In addition to my blog posts here, I've written a number of books and other long-format, self-contained publications that go in-depth on training and performance. Check them out below!
Marathon Excellence for Everyone
Marathon Excellence is your comprehensive guide to modern marathon training and racing. It uses a full-spectrum, percentage-based approach to marathon training, with five different training plans spanning peak mileage levels from as little as 40 miles per week to over 100 miles per week.
This book is your authoritative guide to marathon training, whether you're making your first serious attempt at the marathon, aiming for a Boston qualifier, or gearing up to compete in the elite field.
Learn more about Marathon Excellence here, or get your copy on Amazon here. If you live outside the United States, Marathon Excellence comes in a Metric Edition, with all paces and training plans in kilometers.
Modern Training and Physiology
Modern Training and Physiology is a whirlwind tour of the physiology principles behind the components of a proper training system for events from 800m to 10km. This is the book I wish I had when I started getting serious about running.
Our understanding of the body and the training we use has evolved significantly since the days of old-school Lydiard-style training, and a lot of runners don't fully understand the training ideas that they are trying to use. How long and how fast should a tempo run be? How much mileage should you do? What, exactly, is the lactate threshold?
Modern Training answers these questions and putting theory into practice: with this book, you'll learn to apply modern exercise physiology to tailor your training to improve your strengths, bolster your weaknesses, and ultimately become a better runner.
Modern Training is available in both paperback and ebook, and has helped thousands of runners improve since I first published it in 2013.
Basic Training Principles
Basic Training Principles is a 16-page booklet that's written for the up-and-coming young runner.
The backdrop of the booklet is the question that the entire world of athletics pondered in 1960 after the resounding success of Arthur Lydiard's athletes at the Rome Olympics—why does high-volume aerobic training make you faster at all race distances?
This booklet will set a young runner on the right track for long-term improvement in high school, college, and beyond. It covers the very basic elements of training: What kind of training you should do, why you need to do it, and how it makes you a better runner.
Basic Training is now available in e-book format for Kindle for only $0.99! It was also featured on Down the Backstretch, the go-to place for Minnesota running news.
Something New in Training: The Methods of Renato Canova
Something New in Training is a nine-page article that summarizes the coaching philosophy and training methods of Renato Canova, the Italian coach of many Olympic and World Championship medalists in events from 800m to the marathon. Renato Canova is arguably the greatest coach in the world, and my posts on his training are some of the most popular on my blog.
Renato Canova takes a revolutionary approach to coaching: he views racing as a problem of mathematics, not just of physiology. Renato Canova himself even provided a quick review of my article on LetsRun.com's message board!
The Updated Training Wisdom of John Kellogg
Since my early college years, I've been fascinated by the writings and training philosophy of John Kellogg, the reclusive coach and online personality who was a prolific poster in the early days of LetsRun.com and coached founding brothers Robert and Weldon Johnson to a 2:23 marathon and a 28:06 10k, respectively.
John Kellogg's writings inform a lot of what I believe about training, and since he hasn't done much in the way of formal summaries of his training approach, I took it upon myself to assemble as much of his work as I could. The result was a 293-page compilation, titled "The Updated Training Wisdom of John Kellogg," in homage to the original 2003 compilation by Harvard runner Tim Galebach that inspired my own training.