Footnotes

May 1, 2017
In this offbeat but entertaining take on the fitness memoir, Cregan-Reid (Discovering Gilgamesh) shares his discovery of and love of running, occasionally adding intimate details from his personal life and frequently from his runs. It’s a mashup that’s equal parts philosophy, neuroscience, history, and love note to the author’s exercise of choice. Cregan-Reid takes readers on a running tour, stopping off at Boston’s Spaulding National Running Center to see an Ironman Triathlete’s running injuries being diagnosed, sharing a memorable run through the South Harrow countryside, and finishing the London Marathon “almost by accident.” A self-described “challenged school student,” Cregan-Reid eventually went through a metamorphosis (largely unexplained here) that took him to graduate school; he discovered running while working on his doctoral thesis. Today the author is a professor and literary scholar. That explains why, in addition to finding information here about running retraining or selecting the right shoe, readers will also find liberal literary references to such writers as Austen, Chekhov, Coleridge, and Tolstoy. The book’s greatest strength, however, is in its explanation of running’s benefits (running makes “you smarter,” more attentive, and even makes you feel “more attractive,” according to the author) and in the author’s mystical, Anglicism-sprinkled descriptions of running.