This book was hilarious! If you are a runner, want to be a runner, know a runner, have ever run, or have ever wondered what you would do if a bear started chasing you, this book is a great book to read. I say book, it is really really short. Only a 3 hours audiobook, which I recommend. (most audiobooks are closer to 12-18 hours long).
A really really fun read.

A fun quick read with jokes coming at you a mile a minute. Would highly recommend this for new runners.

Fans of smart, self-deprecating humor will love this book. The sports advice is not bad, but there are better books about marathon training.

This is a a lovely quick read for me as a casual runner stuck in an airport- the author is self deprecating but just the right amount, and tells a very honest story about running his marathon. It's inspiring in the sense that this is an ordinary man who pushed himself to his own limits and beyond, with a sense of humour that lit my life up for a few hours. The story, the doodles and the little internal tips and lists were a good inspiration to get back to the grind and pick up some new races!

As someone who tries, a lot, too loose weight, this book was an inspiration to know that part of succeeding is failing a lot. It's humor is dry and I'm not honestly sure how much of this is true, it's great to know that you can achieve small victories that will gradually lead to bigger ones. If all you need is a laugh, this is a good place for it.

quick, entertaining read

Revising this review as of 4/23

I read this book when training for my first marathon. I'm now preparing to train for my third marathon. With two completed full marathons, and many more half marathons, under my belt, I felt the need to revisit and revise my review for this book.

My additional experiences as a middle age adult training for marathons make me downgrade this review to one star. I'd like to explain why, especially for any other late blooming runners, or new marathoners out there reading this.

I'm not sure who this writer intended their readership to be. Elite or accomplished runners wouldn't seem to be the audience here, nor would young runners in the prime of their training years. The perfect reader for this book would seem to be like the author: middle aged, amateur runners who are looking to get into shape, cross something off of their bucket list, run for a cause, etc. Many of these runners may not be particularly fast, at least not at the beginning.

Like several of the other reviewers here, I was shocked when I read the author's finish time for the marathon he ultimately runs in this book. He is a solid middle-of-the-pack runner, especially in a NYC marathon field, which in my (admittedly limited) experience tends to skew slightly faster than some other cohorts. NYC is also a fairly challenging course. He won't be giving the elites anything to worry about - but he's completely respectable, especially for his very first full marathon, when many people just aim to finish! There's nothing wrong with that. It's pretty awesome. The problem is, he bangs on and on and on in this book about how pitifully slow he is, how he isn't even really running, how slow and ponderous he is compared to all of the runners around him... If he's finishing his first full marathon ever around four and a half hours - he's not slow. I'm not sure if he's comparing himself to collegiate finish times, or the paces of much younger male runners, or...?

I would think that maybe he was just insecure. Maybe it really felt like that to him, in which case I could give him a pass. However, his assertion that he finished NYC in approx four and a half hours and they were already cleaning up the finish area is a straight-up falsehood. There's no way. I ran NYC in 2018 and finished in just over five hours. It was still light out, and they were nowhere near cleaning up. Runners were still coming over the line more than two hours later, and the finish area was still fully set up for them. The NYC marathon in particular prides itself on being there for the final finishers.

I understand this author was trying to write a funny, entertaining book. My worry is that the new runners most attracted to this title will be discouraged after reading it. If someone is running 11-12-13+ min miles and this author acts like his sub-30min 5k (his FIRST 5k!) was embarrassing, that gives a rather unrealistic impression of how most average recreational runners should expect to finish. It's sad, because there are some funny, insightful things in this book, but they're drowned out by all the negative talk.

Hilarious, especially if you are a mid-to-back-of-the-pack runner like I consider myself to be.

This book is a breeze to read and really funny. Written by a Simpsons writer and clocking in at about 100 pages (with pictures, which are also funny) I finished this in one sitting.

As a person who sloughed through a marathon (and all the training) a lot of Cohen's musings were very akin to my experiences. The marathon hurt like hell, but saying I finished it will be forever. This book is the opposite of that. It was over in a moment and I really enjoyed it.

I really should have liked this more than I did. I'm a slowish runner, someone who you would never suspect runs marathons and I'm 4 weeks out from the New York City marathon.

I got really annoyed with the author going on about how slow he is and how "real" runners looked at him with disdain. He ran his first marathon in 4:26. He is not slow. He is average. He also does some pace shaming saying that "Al Roker, the TODAY show weatherman, ran the 2010 New York City Marathon in 7:09. At around sixteen minutes per mile, the verb “ran” may be questionable here." The whole point of the book is "just get out and do it" so this is totally against that whole idea.

I found the humour a bit much. Like inserting stupid jokes for the sake of inserting stupid jokes.

Also just the whole casualness of running a marathon bothered. "Hey I want to run a marathon so I just donated a whole bunch of money myself to get a charity bib!" Well good for you for having the means to do this, but for the majority of runners, getting into the New York City Marathon is a challenge - whether it's pushing to qualify, the anticipation of the lottery or actually going out to raise money for charity. "I just signed up for a marathon - guess I need some proper shoes!" . Blah.

I almost gave this 2 stars cause again, I really should have loved this. I've been saving this book and purposely started it exactly one month prior to the marathon. However it did redeem itself a bit towards the end - I did love the description of the race itself. Than it lost me again with the detail account of all of his training runs, complete with paces ("slow" 9 minute miles). Anyways, might be for some people but not for everyone.