Meet Steve Scott, outstanding world-class athlete with an indefatigable zest for life and will to win. Here is the story of the track star and the man, whose talent and determination have taken him to the pinnacle of worldwide track and field for the better part of his twenty-seven-year career. A three-time Olympian blessed with the miler's prized combination of strength and speed, he earned a top-ten track and field world ranking eleven times and distinction as America's number-one miler from 1977 to 1986. The Miler takes us inside Scott's training regimen and mental preparation techniques, then invites us behind the scenes into the controversial topics of drug abuse, track-and-field politics, and under-the-table payoffs that transformed mile racing in the United States and abroad. Scott recounts his evolution from promising high school runner to disciplined international elite athlete. He also covers the modern history of the sport, from the days when athletes had to wait hours after meets to pick up their meager appearance fees to the current era of powerful sports agents, lucrative sponsorships, and bigmoney prizes.

A Kentucky mountain boy in the 1950s is driven by a recurring dream of a Cherokee runner the century before. An unlikely coach finds the lone runner drained by stress over the decline of his father, and trains him to take on the mystery of his life and the challenge of Time itself.

In thirty-six thrilling days, Melanie Radzicki McManus hiked 1,100 miles around Wisconsin, landing her in the elite group of Ice Age Trail thru-hikers known as the Thousand-Milers. In prose that’s alternately harrowing and humorous, Thousand-Miler takes you with her through Wisconsin’s forests, prairies, wetlands, and farms, past the geologic wonders carved by long-ago glaciers, and into the neighborhood bars and gathering places of far-flung small towns. Follow along as she worries about wildlife encounters, wonders if her injured feet will ever recover, and searches for an elusive fellow hiker known as Papa Bear. Woven throughout her account are details of the history of the still-developing Ice Age Trail—one of just eleven National Scenic Trails—and helpful insight and strategies for undertaking a successful thru-hike. In addition to chronicling McManus’s hike, Thousand-Miler also includes the little-told story of the Ice Age Trail’s first-ever thru-hiker Jim Staudacher, an account of the record-breaking thru-run of ultrarunner Jason Dorgan, the experiences of a young combat veteran who embarked on her thru-hike as a way to ease back into civilian life, and other fascinating tales from the trail. Their collective experiences shed light on the motivations of thru-hikers and the different ways hikers accomplish this impressive feat, providing an entertaining and informative read for outdoors enthusiasts of all levels.

Publisher Description

Provides a close-up portrait of champion runner Alan Webb, who in 2001, broke a thirty-six-year-old record by running the fastest mile in history, describing his efforts to stay focused despite life's many demands.

Make Proverbs come alive for the children in your home, church, or school. Here is a character-building collection of stories by an Amish Mennonite author. Each chapter explains and illustrates a passage from the book of Proverbs with a story.

The undisputed classic of running novels and one of the most beloved sports books ever published, Once a Runner tells the story of an athlete’s dreams amid the turmoil of the 60s and the Vietnam war. Inspired by the author’s experience as a collegiate champion, the novel follows Quenton Cassidy, a competitive runner at fictional Southeastern University whose lifelong dream is to run a four-minute mile. He is less than a second away when the turmoil of the Vietnam War era intrudes into the staid recesses of his school’s athletic department. After he becomes involved in an athletes’ protest, Cassidy is suspended from his track team. Under the tutelage of his friend and mentor, Bruce Denton, a graduate student and former Olympic gold medalist, Cassidy gives up his scholarship, his girlfriend, and possibly his future to withdraw to a monastic retreat in the countryside and begin training for the race of his life against the greatest miler in history. A rare insider’s account of the incredibly intense lives of elite distance runners, Once a Runner is an inspiring, funny, and spot-on tale of one individual’s quest to become a champion.