Notice the pronoun in that title: See How WE Run. It's not a "they," about runners we could be only in our wildest dreams. And it's not an "I," another memoir of mine (which I've already written, three times over). The "we" signals that we're in this together, whether we're side by side on the same course or reaching out across space and time for our companionship. My job here is as it always was in the newsletter called Running Commentary (1982-2007): to write for and about all of us.

The Going Far book mimics its memoir predecessor, Starting Lines, in format by visiting days that set the course of my life. But something is different this time. In Starting Lines, I recreated the stories largely from my memories and family legends because I did no writing of this type at the time. By 1967, however, I was a more-than-fulltime writer. It was my job, as a journalist, and also my hobby, as a daily journal-keeper. So this book draws heavily from published works and diary pages written when events were current. They refresh memories that had faded and correct those that time had...

Sometime between claiming my first Social Security check at 62 and signing on with Medicare at 65, I heard an offhand comment by a fellow writer on running from the same age-group. Rich Benyo, editor of Marathon & Beyond, had finished writing his life story and urged me to get going on mine. -Our age is the best time to write memoirs, - he said. -We're old enough to have had the experiences, but still young enough to remember what they were.- My second big push was a cancer diagnosis. Doctors found this disease early and treated it well, but the episode still left me thinking: Better get...

"A revolutionary is where you find him," wrote running's leading writer, Dr. George Sheehan, as he reflected on the revolution-charged 1960s. "He could be the guy next door. Joe Henderson looks like a typical guy next door. Out of Iowa, he has the smile and style of the heartland of America. But he has fallen for that old Socratic saw that the unexamined life is not worth living. The first result was revolt, rebellion and a booklet called Long Slow Distance: The Humane Way to Train. The LSD method of running that Henderson espouses is not new. He has simply systematized it and, in effect,...

In his updated introduction, Joe Henderson names Long Run Solution as his favorite book of the two dozen he has published: "This book is my clearest statement of how I feel about running. Much of what I've written since its original publication in 1976 is touched on here, and most of these feelings have changed little in the meantime. Naming LRS as my favorite book might sound like a knock on the books that have followed, but it really isn't. They served purposes, just as races do after the last personal record is set. There is value -- even a certain nobility -- in keeping going after we've...

These days I write as I've long written. The first stop for the words is a page in an ongoing journal, and more often than not they go no further. These writings almost always end at a single page. The frequency is daily, with no days off. The setting for this writing is an office at home that doubles as a bedroom for visitors. The writing has truly come home again, to a house where I finally feel very much at home. I've been here since 1992, but took a long time and a long and winding road to find this home. I'd looked for one again ever since leaving my early hometown of Coin, Iowa. Over...

(from the Foreword, titled "Walking Lessons") Walking lessons? You might think these are as unnecessary as eating or breathing lessons. Isn't walking a skill we learn around the age of one, pretty much master by two and then never forget. Not really. Children don't suddenly stand up and walk. Their first steps are lunging runs into the arms of waiting parents. They don't slow down much until their teenaged years, then soon get a driver's license and thereafter limit their walking to crossing parking lots or trekking home when the car breaks down. A few of us keep running after learning to...

George Sheehan liked to say when he borrowed lines from other great thinkers, -We stand on the shoulders of giants.- My take is that we run beside and behind these people. They set our pace, leading us to places we couldn't have gone by ourselves. People stories have always been my favorite type to read. They give life to the times and techniques. They inspire as well as inform. A gap in my book writing, now about to be closed, was not giving proper credit and enough thanks to the people who were with me on every mile run and every line typed. I call them my pacesetters in this book with that...

(from the Introduction) This book book travels through my post-Runner's World years. When the editor cut me loose in late 2003, I still had many more miles to go - on foot and as coach, as well as in print. These are stories about some of those miles. My column moved to Marathon & Beyond, where most of those pieces continued to tell, in serial form, what I kept doing after RW said I was done. The book rests heavily, though not exclusively, on those magazine columns.