Life Is a Marathon

January 15, 2019
An endurance sports writer and nutritionist examines the motivations of marathon runners and how the practice can become transformative.Fitzgerald (The Endurance Diet: Discover the 5 Core Habits of the World's Greatest Athletes to Look, Feel, and Perform Better, 2016, etc.), who has written widely on running, diet, and exercise, recounts how, in high school, just as he was about to participate in a race, his nerves took over and he decided not to run. For years, he was haunted by this failure, but as an adult, he decided he had to race in order to confront his fears. Over the years, he entered short races, marathons, ultramarathons, and triathlons; in each race, he found himself hitting the wall, that point at which every runner must push through or quit. Sometimes he quit, but more often he finished. "Running competitively over long distances," he writes, "is a lot like dangling by your fingertips from a cliff's edge with certain death below, except it's your entire body that feels as though it's losing its grip. No runner finds pleasure in this doomed sense of strained weakening, but some runners handle it better than others." Although he understood his personal motivation for running, he was curious to learn why others push themselves to the edge. In a straightforward, steady narrative, he shares his interviewees' insights alongside his own. The tempo and adrenaline amp up when Fitzgerald intertwines these stories with that of his wife, Nataki, a bipolar woman whose psychotic breaks led her to attempt to kill the author on several occasions. Despite these frightening episodes, Fitzgerald continued to hold on and get her the help she desperately needed. By sharing this personal and traumatic part of the story, the author pushes his memoir beyond just another tale of an obsessed runner.Authentic details of a marathoner's life coupled with the nerve-wracking, dangerous moments with his bipolar wife make for enlightening reading.

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March 1, 2019

Endurance sports writer and nutritionist Fitzgerald (How Bad Do You Want It? Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle)shares a personal story of how training and running marathons saved his life. Through several decades of doing marathons, the author has atoned for what he regards as his "cowardice" in intentionally missing the start of a decades-ago important high school race. In seeking to complete eight marathons in eight weeks, Fitzgerald tells how preparing for these events equipped him with the stamina, courage, tolerance, and resilience necessary to run the race as well as live a complete life. Intertwined in his story is that of his wife, who lives with bipolar disorder. Fitzgerald is honest about the difficulties of mental illness, how it has impacted both their lives, and how running has helped him process painful moments. This journey of self-discovery also leads him to meet other runners across the United States and share their accounts. VERDICT Readers interested in inspirational reading, running, and personal experiences with loved ones' mental illness will find this valuable and informative.--Mark Jones, Mercantile Lib., Cincinnati

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2019
A talented cross-country runner in his youth, Fitzgerald quit running in high school but returned to the sport in 1998, churning out 40-plus marathons and ultramarathons, plus a dozen triathlons, all while carving out a career as a coach, nutritionist, and author of several sports-related books, such as The Endurance Diet (2016). In 2017, he set a goal of running eight marathons in eight weeks in a quest to explore the marathon mystique; he covers that experience here in alternating chapters, but this is not a typical endurance-junkie memoir. Fitzgerald also has a personal story to tell, about he and his wife, Nataki, embracing life as a mixed-race couple and enduring multiple crises after she is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Incidents include several police interventions, hospitalizations (seven times), violent attacks, even a suicide attempt. Runners are certain to find inspiration and relate to Fitzgerald's myriad injuries, but the broader appeal here comes from the raw, heart-wrenching love story about two people navigating an unmarked course through mental illness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)