Reviews and Praise

Timeless Words from a Wise Man
The essays George Sheehan published 20 years ago still inform and inspire

           Remember the '70s? Disco? Bell-bottoms and leisure suits? The running boom? While the plastic music and god-awful getups are making a somewhat ironic comeback, it's worth noting that, once the world started running, it never really stopped. More people are joining running clubs and participating in road races than ever before. What has changed, it seems, is the mind-set behind the miles.
           Back in 1978 a middle-aged New Jersey cardiologist-turned-marathon-runner named George Sheehan published a collection of essays called Running & Being, which spent 14 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. To be a best-seller these days, a book on marathoning would have to be titled Running & Having Really Good Abs. Runners have largely shed the spiritual side of their sport like a sweaty T-shirt. Which makes the 20th-anniversary edition of Running & Being so intriguing. Can the man whom USA Today called the voice of the running movement, and whom Bill Rodgers termed "the spirit of our sport" still have something to say to a reader in the '90s?
           The revelation upon rereading Sheehan, who died of cancer in 1993 at age 74, is just how unpretentious a guru he was. A modestly accomplished college miler who took up the sport again in his mid-40s in hopes of recapturing some of the fitness he had lost during years of practicing medicine and helping his wife, Mary Jane, raise their 12 kids, Sheehan began writing a fitness column for a newspaper in Red Bank, N.J., in 1968. "As a writer," he once said, "I'm Eddie Stanky, a .230 hitter….When I write, I tell who I am, what I'm like, what I've discovered running."
           It was a discovery other runners were eager to share, and Sheehan showed them the route. "There on a country road, moving at eight miles an hour, I discover the total universe, the natural and the supernatural that wise men speculate about," he wrote. Sheehan was fond of quoting wise men from Socrates to Thoreau to Vince Lombardi. Citing Pascal, he wrote, " We are not. We hope to be." Sheehan was relentlessly honest in his self-assessments. "Like most distance runners," he wrote in Running & Being, "I have all the bad features of a saint without any of the redeeming ones. Pity the family and friends who have to care for us."
           As this book makes clear, there are rewards along the way. Certainly for anyone who has ever laced on a pair of trainers and slogged through a couple of miles of what Sheehan liked to call "play," the good doctor's musings and observations to excel, his inveterate quoting-his sheer enthusiasm for the long run of life-made him, then and now, a delightful companion.
SPORTS ILLUSTRATED December 28/January 4 1999 issue

"As the 'guru' and 'philosopher king' of running, you have informed and motivated us to follow your teachings. You're an inspiration to us all."
President Bill Clinton, 1993

"Aerobics and Running&Being changed the world. I am delighted to see that this legendary book is being reintroduced which hopefully will improve the health of millions as it did two decades ago."
Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper
Founder and Chairman,
Cooper Aerobics Institute

"George's mind always outran us. More than anyone, he widened running's moral purpose, which was not to live longer but to live better, to have more energy and self-worth and clarity for all the more important things to do in life."
Robert Lipsyte
New York Times

"Running&Being is scripture. It is the holy text held in reverence not only by runners but by all who value the existence which is fully engaged. George Sheehan heeds Socrates' exhortation to examine life deeply. He finds it abundantly rich if we but have the courage to seek it."
Dr. Walter Bortz II
The American Medical Association,
Task Force on Aging

"With Running&Being, George sets the standard. It remains the philosophical bible for all runners and is a genuine classic. This should be mandatory reading for any athlete looking for answers to the game of life."
Joe Henderson
Runner's World

"In Running&Being, Sheehan restores and reminds us of the physical, mental, and spiritual potential will all hold. He allows us to believe we can all be winners. We can all learn from his lucid analysis of the 'total experience.'"
Jeff Galloway
Author, Galloway on Running

More thoughts on Dr. Sheehan:

"No one makes you feel better about being a runner."
Jim Fixx, 1979

"The undisputed voice of running."
George Hirsch, Publisher, Runner's World

"His voice is irreplaceable. No one did has much for the sport of running."
Bill Rodgers, Marathon Champion

"Like the works of his beloved Thoreau and Emerson, Sheehan's writings will become classics."
Tim Noakes, M.D., Author, The Lore of Running

"He was as fluid with his speech as he was with his running."
Joan Benoit Samualson,
Olympic Champion

"George Sheehan may be our most important philosopher of sport."
Sports Illustrated

" The unwavering foundation of the running movement for the last 25 years. He was the dean of runners. There will never be another like him."
Dr. Ken Cooper, 1993