Kings of the Road: How Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, and Alberto Salazar Made Running Go Boom by Cameron Stracher

I took a long hiatus from reading books about the Running Boom of the 1970s and 1980s. There was a point where I just wasn’t sure what more there was to learn about the era.  After reading Running with the Legends by Michael Sandrock, I had a great history lesson about the personalities of the top runners from this era as well as ththeir training. Add to that the Prefontaine library, which includes both film–Without Limits, Pre, and Fire on the Track–as well as text.

Starting Kings of the Road with the thought that I had very little to learn, but ultimately I was pleasantly surprised.

Stracher brings this book together through common geography. Namely, Stracher focuses on three men Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, and Alberto Salazar, who each hail from New England.  Building from this region, Stracher explores the history of the Falmouth road race, which was started by bar owner and amateur runner, Tommy Leonard.

As Shorter, Rodgers and Salazar head in separate directions, Falmouth becomes the place to which they return each summer for competition. This level of interconnectedness between the three men was a new idea to me.  That is to say, I had read about each man in isolation, but not so much in reference to the other.  Making the most of this overlap, Stracher highlights great moments like one in which the upstart Salazar pulls alongside Rodgers and Rodgers tells Salazar to go ahead and take the lead.

There are also clear differences between the trajectory of the three men’s careers as well. Of the three, Shorter is the only Olympic medalist, taking the gold medal in the 1972 marathon. In contrast Rodgers seemed to always struggle when the Olympics came around and then suffered the impact of the 1980 Olympic boycott.  Salazar also suffered from the boycott as it came when he was arguably at the height of his career.

My only criticism of this book has to do with a few editorial flourishes that come at the beginning of several chapters.  Within these segments Stracher makes sweeping statements about physiology, the current state of the marathon, and the barefoot running fad. I could have done without these, as each topic could be a book in itself.

The last thing that I would say about this book is that its prose is flawless. Stracher is a graduate of the Iowa writing program, and that is clear through the level of precision that he exhibits throughout Kings of the Road.