One of my favorite parts about my new book Marathon Excellence for Everyone is the one thing I didn’t create myself: the cover.
Early on in the writing process, I looked at all the running-related books on my bookshelf and realized there seemed to be an unwritten rule: “books about running need a stock photo of a runner on the cover.”
That on-the-nose imagery makes sense, I suppose (and I followed that rule back in 2013 with Modern Training and Physiology) but I wanted Marathon Excellence to have a cover that was just as distinctive as the Marathon Excellence training approach.
So, I turned to one of my good friends and former college teammates, Guthrie Cunningham. Guthrie is the best artist I know, with an eclectic creative range that spans massive graphite still-life drawings to kaleidoscopic digital art with ever-finer patterns on an infinite zoom.
We started collecting a gallery of inspiration: popular nonfiction, romance novels, movie posters, memoirs, album covers. I traveled a lot in the fall of 2023, and whenever I was at an airport I would wander into Hudson News and stare at the book covers to see what kind of designs created a sense of curiosity, motion, or intensity.
(I did not read most of these books 😅)
Meanwhile, Guth was sketching out early versions of the design on pencil and paper—even going as far as folding the paper to simulate the spine:
I knew immediately this design was going to convey the feelings we wanted. The finish line glittering proudly against the sky, the roadside banners flowing with the wind, and the long, winding road that sprawls across both the front and the back of the cover create a sense of motion and inspiration; a feeling of actually being pulled into the book and onto the road to start your own marathon journey.
With the composition sketched out, we started looking at different color schemes. “Gradient City” is the phrase Guthrie used to describe the dreamy, hyper-real color palette that started to take shape.
Fitting with the “full-spectrum training” approach used in the book, the cover’s color palette uses the full spectrum of blues, from the deep midnight blue of the skies to the ethereal, electric blue banner shimmering over the finish line.
The title itself is set in a sharp, precise, modern font, underscoring how Marathon Excellence unifies the precision of percentages, principles, and scientific techniques with your own lofty and spirited dreams and ambitions for race day.
My favorite thing about the final cover is how it echoes the “origin story” of both of our connections with running. Guthrie grew up running on trails deep in the woods of northern Minnesota, and you can see a glimpse of that coniferous forest biome in the roadside flora on the cover, which sprawls across the front, spine, and back of the book.
My own first marathon (back in 2005!) was also in northern Minnesota, at Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth. That race winds along forested roads, ending—just like the cover—with a finish on the shores of a townside lake. On the back, there’s even a little callback to Carleton College, where Guthrie and I went to school.
Another benefit of the gradient-based design is that it was easy to create a complementary color palette—deep blue to purple—for the Metric Edition of Marathon Excellence. They’re very obviously the same book, but also very obviously different versions.
Maybe a marketing expert would tell me I should’ve opted for a more generic or traditional design. Maybe stock images of photogenic runners really do sell more books!
But having a cover that was organically created with care, by a good friend, with deep connections and callbacks to the book itself and my own running history, is pretty incredible.
Plus, after you finish it, Marathon Excellence will look great on your shelf!
If you haven’t already, you can get your copy of Marathon Excellence here on Amazon, or for the Metric Edition, you can select your local marketplace here.
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If you aren't quite ready for the marathon, I have a shorter book on a simple, scientific approach to 800m to 10k training that I published in 2013 called Modern Training Principles for Middle and Long-Distance Runners. Check it out!
