Eat and Run by Scott Juerk

I first came across Scott Jurek when I read Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.  After seeing a recommendation on a running site (can't remember which one - may have been www.fetcheveryone.com) I bought "Eat and Run".  Normally I would buy the physical book (still old fashioned in that department) - but this was available on kindle at the outrageous price of 1.79 - silly not too.

Being a veggie already I was interested in seeing what extra advice Scott had to offer. I have been a veggie for approaching 30 years so know must things about nutrition but never felt the need, either through health benefits or ethical consideration to turn vegan.  Besides I don't eat that much diary.

I knew already that being a veggie or a vegan didn't have a huge impact on performance - I've been passed by plenty of runners from "Vegan Runners" during races but I was interested in what an elite runner had to say on the subject.

Scott cuts his life story into chapters, with each chapter ending with a recipe.  Some of the chapters also  have running a few paragraphs of running advice.

So chopping the review into the 3 sections:

Recipes

The recipes are US centric (using cups as measurement) and some of the ingredients will be hard to source: tempeh, spirulina (got some from H&B), nutritional yeast (Ocado)

But nothing is too complicated, some recipes may take some planning but lots can be made beforehand and kept in the fridge. Even making your own rice milk sounded interesting.  I have already started using nutritional yeast as a extra add in - but can't say I have suddenly found myself having bags of energy.

Life story

The development of Scott from small town boy to ultramarthon race winner is an engaging story.  He doesn't scrimp on the detail of his home life and lays bare his feeling about his mothers illness and death.  It's a fascinating tale.  Scott also details how his relationship changes with people through his racing career - particularly his wife Leah and key pacer Dusty.  It shows that to pursue a path and be that single minded, there can be casualties along the way.

Scott writes about something I think we have lost, a pure sport that participants competed in simply for the joy of it.  Scott and his competitors weren't paid with big sponsorship deals - they lived hand to mouth, just so they could challenge themselves (and each other).

Running Nuggets of wisdom

There are plenty of quotable lines in the book and enough running tips to be useful but not so many as to turn the book into a how to guide.  Scott covers, among other things: stretching , nutrition (obviously) and up hill running.

None of this advice will give you a magic bullet - but as he says - the only way you are going to get better is to get out and run.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed the book, the death of his mother was handled so much better in this book than in Why we Run by Robin Harvie which I had read just before this.

The book also gave me an excuse to head to the kitchen and eat some food.  Running and food, is there a better combination