Running: A Love Story: 10 Years, 5 Marathons, and 1 Life-Changing Sport

by Jen A. Miller

Overview

Jen Miller has fallen in and out of love, but no man has been there for her the way running has.

In Running: A Love Story, Jen tells the story of her lifelong relationship with running, doing so with wit, thoughtfulness, and brutal honesty. Jen first laces up her sneakers in high school, when, like many people, she sees running as a painful part of conditioning for other sports. But when she discovers early in her career as a journalist that it helps her clear her mind, focus her efforts, and achieve new goals, she becomes hooked for good.

Jen, a middle-of-the-pack but tenacious runner, hones her skill while navigating relationships with men that, like a tricky marathon route, have their ups and downs, relying on running to keep her steady in the hard times. As Jen pushes herself toward ever-greater challenges, she finds that running helps her walk away from the wrong men and learn to love herself while revealing focus, discipline, and confidence she didn't realize she had. Relatable, inspiring, and brutally honest, Running: A Love Story, explores the many ways that distance running carves a path to inner peace and empowerment by charting one woman's evolution in the sport.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580056106
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	03/22/2016
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jen A. Miller is a veteran freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, SELF, espnW, Runner's World, Running Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Allure, and Women's Day. Before becoming a full time freelance writer, she was the editor of SJ Magazine. She has also written two travel books about the Jersey Shore.

Jen has degrees in English literature from the University of Tampa and the Graduate School at Rutgers University-Camden. She's currently preparing to run her sixth marathon. She lives in Collingswood, NJ.

Learn more at RunningALoveStory.com

Read an Excerpt

New Jersey Marathon
May 5, 2013

I closed my eyes as we approached the staging area. Mom drove, silent. She knew not to talk to me before races, and the only noise was me softly giving directions to Monmouth Park. It's normally a thoroughbred horse race track, but that day, it was the start line of the New Jersey Marathon and Long Branch Half Marathon.
Under my sweatpants and sweatshirt, I wore an outfit I had tested in my sixth Ocean Drive 10 miler five weeks before: two-toned blue tank top, black compression shorts (and Body Glide spread liberally on unmentionable areas that would otherwise chafe over the next four plus hours), blue knee-high compression socks, black gloves, Timex sports watch. My yellow visor rounded out the ensemble. On my feet were the blue and orange Mizuno Musha 5s that I hoped would carry me over 26.2 miles in under four hours and 35 minutes.
In 2010, I signed up for this race. It would have been my first marathon, but I ran myself into the ground and quit half way through training. That year, temperatures topped out at a humidity-soaked 89 degrees. This time around, race day was a freak cold day in May in New Jersey, with a forecast high of 53 degrees. If I planned to blame the weather for not reaching my goal, I lost that out. I couldn't have asked for a better day or better conditions to try, in my third marathon, to put together a race for which I could be proud, one where I didn't crash and burn and beg and cry and almost crawl to the finish line in the final miles.
I had 18 weeks of training in my legs and lungs. I prepared using a controversial marathon training method blasted as dangerous, unhealthy, and unproven. It put me, a middle of the pack amateur, through high-intensity workouts, topping out at 56 miles a week - a volume that sent me into daily naps and two dinners a night. One of my editors and a long-time runner wished me luck with the training as if I were about to paddle a canoe into the Bermuda Triangle. I ran that schedule fresh out a breakup with the man I thought I was going to marry, and somehow kept it up through living with my mother, re-settling my home, trips to Seattle, Florida, Las Vegas, white-knuckle clinging to the runs to keep me from falling over the edge into the black tar pit of my mind that kept telling me that I was a failure.
I had pushed my body to the brink to outrun my pain. And as I stepped into the Monmouth Race Track and planted myself among the thousands of runners who would test themselves in either a half marathon or marathon that day, I felt more prepared than before my last two marathons. My body was humming. My muscles were in tune. I had panicked before most of the races I'd run in the last seven years - dozens of 5ks and 10ks and 10 miles and half marathons – but this time my breathing was steady and I was strong, like a horse set to charge out of the gate.
Except for one thing: doubt tickled in the back of my mind that this marathon would end like the Philadelphia and Chicago Marathons. Maybe I hadn't rested enough in the taper, or the ankle that was sore last week would give out, or the training method I used really was snake oil, and I'd end up a carcass being picked over by seagulls on the streets of Long Branch.
No, I told myself. No. Stop. That wasn't going to happen. That could not happen. I had no excuses. That day was do or be humiliated. I had the training. All I had to do was push my mind out of the way, get the hell out there, and run.
Mom stopped just short of the entrance to Monmouth Park. I got out of the car, said goodbye to her with a squeeze of her hand, and walked to the start.

Editorial Reviews

"Running, A Love Story is a frank and sometimes gritty look inside Jen Miller's heart. She speaks for a lot of us as she reveals her self-doubts, and then finds the confidence to quiet them through running. How running does that to us is, like love, very simple yet totally mysterious. But here's the bottom line: It works for everyone." Kathrine Switzer, Author of Marathon Woman, First Woman to Officially Run the Boston Marathon and Leader of the 261 Fearless Movement. Led the drive to get the women's marathon into the Olympic Games, Winner of the 1974 New York City Marathon
"Millions of everyday men and women have a love affair with running. No book I've read captures the richness and complexity of this widely shared experience the exhilaration and heartbreak and everything in between more faithfully than Jen Miller's lovely memoir, Running." Matt Fitzgerald, author of more than twenty endurance sports books, including How Bad to You Want It? Mastering the Psychology of Mind Over Muscle
A contemporary coming of age story that will speak to a generation of women, RUNNING: A LOVE STORY is the candid memoir of a young woman s painful but triumphant search for her place in the world. Skillfully crafted and unsparingly honest, RUNNING is a courageous memoir written straight from the heart." Amy Hill Hearth, New York Times and Washington Post Bestselling Author
"RUNNING is a ballad for anyone looking to discover themselves. Jen Miller is remarkably honest, candid, and approachable in her writing style. She narrates in a way that makes you feel like the two of you are tucked in the corner of a tapas restaurant sharing stories way into the late hours. As someone who has never been "good" at running, I was delighted to find this book to be about so much more than sneakers and mile marks. This is a book about finding love, discovering your breaking points, and letting go. Jen pieces together a moral I think the world needs: only when we fully let go can we finally grip tight to the stuff that really matters." Hannah Brencher, author of If You Find This Letter"


"Running, A Love Story is a frank and sometimes gritty look inside Jen Miller's heart. She speaks for a lot of us as she reveals her self-doubts, and then finds the confidence to quiet them through running. How running does that to us is, like love, very simple yet totally mysterious. But here's the bottom line: It works for everyone." Kathrine Switzer, Author of "Marathon Woman," First Woman to Officially Run the Boston Marathon and Leader of the 261 Fearless Movement. Led the drive to get the women's marathon into the Olympic Games, Winner of the 1974 New York City Marathon
"Millions of everyday men and women have a love affair with running. No book I've read captures the richness and complexity of this widely shared experience the exhilaration and heartbreak and everything in between more faithfully than Jen Miller's lovely memoir, Running." Matt Fitzgerald, author of more than twenty endurance sports books, including "How Bad to You Want It? Mastering the Psychology of Mind Over Muscle "
A contemporary coming of age story that will speak to a generation of women, RUNNING: A LOVE STORY is the candid memoir of a young woman s painful but triumphant search for her place in the world. Skillfully crafted and unsparingly honest, RUNNING is a courageous memoir written straight from the heart." Amy Hill Hearth, "New York Times" and "Washington Post" Bestselling Author
"RUNNING is a ballad for anyone looking to discover themselves. Jen Miller is remarkably honest, candid, and approachable in her writing style. She narrates in a way that makes you feel like the two of you are tucked in the corner of a tapas restaurant sharing stories way into the late hours. As someone who has never been "good" at running, I was delighted to find this book to be about so much more than sneakers and mile marks. This is a book about finding love, discovering your breaking points, and letting go. Jen pieces together a moral I think the world needs: only when we fully let go can we finally grip tight to the stuff that really matters." Hannah Brencher, author of "If You Find This Letter""

From the Publisher