Finding Your Cool Impossible

Did you hear the one about the runner at the airport, en route to a marathon, reading a book about running, while wearing spandex? Just kidding, that's not a joke, that's my life and the book I was reading was The Cool Impossible by Eric Orton, the coach from Born to Run. This book outlines Eric's coaching style and method, along with providing strength exercises and training plans, written as if Eric was narrating your visit to Jackson Hole to be coached by him. What I really loved about this book was that it was flexible. It breaks running down to the nittiest, grittiest detail, such as strengthening your foot, but at the same time allows you to customize the training plan based on your current level of ability. While this is no substitute for face to face coaching, it is nice to have a training plan at your disposal that is customized for you.

The book is split into sections about running, diet and the mental side of running. Running is very detail oriented, as you would expect, while the diet section doesn't encourage any particular way of eating, other than to keep it healthy (not eating processed foods, for example). Finally, the mental section, which was my favorite, deals with not letting worries such as 'can I complete a marathon?' deter you from your larger goals, instead focusing on just the next fifty feet, and reaching your goal that way. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in running, novice to marathoner. There's great strength moves, a training plan and some incredibly inspiring words to get you out the door and running towards your own cool impossible.