I just finished the 75 page e-book, Your Comprehensive Guide to Marathon Preparation and Recovery written by accomplished marathoner and blogger Blaine Moore. He recently won the Cox Sports Marathon in Rhode Island in 2:43 (I’m not sure what his PR is).

According to his blog he has finished 9 marathons and has been competitively running since 1992.  He establishes his credentials for the book during the introduction.

The book is well written in an easy to read and follow format.  E-books are a new trend and make for great portability and ease of reading and re-reading no matter where you are, assuming you have a computer or cell phone!

He easily walks the beginning and experienced marathoner alike through the 4 major parts of a marathon – deciding to do one, pre-race training, the actual race, and post-race recovery.  His goal is to simply make the marathon as painless as possible!

This book isn’t a training schedule like you might get from Hal Higdon or Jeff Galloway, but it adds insights that are sometimes left out of those training schedules. Some of the advice and tips might seem like common sense, but I think that is sometimes the things we forget to pay attention to.  The facts are interspersed with links to past race reviews and stories of his different experiences at the various races he’s run.

I enjoyed the “What to do during the race” section which hit on my most common ailment – starting too fast. I also resonated with other points, like not walking through aid stations if you didn’t do walk breaks in training.  I’ve done that before and it never helped, Blaine has experienced that and explained that it makes your legs stiffen even that short amount of time.

I’d say give it a read, its quick and easy and contains lots of valuable insights for every marathoner.

[tags] Marathon Training, Blaine Moore, Training, Marathon, Book Review [/tags]

Disclaimer: I won my copy in a recent contest at Blaine’s blog.