Catriona Menzies-Pike

I found this to be a great book and I am grateful to my daughter who lent it to me. It has a really good balance of the personal memoir of a thoughtful person and a didactic feminist sociological perspective of the history of the oppression of women as athletes. The story is inspiring in many ways and I found great emotional connection with the author's situation. It was just right for me at a time when I am unable to run due to age+injury and am contemplating my future. It asks the question: what is good about running? and it gives an answer that isn't along the standard lines. Catriona Menzies-Pike made me think and feel...what more can you ask?… (mais)

The Long Run sprints ahead of other books that I’ve read about running (which have been a lot). First of all – this is one of the only books that I’ve read about running that is female-centric – but not in the way that one might expect. Instead of being a shallow book of Pinterest self-help quotes, this book aims higher and hits the mark by delving into the psyche of women and for the reasons they run. It made me question why it was exactly that I began running a few years ago. It connects a lot of dots to running: the human psyche, feminism, culture, history and even literature. Reading this book made me realize that the author is a treasure trove of information on a myriad of topics and her ability to interrelate all of these ideas was skillfully done.

Additionally, the author looks at heroic women who have broken through social barriers in the running world and while it made me appreciate these women much more than I have previously, I also walked away with much respect and admiration for the author. She’s the everyday woman who overcame heartache and a sedentary lifestyle by transforming herself into a runner. She represents what we’re all capable of doing. Catriona Menzies-Pike is inspiring and fierce in her own right.

Many thanks to Crown Publishing and NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
… (mais)

Have you ever driven down the street when it's raining or snowing or it's blistering hot and you see someone out running? Unless you are a runner yourself, you probably write that person off as completely crazy. You might even write off as crazy a runner out on a perfectly temperate day if you aren't a runner yourself. So why exactly do people run? Why do women in particular run? Catriona Menzie-Pike looks at the larger culture of women running through history as well as how she herself came to running to overcome a decade of grief. Her thoughtful and intelligent memoir, The Long Run, is a personal, political, and social history of running.

When Catriona Menzies-Pike was just twenty years old and starting her adult life, her parents were killed in a plane crash. Ten years after that, she started running. If that makes the two sound unconnected, it shouldn't. Running became a good and healthy way for her to find her path through the grief that still sat heavily on her and it also became a way for her to learn about herself and the women who ran before her. Menzies-Pike calls herself a complacent runner rather than a competitive one but even a complacent runner is transformed by the freedom of movement. She stumbled into running a half marathon and found herself while out on the roads and paths she trod. She ran into any number of road blocks on her way to her many races but through it all, she persevered. Woven in with her own personal journey, is the history of the marathon and specifically women's place in that history. She looks at the advances of women in running as a mirror of the growth in feminism, changing social perceptions of women's abilities and place in the world, and the ongoing long run towards equality. The narrative can veer off on tangents and some chapters feel more like essays than through narrative so this is definitely not a traditional memoir but over all it works. Runners, those interested in running history, and feminists will find much to enjoy here. And maybe it will inspire some non-runners to lace up running shoes for the first time and to stride off into the rich history of women running.… (mais)