Mile Markers

May 1, 2011

In this collection of entries from her Mile Markers blog (milemarkers.runnersworld.com), Armstrong (Work in Progress: An Unfinished Woman's Guide to Grace), a contributing editor to Runner's World, writes of how running enriches her life and allows her to mark milestones. The blogs are arranged into 26 thematic chapters, exploring topics like friendship, endurance, balance, and gratitude. Threaded throughout are universal themes of family, Armstrong's community of women runners, and her spirituality. Armstrong can be witty, vulnerable, and inspiring as she opens up about her life and her running, taking us on training runs with her girlfriends and sharing her experiences of racing with her daughter. While her writing is fluid within each reprinted blog and her insights spot-on, getting to the heart and soul of a woman runner, the reprinted blog entries are not chronological, and this can be disorienting. An easy read or for dipping into, this is recommended for runners who love reading about the sport and busy mothers seeking balance.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2011

Runner's World blogger Armstrong (Happily Ever After: Walking with Peace and Courage Through a Year of Divorce, 2008, etc.) neatly packages a marathon of observations on running and womanhood into 26.2 chapters.

Although the miles of the book (as the author refers to its chapters) often begin at a distance from the author, Armstrong's steadily paced prose soon takes on a more candid tone. Each chapter is filled with fragments on a theme, which often seem like disparate thoughts struggling to mesh together. The author's repeated references to personal achievements and the inclusion of an unwieldy circle of friends, whom the reader must also befriend, may strike readers as off-putting at times—as will the constant self-promotion of her popular blog. The muscle pain and endorphin rush she describes at length may be alien to non-runners, but her renderings of the physicality of running will have readers' muscles burning with empathy. Armstrong's anecdotes are clever and amusing, likely to elicit an outright chuckle or two. Particularly resonant is a passage on how runners distinguish themselves from the pack with the messages they wear on their sleeves, ranging from political ("Free Tibet") to personal ("In honor of my dad"). The witty tone and urgency of the prose, the immediacy of the scenes she evokes and the ironic one-liners ("My mother hates to sweat") will have even non-runners stretching their reading muscles.

Part stream-of-consciousness, part self-help, but ultimately heartfelt—a compelling collection of essays, even for non-runners.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)