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Book Review: All American. The Rise and Fall of Jim Thorpe

by Coach Adolfo Salgueiro | Nov 23, 2021 | Book Review, Opinion

Written by Bill Crawford

Reviewed by Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

James Francis Thorpe (1887-1953) was a member of the Sac and Fox Nation who became labeled as “The Best Athlete in the World” By King Gustav of Sweden after winning both the pentathlon and decathlon in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. He was also a college and professional football player, first President of the NFL (1920) and if that weren’t enough, also played Major League Baseball, among many athletic achievements.

As a lifetime sports fan, the name of Jim Thorpe evoked victory, nostalgia, athletic triumph and unfair treatment by the powerful institutions of sports of the earlier parts of the 20th Century.

As an early fan of sports history, Thorpe caught my attention at a young age mainly because of his Olympic triumphs, and because he also played Major League Baseball, of which I was a big fan at the time. The more I read about this mysterious character, the more the legend of “the best athlete in the world” grew for me. Then, as an adult, you get your hands on a serious biographical text like this one and you get to delve into so much more. I knew he was involved in other sports activities but wasn’t aware of the extent of it. Well, now I am.

The book covers in detail the birth of amateur sports and how the entire concept became established. It was a way for the snobby British of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries to keep the working class from competing against them. To keep the riffraff away. It was not about being paid to compete or win, it was about having to work to make a living instead of dedicating your life to leisure and sports. This forces the question: who was the amateur and who was the pro? I have read other books where this is explained the same fashion, so I tend to believe the theory.

Jim Thorpe at the 1912 Olympics

Bill Crawford’s book should be a bonanza for football fans. Even though it was not his favorite sport, Thorpe was one of the great football players from the early days when the game was just getting established. It goes into plenty of detail on the evolution of the game, its main characters at the college and professional levels, both on and off the field. If you couldn’t care less about football, about sixty percent of this book may not be of your interest. I fall in that category but was able to make the best out of it just because I had so much interest on getting to know more about Mr. Thorpe.

His Olympic prowess and details of his participation at the Stockholm 1912 Olympics are covered in just one chapter. His participation in Major League Baseball is no more than anecdotal. His spectacular riise and fall are explained in detail, which is an important aspect of why his name became the historic figure we all know, today.

In summary, All American is a good book and if you are interested in learning about the man behind the myth, it will be money and time well spent. But if you are looking for a book about running, Olympic triumph and competition, this is not it.

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Book Review – Arthur Lydiard: Master Coach

by Coach Adolfo Salgueiro | Oct 26, 2021 | Book Review, Coaching

By Garth Gilmour

Reviewed by Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

While names like Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Eliud Kipchoge, Grete Waitz, Haile Gebrselassie or Fred Lebow are known by many as some of the most influential people in the history of contemporary running, Arthur Lydiard’s is less known by the masses. Yet, most of our training plans, including some for the aforementioned runners, are based on Lydiard’s periodization principles. Born in New Zealand in 1917 (passed away in 2004), he is well known among coaching circles and by those curious enough to figure out where the basics of their training plans are coming from.

A well written book worth the time and money for those who care about the history of running.

Arthur was a local running elite who started keeping track of his training and figuring out what worked better for him. He focused on what made him better and discarded that what did not. He was no physiologist, medical doctor, or scientist. He was a shoemaker with a side gig as a milk deliveryman who just loved to run and get better at it.

His main discovery is that gains needed to be obtained slowly over time for the body to adapt and them to stick. That when the body adapts to the stimuli this gains remain and from there you can build on them. He realized that not everybody needs to run 50×400 like Emil Zatopek to become a better runner. The key for any distance from 800 to the marathon is endurance and you could obtain such endurance by developing your cardiovascular system. You do so by taking your time and running a lot of miles while recovering so you can do it, again.

As his New Zealand track and field teams had successful Olympic Games in 1960 and 1964, and Peter Snell, Murray Halberg and Barry Magee became household names in the world stage, coaches from around the world started approaching Arthur. Suddenly, Lydiard was “discovered” and became a coaching guru traveling the world.

Lydiard epitomized the Luke 4:24 biblical verse: “no prophet is accepted in his hometown”. Despite his multiple successes taking many compatriots into the top of the world stage, he kept fighting with the local sporting authorities who refused to accept his methods and ended up spreading his knowledge around the globe while New Zealanders were left behind.

Olympic Committees from Mexico, Finland, and Venezuela trusted him with the training of his athletes, some with better results than others. Japanese coaches and runners visited New Zealand to train with him. During the boom of Japanese world-class marathoners of the early to mid-eighties, Toshihiko Seko and the So twins, Shigeru, and Takeshi, were in part, his success.

Thet op runners of the Japanese world-class runners boom from the eighties were product of Lydiard’s principles: Toshihiko Seko, Takeshi and Shigeru Soh.

Lydiard’s periodization principles were so effective and revolutionary, that swimmers and horse trainers adopted them with the necessary adjustments and saw results. It has been used for decades by some of the most successful performers in those disciplines.

The March/April 1992 issue of Peak Running Performance magazine said: Lydiard\’s program epitomizes one general, but very critical concept related to exercise and sports physiology. This broad principle is gradual adaptation. While most athletes would call this \”plain old common sense\”, experience tells us that common sense is not so common–especially among runners who have a strong desire to improve their running.

Author Garth Gilmour condensed Arthur’s work in the following paragraph:

“First tested and found successful in the 1950s, the Lydiard system has undergone some subtle refinements through the years. But it remains the same elemental theory that first placed a small handful of ordinary runners, from Lydiard\’s immediate neighborhood in an Auckland, New Zealand, suburb, at the forefront of world middle and distance running for more than a decade and then, as Lydiard advanced from being a coach of runners to an international coach of coaches, spread around the running tracks and training centers of the entire world.”

This is a biography on the subject, not a scientific treaty of his findings or the application of his training theories. Sure, Lydiard may not be the sexiest of subjects for everyday runners, but he was an innovator with a legacy worth knowing about. Arthur Lydiard: Master Coach is well written book, pleasant to read. Well worth your time and money if you care for the creator of the core in which most of our training plans are based on.

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Book Review: A Runner’s High

by Coach Adolfo Salgueiro | Jul 13, 2021 | Book Review

By Dean Karnazes
Reviewed by: Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

Since the unexpected success of his first book, Ultramarathon Man, back in March 2005, Dean Karnnzes has become a running celebrity. His superhuman feats of endurance and adventure have inspired thousands of ex-runners to lace up their shoes once again, and new ones to start pounding the asphalt for the very first time.

This book is a good investment in time and money

In “A Runners High”, Karnazes tells a variety of running stories interlaced with his preparation and participation in the 2019 edition of the Western States Endurance Run. This is a 100-Mile race that has become the Boston Marathon equivalent of the ultrarunning world. It takes place in the California Sierra Nevada during the last weekend of June. It ran for the first time in 1977.

The narrative starts with Karnazes preparing to run the Bishop High Sierra Ultramarathon, a 100K race in preparation for his eventual participation in the Western States, where the narration culminates. In the meantime, there are many first-person accounts and running stories that, even if many runners can’t relate, they are told in such a quotidian, non-technical, well described and no aggrandizing way, that if you have run for a few years, you will be able to visualize, identify and even feel the glory and the suffering of the storyteller.

The author also delves into the dynamics of his family and their intersection with his demanding running career and life. His son Nicholas and his parents, as well as their interactions, become important figures in the narration. As a runner, son, and father, I can definitely identify with many of those situations. His wife and daughter also made important appearances, but to a lesser degree.

As the weeks pass by and events take course during the span of a few months, some of Karnazes latest running adventures, the ones that haven’t made it to his previous books, make an appearance. His running of the Silk Road through Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan is the story I liked the best. It shows how running can become part of US diplomacy. It also takes you through some of the roads least traveled by every-day US citizens. His interaction with the locals and their customs is well told though very illustrative anecdotes.

“We discover who we are through the movement of our bodies” – Dean Karnazes

Then, of course, it comes Western States, where the whole gamut of human emotions show up at one point or another. From euphoria to misery, and everything in between, take their turn as part of the racing experience. Through these emotions, he masterfully takes the reader through the understanding of the peaks and valleys of ultrarunning, even if he/she has never ventured beyond the thin line that separated “regular” running from ultrarunning.

Not sure if it was the vivid description of the misery he went through or that I don’t feel like the Western States are in my future, but the one thing I can say about this Karnazes book when comparted to his previous ones (which I’ve read them all), is that after finishing this one I didn’t feel the rush to lace up my shoes and go for a long run. Somehow, this experience was not relatable to me, while his other ones, while are not in my future either, were. But that is not a judgment on the book’s value, just a personal assessment.

As usual, Karnazes comes up sometimes with marvelous nuggets of running wisdom that become some of the most quoted in running. This one is the one that blew my mind; thus, I share:

“Running is a conversation, and education, a revolution, an awakening. We discover who we are through the movement of our bodies, and there are lessons to be learned in running alone much as there are in running large races”.

This is a good running book that most runners will enjoy and somehow relate. Entertaining, well-written, funny at times and deep at others without leaving you gloomy or mentally exhausted. A good investment of time and money.

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What Motivates Runners

by Coach Adolfo Salgueiro | Jun 22, 2021 | Reflection, Science

By Coach Adolfo Salgueiro

I was recently having a conversation with a group of friends regarding the reasons we lace up our shoes three, four, or five times a week. It became obvious that even though most of us may have the same basic reasons, if we dig deeper and list the top five things that motivate us to engage in this sport, the lists will be as unique as the uniqueness of each runner.

When it comes to running, we all have a main reason why we do it. The answers can fit into a wide spectrum ranging from “because I like it” through “I just can’t stop”, with infinite shades in between.

As I was recently re-reading “The Science of Running” (a book by Steve Magness, which I highly recommend to anyone wanting to delve very deep into the subject of the title), I was surprised to see a section with an array of scientific studies that classify runners according to their motivations.

Three of them caught my attention, and thus, I share them with you here, so you can find where you fit based on each one of them.

According to a paper titled “Motives for Participation in Recreational Running”, published in The Journal of Leisure Research by Peter Clough, John Shepherd and Ronald Maughan, back in 1989, runners’ motivations could be divided into six groups:

a.    Well-Being
b.    Social
c.    Challenge
d.    Status
e.    Fitness/Health
f.     Addiction

According to this study, while most leisure activities include one or many aspects of the first four aforementioned reasons, the last two separate running from other activities. Interesting to me is the last one. I am sure we all know someone we consider “addicted to running”, but to realize there are scholarly studies that actually classify addiction as a real motivation for the sport, puts such compulsion in a new light. At least for me.

In his latest book, “A Runner’s High”, Dean Karnazes states: “If running is a drug that threatens my life, let me have it”.

Magness also cites a study titled “Motivations for running and eating attitudes in obligatory versus nonobligatory runners” by Heather Slay, Jumi Hayaki, Melissa A. Napolitano and Kelly D. Brownell, published in 1998 in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

As the title suggests, runners were separated in two groups based on the reasons they participate in our sport. This study separated those who run because they want from the ones who run because they must. The “Obligator” group is motivated by negative or external factors. These are the runners that if they take a week off will start thinking they are letting themselves down or the pounds will start creeping in by tomorrow. On the opposite side are the ones who just run because they want to. That is where I fit in, and I just prefer it this way.

The third study that caught my attention is a paper titled “A typology of marathon runners based on cluster analysis of motivations”, published in 2003 in the Journal of Sports Behavior by B.M. Ogles and K.S. Masters. In this one, marathoners are separated into five categories based on their motivation:

a.    Running Enthusiasts
b.    Lifestyle Managers
c.    Personal Goal Achievers
d.    Personal Accomplishers
e.    Competitive Achievers

Runners train in Ngong, Kenya, in 2012. The country has produced the world’s best distance runners for decades, and most belong to the Kalenjin people.

Of course, there are many more motivations for running. According to a study by Professor Vincent Onywera in 2006, the main motivator for Kenyan Elite Runners is financial gain. Lower in their list are talent and national tradition.

If you read the recently published book “Out of Thin Air”, by anthropologist Michael Crawley, you will realize that Ethiopian runners have the same financial motivation, even those who are still far of the “elite” label but working towards it.

Financial is not a motivation for 99.9% of the readers of this blogpost. If anyone fits into the 0.1% remaining, please identify yourself.

This blogpost ended up a bit denser on science than I what I originally intended, but I found this subject fascinating. Somehow, I am sure we can all find ourselves in each one of these studies and understand a bit more why we do this. Because if you are a runner, it doesn’t matter what motivates you, as long as it keeps you moving forward.

Any thoughts? Leave me a comment, below.

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The Inspirational Story of Marie Bartoletti

by Coach Adolfo Salgueiro | Mar 9, 2021 | Guest Perspective, Reflection

By Marie Bartoletti

My name is Marie Bartoletti. I am a proud daughter, mother, girlfriend, and athlete. I have done many things in my life, including the completion of 500 marathons.

Marie finished the 2021 A1A Marathon on February 14th, 2021, in 4:38:26, her 500th.

I was born on August 2nd, 1957 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, into a large family with four brothers and two sisters. I grew up playing sports and having fun with my siblings. I’ve always had a passion for running and athletics. In my lifetime, I have extended this passion to many areas. I have been a physical education teacher and coach of all types. I have hiked, biked, and ran all over the world, even been on a Wheaties box!

I have also faced a great deal of struggles. On November of 2015, I had a massive stroke. This has disrupted my life in so many ways but has only pushed me to be stronger. It has been a long recovery process and I take so much pride in my ability to continue overcoming these struggles every day.

The side effect of the stroke I was most concerned with, was the loss in my ability to speak. It appeared I could understand everything but not respond with my words. This hit me extremely hard as I am a very social, outgoing person. I began to do rigorous therapy and continue to work on my speech to this day.

The doctors were shocked to find out that I required no physical therapy after my stroke. I was able to complete all the challenges they tasked me with in the hospital. I was so thankful to find this out. After having already lost so much of my speech ability, I feared losing my physical talents as well. I continued to persevere through these struggles and remain passionate about everything I do.

I have run in 181 marathons since my stroke. This is something that gives me great pride because I enjoy competing in marathons very much!

My first marathon was Pittsburgh, on May 7th of 1995. This race taught me my first real lessons about how to run marathons. I finished in 4:01:48. My biggest mistake was that I neglected to drink water in preparation for the race. Even throughout the race I turned down fluids. I was in terrible pain and completely worn down after this experience. I committed to never running another marathon again. Clearly that did not stick.

Marie’s inspirational story is written in this book. Directions on how to acquire it are at the bottom of this post.

My next marathon was in South Bend, Indiana. This was the town in which my mother was born, and my brother Tom, lived. I started the trend of traveling for marathons early, this was number two. Throughout the next few years, I continued to run marathons while also competing nationally in tennis, another passion of mine. Fast forward to 2005, I had traveled to Hawaii to achieve my goal of running a marathon in each state. This marathon also was my 50th. In the running world this is called my titanium marathon. I was able to check off both boxes with one race.

I have gone through many injuries including operations on my bunions, broken ankles, and several concussions. Through each of these injuries I have learned perseverance. Remarkable instances in my life were my 300th and 500th marathons. They both took place at the A1A Marathon in Ft Lauderdale, Florida, on 2/15/2015 and 2/14/2021. 200 races and almost exactly six years apart.

The 500th marathon, earlier this year, was a major accomplishment for me. I have gone through so much and I was so excited to achieve such a remarkable feat. In 2019 I published a book that tells my life story. I explain how I have persevered through so much and continue to be strong every day. This book is titled “Perseverance: How a Determined Athlete Tenaciously Overcame a Stroke”. I have sold numerous copies due to how inspirational people have found my journey.

I would have not been able to do any of this without the support of my amazing family and friends. I have two lovely sons who have given me beautiful grandchildren. I am so thrilled to watch them grow up as well. My boyfriend, John, was present when my stroke occurred and has been essential to my recovery throughout the years. I am a devout Catholic and I pray to God and thank him every day for these blessings in my life.

My 500th marathon was a very prideful moment, but I am most proud of the beautiful life that I am fortunate enough to live every day.

Editor’s Note: This blogpost is just a quick snapshot of Marie’s inspirational story. To find more about it, you can purchase her book by sending $23.75 to:
Marie Bartoletti
5495 Library Rd Apt 20
Bethel Park, PA 15102

2022 UPDATE: During the Miami Half Marathon, I caught up with Marie at about Mile 6. She was pacing the marathon. I have never met her in person. I approached her and as soon as I said hi, she knew who I was. It was a heartwarming experience do exchange a few words during an actual race.

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