Stars: 3 out of 5
Pros: Interesting stories of running and people met along
the way
Cons: Too unfocused and rambling at times
The Bottom Line:
Run through history
With often lacking focus
Tighter is better
A Book I Won’t be Striding Back To
Because I’ve turned into a runner over the last few years,
Benjamin Cheever’s book Strides: Running Through History With an Unlikely Athlete caught my interest. And since it looked to be partly about his
own adventures in running as well as a history of the sport, I was
intrigued. Unfortunately, it is often
unfocused, leaving the result a disappointment.
On the history side of things, we get chapters filled with
Greek myths about running, the early Olympics, how the Olympics were revived in
modern times, and even some stories from recent Olympics. When Benjamin is talking about himself, he
starts with his first interest in exercising period, flashes back to his high
school football career, and talks about trips he’s taken to run in France , Iraq ,
and Africa .
At times, the book is interesting and worth reading. Most of those passages are the ones were
Benjamin is talking about his own experiences.
While not captivating, I enjoyed hearing about them.
But when he tries to be a running historian, he wanders all
over the place, mixing in people and incidents seemingly at random until it’s
hard to tell exactly what the point of the chapter was. More than once, I had to look back at the
chapter title and first paragraph to see exactly what it was I thought I was
reading about. It felt like someone
speaking and just letting his thoughts wander, sharing one exciting story after
the next as he thought of them.
The perfect example comes in the chapter about his trip to France to run a
marathon there. He winds up on a tangent
about how long the French live, and includes a story about a woman who lived to
be 121. No, she wasn’t a runner. He never met her. So I have to wonder why her story was
included in this book at all, much less that chapter.
As the book winds down, he goes into the medical field and
running, the friends he’s made along the way, and the brotherhood of
runners. I found all those chapters
better put together and enjoyable.
I also really enjoyed the chapter on running and the
military, which included his trip to run a 10K in Iraq
in July and a trip to run with soldiers in Germany . The people he talks to are varied and
interesting, and even though there are many people mentioned, the flow of the
chapter makes sense.
If the ramblings chapters had been tightened, this would
have been an overall enjoyable read. As
it stands now, Strides: Running Through History With an Unlikely Athlete winds up being
just middle of the pack. Kind of like me
as a runner.
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