This website has been developed to provide an evidence-based resource for those interested in barefoot or minimal footwear running.

2:20:11

5th American in 2:22:38

“The running shoe right now is doing nothing for preventing injuries,” said Reed Ferber, director of the Running Injury Clinic at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Kinesiology. But, he adds, going barefoot has downsides too, and the research so far is still inconclusive. “It’s a total tradeoff.”

Chris McDougall, author of the recent book Born to Run, goes further. “If this were a drug, it would be yanked off the market,” he said of running shoes. McDougall says his own persistent problems with plantar fasciitis cleared up after he started running in Vibram FiveFingers.

Breakaway Books published OAR’s sequel, Again to Carthage, in 2007; a 6,000-copy first printing sold out in three weeks. Runner’s World excerpted the new novel, and the article caught the eye of agent Byrd Leavell, of the Waxman Literary Agency. He read it, and was inspired to contact Parker and try to get a publisher to reissue the book. Six houses bid, and the winner was Brant Rumble at Scribner. Parker is working on a prequel to OAR, titled Cold Island Blues. Leavell said he will bring it to Scribner in April.

Debatable:
The only place where Once A Runner falls short of perfection is, inevitably, in the novel's climax, Parker's depiction of The Race. In a valiant attempt to convey Cassidy's internal thoughts and emotions, Parker's language loses the freshness and originality of previous chapters, instead reverting to the hackneyed clichés and tired aphorisms so common in sports-writing today. He still succeeds in creating a gripping scene of drama, but fails to capture the true essence of Cassidy's spiritual, personal effort.

There won't be a threepeat: This time next year, Once a Runner will no longer be eligible. The novel's place atop Bookfinder's list caught the eye of Brant Rumble, an editor at Scribner, which is printing new copies in April. A nonrunner, Rumble told me he nevertheless found himself "completely engrossed" in the detailed descriptions of Quenton's runs.

That puts Rumble in a small minority. The paradoxical nature of the novel's popularity—it was the most-wanted book that not enough people wanted anymore—suggests an intense but narrow appeal. There's a reason Once a Runner has never managed to find a mainstream audience. It aggrandizes the insular world of running in a way that, with due respect to its new publisher, no nonrunner could possibly relate to. It is written for runners—and to keep nonrunners out. But it also nails the running life like no other novel ever has.

Kevin Patrick talks with author John L. Parker about his books - the classic Once a Runner and the new Again to Carthage - why he wrote them in the first place, and why he came back to write the sequel decades later, his own health and life and reprinting Once a Runner.

Last month, I sat down with John L. Parker in the corporate offices of Fleet Feet Sports in Carrboro, NC to interview him about the much-anticipated sequel to Once a Runner, Again to Carthage.

"It just blows my mind," said Jerry Parker, John Parker's younger brother. "When it first came out, we couldn't give copies away. Now, we have people - multiple people - telling us they legally changed their name to Quenton Cassidy. After 30 years, it's an overnight success."

Having printed 5,000 copies, Parker then dispatched the novel to running-shoe stores. Sometimes the copies came back, and with notes that were not appreciative. So he went to races in a T-shirt with iron-on letters. "It was blue, I think," he said, "and the lettering on the back just said something like 'Free Book' and there was an arrow pointing sort of up over my shoulder, indicating that you needed to pass me to win a free book." He wanted to make sure that other runners knew he was a real runner. He wanted to make sure they knew he was fast.

"Man, talk about hubris," Parker said. "The back cover of that first edition actually listed my PRs."

I have chosen to do a term paper on Once a Runner for my AP English class. The assignment is to choose a book with personal significance, preferably a work ?outside the traditional literary cannon,? and write four to six interrelated but separate essays on reading the focal text. The first essay is an introduction of content, themes, contexts, and significance. The following essays must begin with an epigraph, examine a ?broad human truth,? and contain an encounter with another reader, such as a critic, a family member, or the author in another venue. I come here in search of encounters with fellow readers, as I doubt any literary criticism on Once a Runner even exists, and no one in my family has read the book. I will copy/paste a few of the quotations I?m looking at below. Feel free to comment on them in particular, on any other aspect of the book, or even on anything tangentially related to Once a Runner.

I hear they paid over $150,000 for the rights, which is kind of insane but also kind of not. I suppose they’ll publish in hardcover, I bet they’re hoping for media (timed to Fall marathon season?), a tie-in with the paperback edition of Again to Carthage (Parker’s sequel, which came out October 2007), big library sales, and a backlist title that will sell forever. At least, that’s the minimum I’d hope for, if I were in their (running) shoes.

They don't refuse to reprint Parker's running novel 'Once a Runner' but the 7 or 8 printings since it first appeared have not been enough for consumer demand. About 10 copies (it's a paperback) turn up every week on Ebay, only shagged out examples making less than $100, never less than $80 and decent ones can make over $150. The edition is almost immaterial. I suspect that people buy it there, read it, and then put it up again. I calculate that Ebay make about $3000 a year in fees from this one paperback alone.

Perhaps most perplexing, the fiction list is ruled by “Once a Runner,” John L. Parker’s 1978 novel about, um, running. My favorite line, courtesy of the book’s Wikipedia page: ” ‘A 3:58 or so, Cass.’ He looked up seriously from his chowder. Cassidy sipped his tea morosely. These things were not to be bantered about lightly. It was bad luck to put your mouth on times your feet couldn’t reach.”

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