Christmas Gift Suggestions for Runners: Books in 2011

Since today is Black Friday, the day following American Thanksgiving, it officially kicks off the Christmas shopping season.

If you are looking for ideas on books to buy, you can go to the Book Review category section. And of course, there is my Rocket Sprint Start book to be released on December 1.

Here are some great books that came out in 2011 on *my* shopping list. Thank God for Amazon.co.uk as they ship to Italy without headaches… from the USA, mail delivery takes over 3 weeks!

From the list, you can see I am mainly interested History, Leadership and Coaching Books.

Fastest Men on Earth by Neil Duncanson
Gold Rush by Michael Johnson
The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World
Yuri Verkhoshansky’s Special Strength Training: Manual for Coaches

Fastest Men on Earth

(In the UK: The Fastest Men on Earth)

This newly released book included some insight from Dan Pfaff, where he talks about top sprinters:

"First and foremost I think that great 100m sprinters are tremendous risk takers. In the 100 you take 41 to 44 steps and there’s a lot of monitoring going on with each step, checking your position, ground contact time, projection angles of flight, balance, where people are around you, acceleration curves, and you have to make a lot of very fast decisions. So when you are in the zone of a sprinter it’s super, super slo-mo and you’re processing tons of information and you have to take chances with things, so the common denominator in great sprinters is that they’re kind of gunslingers. You have to have a certain amount of bravado and risk taking in your personality. There have been some who don’t conform to that format and they can run great times, at times, but not all the time and not in championships."

Gold Rush

Gold Rush by Michael Johnson

(In the UK: Gold Rush by Michael Johnson)

Michael Johnson, who needs no introduction, has assembled his very own Olympic Hall of Fame in assessing the DNA of true champions. The book is themed around chapters where he discusses each of the key qualities and factors that make a champion.

He gets testimonials from former Olympic Gold medalists, including:

Usain Bolt (whose Beijing 2008 annihilation is on the cover), Carl Lewis, Sally Gunnell, Seb Coe, Daley Thompson, Cathy Freeman, Ian Thorpe, Michael Phelps, Rebecca Adlington, Chris Hoy, Steve Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent, Lennox Lewis and Michael Jordan.

The John Carlos Story

The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World

(In the UK: The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World)

This is his FIRST autobiography co-written with Dave Zirin, and not to be confused with CD Jackson’s biography Why: The Biography of John Carlos With C. D. Jackson, Jr.

John has been in the news recently with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Special Strength Training: Manual for Coaches

(In the UK: Special Strength Training: Manual for Coaches)

If you are familiar with the book Supertraining, or the Yahoo group formerly known as Supertraining (moderated by the late Dr. Mel Siff), then you know who Yuri Verkhoshansky is.

Yuri passed away before the book was completed, so it is co-authored by his daughter, Natalia Verkhoshansky.

Natalia lives in Rome, and I will be meeting with her in the future. If you have any specific questions for her, or about the book, please contact me or email me directly at jimson@speedendurance.com.