Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. If you think about it, it's kind of

incredible that we're still innovating how we run. We, as a species, have had, you know,

a few hundreds of thousands of years running, and yet some of us are trying to figure out ways

to make us a little faster, run a little farther.

Sean Brosnan is one of those people.

He's a high school cross-country coach that led his team to national championships,

and he co-wrote a memoir titled Beyond Fast,

how a renegade coach and his unlikely high school team revolutionized distance running.

And in this interview with NPR Scott

Simon, they talk about some training minutia, but Browston says what really helped him

become a winning coach was getting a hundred percent commitment out of his kids. That's ahead.

You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodriguez, Liz Cheney, or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well-informed colleagues at The New Yorker.

So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.

When Sean Brosnan started coaching the Newberry Park High School cross-country team, he made a vow

that sounds, well, overblown, even for a coach.

He said, give me total commitment and will win a state championship in four years. Newberry

hadn't even qualified for a state championship in 25 years. But within just three years,

Newberry cross-country runners were state champions.

The team would go on to win three consecutive national championships and send

scholar athletes off to Division I colleges and the Olympic Games.

Sean Brosnan has written a memoir with Chris Lear and Andrew Greif.

Beyond Fast, our renegade coach and his unlikely high school team revolutionized distance running.

...