Chris LearLyons Press Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside With Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, And The University Of Colorado Men's Cross Country Team

Enjoyed the book so much I read it twice. First time I have ever done that. Takes you behind the scenes of a top NCAA Division 1 college Cross Country program. Great training and racing tips for cross country running and what it takes to be part of a Division 1 team.

Nice format for reading running training experience - lots to learn between the pages too

This book has been on a number of top ten running book lists. Having read the first third of the book, my conclusion is that there are fewer than ten good running books.The book is a diary account of the Buffaloes' cross country season. This is intrinsically interesting to runners such as myself, but a prosaic writing style ensures it soon feels repetitive. It is not a terrible book, however, and I aim to read it to completion some time in the future. It may well be that the latter stages of the book are more enjoyable.Other running books I have had greater luck with are "Born to Run," and "Feet in the Clouds."

Initially I thought it was unreadable because it seemed to focus on so many individual characters but it developed cohesion with my own understandings and experiences with running.

Being a British middle distance athlete, I always look with envy on the unashamed vociferous passion that United States collegiate athletes hold not only in their athletics, but in their sports in general.Mr Lear does well to capture this, and the camaraderie instilled by the University of Colorado Men’s Cross-Country team, with whom the author spends a season, is inspiring, and at particular eventful points, deeply moving.Behind the unrelenting energy, I did not find the book to be particularly well written, and the efforts made to track the progress of many of the athletes in the team, as opposed to focusing upon only a select few, led to this reader easily losing his mental foothold of the characters involved.In a bid to capture the essence of what it means to be a competitive distance runner, the text does not surpass the achievements of 1978 classic 'Once a Runner', which adorns the olive wreath of this reviewer's book shelf.All the being stated, the text is undoubtedly a recommended read for all endurance athletes, and for those who have competed for university athletic teams in a previous life, a pleasant period of nostalgia awaits as you watch a group of young men trying their damndest to be as good as they can be.