Marathon Man: My 26.2-Mile Journey from Unknown Grad Student to the Top of the Running World - Hardcover

"I've been reading Bill Rodgers' book, Marathon Man, and they let him go. And I tried to visualize that, race the way he did." --Meb Keflezighi, moments after winning the 2014 Boston Marathon

"Required Reading" --New York Post

"This book is more than a good read. It's my new Bible." --Fitness

"An absorbing portrait...of the grueling stress and subtle strategizing of long-distance races, and of the plucky, slapdash subculture of marathoning in its salad days." --Publishers Weekly

"Bill Rodgers is the most celebrated men's distance runner in history." --National Distance Running Hall of Fame

"If anyone can rally runners to a cause, it is Rodgers, who remains by some measures the most popular road racer of all time" --Runners World

"Trace the popularity of road running today, and the roots lead back to Rodgers." --South Bend Tribune

"I could see reading this book on the beach and being inspired to do an afternoon run." --Ross Martinson, co-owner of Philadelphia Runner writing for BeWellPhilly.com's Summer Reading List

The legendary long-distance runner details his historic victory in the 1975 Boston Marathon that launched the modern running boom

Within a span of two hours and nine minutes, Bill Rodgers went from obscurity to legend, from Bill Rodgers to "Boston Billy." In doing so, he instantly became the people's champ and the poster boy for the soulful 1970s distance runner. Having won the Boston Marathon and New York Marathon four times each, he remains the only marathoner to have appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated twice. Winning the Holy Grail of marathons in an unthinkable record time changed Bill's life forever.

But his dramatic breakthrough in Boston also changed the lives of countless others, instilling in other American runners the belief that they could follow in his footsteps, and inspiring thousands of regular people to lace up their shoes and chase down their own dreams. In the year before Rodger's victory at the 1975 Boston Marathon, 20,000 people had completed a marathon in the United States. By 2009, participants reached nearly half a million.

Thirty-seven years later Bill Rodgers still possesses the same warm, endearing, and whimsical spirit that turned him into one of America's most beloved athletes. In Marathon Man he details for the first time this historic race and the events that led him there.