The name Joe Henderson is forever linked with Runner’s World. He spent more than three decades with that magazine, but his tenure there ended abruptly and surprisingly in 2003 with changes in... More > the magazine’s editorship and editorial direction.
He wasn’t long without a writing home. Within weeks of that parting he signed on as a columnist for Marathon & Beyond. His stay at this magazine lasted another seven years, ending voluntarily this time.
“I think of M&B as the New Yorker of running magazines,” he writes. “Editor Rich Benyo and publisher Jan Seeley let the writers write in our own ways and at whatever length the subject requires. The writing is deeper and purer here than anywhere short of a book.”
This book, borrowing the title “Joe’s Journal” from the M&B column, collects his writings from there between 2004 and 2011. During those years he passed his 50th anniversaries as both a runner and a writer on running. His long view of the sport fills these pages.< Less
The Run Right Now Training Log does not tell you exactly how to train or race. You can find those plans in other books, including some of mine.
The Training Log holds a year’s worth of runs.... More > One day’s report is like one step in a long run. By itself it doesn’t tell you much. But over the months, years and decades the days the steps multiply to form a trail that helps you plot your path ahead – and also to see how far you’ve come.
Analyze your results by the month or longer periods. (Forms at the back of this Log help you do that.) Judge from your records what does and doesn’t work. Then use these conclusions to write better training and racing plans for yourself instead of trusting another writer to do that for you.
Also use the Log as a place to remember and reflect. Write a book that you can open later to any page and call that day back to life. Capture here and now the experiences that otherwise would be as fleeting and invisible as footsteps on a dry street.< Less
Sometime between claiming my first Social Security check at 62 and signing on with Medicare at 65, I heard an offhand comment by a fellow writer on running from the same age-group. Rich Benyo, editor... More > of Marathon & Beyond, had finished writing his life story and urged me to get going on mine. “Our age is the best time to write memoirs,” he said. “We’re old enough to have had the experiences, but still young enough to remember what they were.”
Writing on this memoir began in 2008, I wrote and wrote and wrote that year, and only took the story as far as 1967. This became Starting Lines, covering my growing-up years in the Midwest. Two more books (Going Far and Home Runs) would follow in the next two years.
Each chapter of Starting Lines (and its two sequels) opens with a journal-like entry from one of my big days, then I append an instant epilogue (called “Update”) that tells where the events led. New-era-openers abound in every life. I’ve been lucky enough to keep a written record of mine.< Less
Run Right Now. These three little words imply three different meanings. “Right now” can mean correctly, immediately or temporarily. The title can represent running the right way. Not that... More > I have a corner on absolute truths, but the book represents the best ways to run that I know, based on long experience. The title also can stand for running right away. Even as an author I say, don’t spend too much time reading and planning and analyzing. I’d love to hear that a runner read one page and was moved to drop the book and go run right now. And finally the title can mean running right for now. Current practices change along with interests and abilities.
This book is a memoir of lessons learned in a lifetime of running and writing about it. These chapters can’t protect you from making any mistakes of your own. My hope is that you’ll make fewer than I did, that you’ll learn these lessons faster and that they’ll take you farther than I’ve gone with them.< Less
This event requires special training – and lots of it for a long time. The book focuses on those training requirements. This isn’t a book about the history or personalities or statistics... More > of the marathon, or about training for any other distance but the marathon. This book deals exclusively with how to get to and through a race that justifies all the time and effort you put into it.
Marathon Training offers proven training programs, each lasting three months, for three different levels of runners. Joe Henderson provides the tools for writing individualized sessions for each of the 100 days. Supporting each one is a “Thought for the Day” and a “Tip for the Day.” Together these items supply the information and inspiration you need to complete the training – and eventually the marathon itself.< Less
In his updated Introduction, Joe Henderson names Long Run Solution as his own favorite book of the two dozen he has published: “This book is my clearest statement of how I feel about running.... More > Much of what I’ve written since is touched on here, and most of these feelings have changed little in the meantime… Naming LRS as my favorite book might sound like a knock on the 15 or so books that followed, but it really isn’t. They served purposes, just as races do after the last personal record is set. There is value – even a certain nobility – in keeping going after we’ve peaked. Which is the message of the book: Do what it takes to run long, not in miles but in years and decades.”< Less
“A revolutionary is where you find him,” wrote running’s leading writer, Dr. George Sheehan, as he reflected on the revolution-charged 1960s. “He could be the guy next door.... More > Joe Henderson looks like a typical guy next door. Out of Iowa, he has the smile and style of the heartland of America. But he has fallen for that old Socratic saw that the unexamined life is not worth living. The first result was revolt, rebellion and a booklet called Long Slow Distance: The Humane Way to Train. The LSD method of running that Henderson espouses is not new. He has simply systematized it and, in effect, founded a new order, a new sect that has bid pain, suffering and sacrifice good-bye. Joe Henderson is a revolutionary not because his writings have produced a wave of faster runners, but because he has spawned happier ones.”< Less
(from the Foreword, titled “Walking Lessons”) More than 20 years passed between my becoming a runner and my return to walking. I took that long to adopt walk breaks as good and necessary... More > additions to what remains today a running-centered routine.
Little more than half of the “run” time nowadays is spent running. Walk breaks come often, and some days pure walks replace runs. Pure runs are as rare as lunar eclipses.
Walking hasn’t replaced my running but has added to it. Walk breaks, the simplest and best type of cross-training, have extended my life as a runner. I happily stop to walk if it keeps me running longer – if not in miles, then in years.< Less
These days I write as I’ve long written. The first stop for the words is a page in an ongoing journal, and more often than not they go no further. These writings almost always end at a single... More > page. The frequency is daily, with no days off. The setting for this writing is an office at home that doubles as a bedroom for visitors.
This was pure writing. I didn’t write it on orders from an editor or publisher. I used no notes. I felt the eyes of no reader peering over my shoulder. All of this came later (as chronicled in the first two book of this memoir trilogy, Starting Lines and Going Far), but seldom does anymore. I haven’t published a book-on-paper since 2006. For the first time in more than four decades, I write regularly for no magazine. The vast majority of current writing is unpaid and unseen again. It’s back to being mostly a hobby, as rewarding now as it was in the beginning.
I’m home at last and loving it. This book is the story of how I got here.< Less
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