A light read for the holiday season! I really enjoyed this short book full of fun illustrations. Brendan Leonard is in general a really fun content creator to follow (he’s @semi_rad on Intstagram). I would definitely recommend the Paperback, as I am not sure how the illustrations are rendered in Kindle (though I haven’t tried). It’s not available as Audio because that would miss the core of the value of the book.
The book opens with the “complicated relationship” that a lot of (all?) runners have about running. I find this quote to be really interesting.
I suspect most of us runners have a complicated relationship with running — you could call it a love-hate relationship, but I think it’s more nuanced than that. If running were a person I was dating, I would definitely have broken up with that person long ago. But running is more like a weird friend I keep hanging out with and who is good for me in a really strange way — despite being pretty unlikable most of the time
B. Leonard
I think my relationship to running is a slightly more positive one than what he describes, but it still resonates… and I also find it funny.
To be honest, there are so many quotes in this book that I could almost recite the entire book, so you should read it! One of the aspects that I found particularly interesting is how so many of the quotes or illustrations are relevant outside of running. A few things that come to mind: how to set new habits, the value of a growth versus fixed mindset, the ability to deal with setbacks, the learnings from mistakes, the milestones towards achieving a bigger goal. I’ve definitely enjoyed the content creation from Brendan, beyond the book, both on Instagram and on his website. I’ve even shared several of them to people on my team as I find them so relevant to a research team solving complex problems, similarly to how Courtney Dauwalter says she likes to “problem solve” when running ultras.
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