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TFS Book Review - Kenny Moore’s “Best Efforts: Great Runners and Great Races”

Posted July 8th, 2008 at 12:00 PM by Jesse Squire

Section: Motivation, Books, Special Features, TFS Reviews

kenny moore best efforts book review Best Efforts: Great Runners and Great Races, Volume 1
by Kenny Moore
Daybreak Press (Eugene, OR) 2008
Available through KennyMoore.us ($14.95)

This book, originally published in 1983, is back in print again. For years it was among the most difficult running books to find, generally going for upwards of $100 at the various online auction sites. Mostly, your options were interlibrary loan or just plain luck (as I had when stumbling across a copy of The Self-Made Olympian at a coffee shop for $3.95). In the manner you’d expect–quiet and understated–Kenny was selling and signing books in the back of a booth at the Olympic Trials this week with no advertising or fanfare. If you didn’t walk in, you wouldn’t have known.

The book is a collection of pieces written for Sports Illustrated from the ’70s through 1980, but by no means a complete one. The “Volume One” attached to this new edition refers to a planned second collection of articles from 1981 through the present. The subject are wide-ranging and include Bill Bowerman, John Akii-Bua, Roger Bannister, Steve Prefontaine, Lasse Viren, Bill Rodgers, Mary Decker, Eamonn Coghlan, the 1971 Fukuoka Marathon, the 1979 Golden Mile, and others.

Moore’s perspective is at times a participant and at times a detached observer, whichever is most appropriate. The opening piece, on the 1972 Olympics, its tragedy, and its marathon, is written in a semi-Gonzo style, allowing the reader to experience the event from the inside and the emotions and reactions of those involved. While the book starts with weighty issues, it lightens as it goes, finishing with another insider’s report on the 1971 Fukuoka World Championship marathon (where marathoners are treated like rock stars) and a weird and wonderful 312-mile stage race around (and around and around) the island of Oahu.

When profiling an athlete his writing is more like a good documentary film. You can feel the fear in Amin’s Uganda and the poverty in Tanzania when he visited John Akii-Bua and Filbert Bayi, you can see how their surroundings made Lasse Viren reserved and shy and Steve Prefontaine so loud and overbearing. Moore’s writing is almost clairvoyant; his 1978 article on Mary Decker made clear the reasons why she bawled like a baby at the 1984 Olympics (and, if she actually did turn to drugs late in her career, what her motivations were there as well).

The book as a whole is a timepiece that takes the reader back to a different era. “Muscle and Blood”, about the landmark 1975 study of elite American distance runners, lets us see almost the whole cast of characters at once and reminds us that scientists are far better at asking questions than they are at answering them.

Moore has a well-earned reputation as the best track writer in the English language. My review: 400 meters (out of 400 possible). This is on the short list of best track/running books ever. Get it before it goes out of print again.