what you could do about obnoxious gym-goers, coworkers, siblings, and children? Maybe, maybe not—but either way, Amy’s direct and no-nonsense thinking may help solve the problems you’re facing, too. Ask Amy is an essential and entertaining collection of advice, written in the tone of a best friend who gives the hard truth and a comforting hand in troubled times. Her readers’ questions may seem odd or unsolvable, but they’re a reminder that we all have problems we might need a little help fixing.

This is the sixth book in Jim's "Marathon Tourism" series aimed at those who enjoy combining their love of running with a love of travel. It presents a runner's guide to 20 of the most popular marathons in the USA offering detailed descriptions, not only of the events themselves, but also of the locations in which they are held. This book is recommended reading for anyone contemplating running a marathon in the USA.

An A to Z resource on running including history, key figures, major events, and primary training theories and terms.

Soaring skyscrapers, deep-dish pizza, and improv comedy may be what the city is best known for, but they are only the beginning of Chicago’s story. It could take a lifetime to experience everything this one-of-a-kind town has to offer. But what if you only have a few days to explore? You're in luck! The one hundred adventures in this candid insider’s guide promise an authentic taste of the Windy City whether you’re taking a weekend-sized bite or sticking around for the buffet of a lifetime. You’ll find seasonal and themed itineraries to make planning your explorations easier. Discover which blues club locals swear by, pay a visit to a quiet green space hidden in plain sight, or dig in to an ice cream cone piled high with five different flavors! If you’re visiting for the first time, or you’re lucky enough to call Chicago home, these one hundred iconic experiences should top your to-do list. No matter when you visit or how long you stay, as you cross off each item, you’re certain to learn something new and have fun in the process.