“How Bad Do You Want It” is the best Matt Fitzgerald book, dealing with the power of mental training and motivation in endurance sports. And it has some really excellent inspiration stories of athletes digging super deep, you can’t help but go for a great run after reading about Sammy Wanjiru at the Chicago Marathon. His “Racing Weight” book and the other ones with more specific physical training recommendations are good, but they’re not really appropriate for most of UA’s audience, better for 10k to marathon runners – they have more of an emphasis on short workouts and eating the carbs you need to fuel them.
Extreme Alpinism by Twight has some out of date info and TFTNA is better for training advice but it still gets you psyched.
Dan John writes great books though he’s more focused on track and field, olympic lifting, and football than anything endurance. I like Easy Strength and Never Let Go. His best stuff is less about specific training prescriptions and more about how to be a lifelong athlete, how to incorporate training into a healthy overall lifestyle, how to figure out what matters and what doesn’t (in training or otherwise), and just how to be a good person.
Happy Runner by David Roche is a good book about mental health in sports. It’s easy to get depressed when you get injured, or your race gets canceled, or you can’t send due to bad weather, or whatever. The book is all about how to keep a healthy relationship with sport. Grizzled and angsty alpinists might find it a little too lovey-dovey but it’s good.
Then stuff about how to be a better climber – Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain by Bruce Tremper, 9 Out Of 10 Climbers Make The Same Mistakes by Dave MacLeod, Alpine Climbing Techniques To Take You Higher by Cosley and Houston, Advanced Multipitch Climbing by Andy Kirkpatrick, The Self-Coached Climber by Dan Hague, The Mountain Guide Manual by Marc Chauvin, self-rescue books, etc etc etc.
