Hi, I'm Melissa Nadwarnie, and this is Book of the Day.

Today we have two books about running, even though one of them is called This Is Not a Book

About Running. We'll get to that. First, the book The Long Run by marathoner Martin Dugard.

Perhaps you see people running a marathon and think, why would anyone subject themselves to those 26.2 miles of pain?

Or maybe you're like me training for your fourth.

Whoops.

Dugard believes the marathon is a reason to rise to the occasion.

And he spoke with Morning Edition, host A. Martinez, about that poll.

I am a runner. I started running back in the late part of the 20th century, also known as the 1990s. And these days, because of my ever-shifting work

schedule, I either run at 11 p.m. or 3 a.m., but one way or another, I got to get my miles in. Martin Dugard is an author and running coach.

His new book is The Long Run. And I started by asking him why people would voluntarily

subject themselves to the pain of running 26.2 miles. I think we're wired to do hard things.

Seriously, it's kind of perverse.

But, you know, the marathon has become one of the great bucket list items.

I think people get something real out of pushing limits they didn't know that they had.

You know, most of modern life is kind of mediocre, kind of average.

And I think that I think we like to rise above that mediocrity.

Tell us about the origins of the marathon, the long term. kind of average. And I think that I think we like to rise above that mediocrity.

Tell us about the origins of the marathon, the long-term mythological history of it.

The common story that we're told is that there was the Battle of Marathon between the Persians and the Greeks and that a messenger, a warrior messenger, a guy who actually fought in the battle, was dispatched

afterwards to tell the people of Athens that they had won.

And the legend is that he ran 40 kilometers, about 25 miles up the hill to Athens.

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