Galloway's Book on Running: 3rd Edition

This book is full of useful information. I’m quite I bought it and read it!!

You know it's a great book when you want to read it at least twice. My wife and I have now joined the cult of Jeff. We're now "Jeffing it" via Garmin Coach. This is a must read for all runners.

The Bible for runners of all types

Other than the cover photo, wearing red jogging shorts instead of black, not a lot has changed in this book since it was first published nearly 40 years ago. The cover photo is telling: it was probably taken on the same day as that on the first edition, with a minimal break to change running shorts (but not the shirt). Much, if not most, of what Galloway advocated back then is still relevant.I first purchased this book in 1995, and used it to train for my first 10K a couple of years later.Often after running I'd get excruciating lower back pain. Then one day I looked more closely at the chapter on running form. I read that "the hips should be shifted forward in line with the head and shoulders." My skiing coach was telling me the same thing. I had been slouching as I ran. I tried keeping my hips forward, and the pain went away. Two decades later it's still gone.This 3rd edition fortunately leaves the original line drawings just as they were. There are minimal revisions to the text, with recommendations on diet and other aspects of training sometimes reworded but not radically different. Galloway's recommendations don't change with changing trends.The most noticeable difference in editions is that the entirety of the new edition is printed in black and white. The shades of blue which brightened up the first edition were replaced by a dull gray in the 2nd edition, and the gray continues into the 3rd. It's primarily for this reason that I didn't give this edition five stars.To its merit, this book is not padded with irrelevant photos of runners, something which I've found extremely annoying in Galloway's books published by Meyer & Meyer Sport.On the cover of the second edition Galloway is pictured as he probably looked in the year of that edition, 2002. The scene appears to be a relaxing jog with his wife. One wonders why he decided to return to the image from 1984 for the new edition, and why he didn't update his photo on the author page (it's from the 2002 edition).It would have been helpful if Galloway had included a section of how his personal running changed over the decades. His shared insights would be valuable. But so far as I can tell from reading a number of his books, he's reluctant to address any personal issues of aging. The closest he comes is perhaps in his book "Running Until You're 100," first published in 2006. He describes runs that each of his parents did late in life. But even though the publisher keeps issuing new editions, the 6th in 2019, the information and stories in the book remains that of 2006. Galloway is now nearly the age that his parents were in the descriptions. I'm certain he could tell a great story about himself.

Helped me run better.