Matthew Futterman’s Running to the Edge and the ignition of passion
I want to coach.
It’s been in the back of my mind for most of my time in college, but mostly as a fallback. I picked up a majority of the credits required for a coaching minor in the last four semesters, but I never took it too seriously. Now, I wish I had.
Running to the Edge by Matthew Futterman is a non-fiction book about long-distance coach Bob Larson’s career as it leads to his coaching of the great American distance runner Meb Keflezighi. He also popularized the tempo run in America. He’s basically the foundation of distance running in the country.
He took notes from the way Kenyans and other East Africans were training, and learned that part of the secret is the team mentality, hard and long running, and unified drive towards a singular goal of getting faster – for the sake of getting faster.
The way Futterman takes the reader through Larson’s storied career could make the most running-adverse person feel a sudden need to hit the roads.
The book is full of inspirational and heartbreaking stories, rises and falls, as Futterman puts it. He takes something as simple as putting one foot in front of the other, trying to be faster each time you do, and elevates it to a drama about a coach, his athletes and their battle against the villains of shoe companies, American records, Olympic medals and those who continue to say “no you can’t.”
It wasn’t until reading this book that becoming a coach removed itself from the backburner of my mind.
There were other events that fueled the recent fire in me to bring distance running to the next generation of athletes. In December, my high school coach and the man who helped incubate my love for running in the first place died. And then, COVID-19 swooped in and took away my final season of organized competitive running.
When Coach Smawley died, my love for running and drive to compete to the best of my ability at every opportunity doubled.
When my final collegiate season got taken away by coronavirus shutdowns, it asked me to figure out where to put that passion now that I can’t compete in that same team setting that’s become the norm of my life over the past eight years.
All the while, I’ve been slowly making my way through Running to the Edge. And all the while, it’s been helping build that bridge from where I was in August to where I am now.
Thanks to Running to the Edge I can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I want to coach.
My only complaint about the book is that it’s also fueled my drive and passion for storytelling. Beyond helping me decide I want to coach, it’s made me want to tell a story like this. One that requires dedicated research and a passion for the subject matter. One that takes a man and a sport that live in relative obscurity and tells readers how much he really mattered. In the small social bubble of running, and in the way American runners have boosted national pride in races like the Olympics or the New York, London and Boston marathons.
So thanks, Matthew Futterman.
Now I’ve got to find out how to juggle a coaching career, marathon training, passion for journalism and a novel-length side project that highlights the importance of distance running in America and across the globe.