Funny, inspiring and poignant. ( )

A book that sat on my self the past few years so reading it after my military retirement seemed like a good fit. Having lived in Chicago and being just two years older than Peter Sagal (and enjoying his radio program) the book felt like a friend telling a story at a corner bar. ( )

This is one of those books where the audiobook is an entirely different experience than the printed edition. Peter Sagal’s narration is a performance that perfectly highlights the highs and lows of his life and running. His tone perfectly illustrates the pain he feels surrounding his divorce and resulting relationships with his children. I think those moments might feel glossed over in the written version because he switches back and forth to humor quickly. In the audio, his tone and pacing perfectly illustrate the emotions and pain.

This was a wonderful audiobook for runners and people who are dealing with life change. This will be one of those books where I will always suggest the audiobook version. ( )

Motivating and, surprisingly, poignant ( )

Peter Sagal’s The Incomplete Book of Running is the radio host’s memoir of his running career, which essentially started in middle age as his marriage was falling apart. He relates various segments of his racing and training career, usually tying them into some observation about running as it relates to the greater world, and gives his views on the best training, racing and living tips. Sagal writes with a self-deprecating wit that will be familiar, if a little more biting, to his radio audience, and that wit makes the book a pleasant read. Ultimately, though, the running lessons feel a bit thin, and there’s not enough to the rest of the book to make it required reading.
The book is bracketed by chapters describing two of Sagal’s runs at the Boston Marathon, the first in 2013, the year of the bombing. In each of these runs, Sagal is guiding a runner who is vision-impaired, and tells the story of how they got connected, Sagal’s training for the race, and details of the race itself.
Between these vignettes, Sagal traces the origins of his running, beginning with his teen years when he began running with the inspiration of his father and to deal with self-esteem. He then glides through his nonrunning early-adulthood before describing how he picked the sport up again later in life.
Sagal is upfront at the beginning that the crumbling of his first marriage was something of a factor in his running career. He also states that he will not discuss details of the marriage in the book. He mostly sticks to this pledge, although sometimes to the detriment of the story.
The meat of the book traces a thematic arc through Sagal’s running career - rather than strictly chronological, or as a progression of faster times, he takes lessons he’s learned through running and chooses the anecdotes to highlight these themes. These little tales are nicely told, as Sagal is a talented writer, though the advice sometimes verges into “kids these days” territory, or outright silliness (the size of your vocabulary does not affect your metabolism).
This book, like Murakami Haruki’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Running, sits in a strange space: running memoirs by people famous for other things. As such, Sagal struggles a little to find his audience. Though he is fast for an amateur runner - attested by his Boston qualifications - he does not have the racing background to intrigue those interested in the pinnacle of the sport. It is clear in parts of the book that Sagal takes running seriously as a competitive endeavour and not just as a fitness lifestyle, but he seems to downplay this aspect of his running, perhaps because he thinks his main audience is a nonrunning one. This may be true - Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me fans are most likely to pick this up, I would imagine - but I think he was served poorly by not examining this aspect of his running in the book. A look at someone who puts serious effort into something that he is not the best at, nor is even his main career, would be fascinating.
Sagal’s humour, which is probably what he is best known for, is evident in parts, but this is not a funny book. The subject matter is too serious. Yes, it’s just running, but it’s important to Sagal as it is to many people, and he uses this subject to tackle serious issues, including eating disorders. The main theme of the book is how running helped ease the pain of his divorce and the personal lows he went through during this period. Unfortunately, his pledge not to go into details of his marriage weakens this a bit. While I understand his reluctance, and certainly don’t think he’s obligated to tell the world his personal issues, it did seem a little curious that almost everything in the book came back to this event that we get little to no information about. It’s hard to understand the pain (or the redemption) if we don’t see how you got there.
Despite this, The Incomplete Book of Running is a good read, especially if you are a fan of Sagal or his show. Like any training plan, not every part works out as well as it could have, but the end result will be enjoyable to anyone interested in the subject matter.

C+ ( )