Why We Run

For readers of Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run and Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Emmy-winning broadcaster Toni Reavis draws on five decades inside distance running—from the first running boom and history’s greatest marathon duels to Boston Strong and today’s global running culture—to reveal how the sport became a source of identity, healing, community, defiance, and meaning.

Running seems absurd. Day after day, runners push themselves to exhaustion. On race day, they often pay for the agony, er . . . privilege. Every morning, afternoon, and evening run expires. And like a self-torturing Sisyphus, a runner volunteers to do it again. Why?

Emmy Award-winning broadcaster Toni Reavis has covered running for a half-century. In Why We Run, he draws on his own experience, hundreds of hours of archival recordings, and decades of conversations with champions and everyday athletes for an inspiring cultural history and philosophical inquiry into the bond between movement and the human spirit.

Reavis traces running from our evolutionary beginnings through Frank Shorter’s 1972 Olympic victory, the rise of Bill Rodgers and the mass running movement, Joan Benoit Samuelson’s Olympic triumph, East African ascendancy, and today’s run-club culture. Along the way, he captures iconic races and intimate moments with Kathrine Switzer, Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley, Meb Keflezighi, Haile Gebrselassie, Wilson Kipsang, and others. And he explores how running helps ordinary people endure grief, build friendships, reclaim communities, and discover reserves of courage.

Why We Run reveals that running’s greatest rewards are belonging and the resolve to push through life’s greatest distances.