I consider myself a newbie runner with only a few months (and under 20 miles a week) under my belt and am training for my first half marathon so I thought this would be helpful. In general, I found that it was not. There were a few nuggets of useful information but overall, it seemed like common sense stuff, or maybe I have just done more research already than the average woman starting running would/has?

Right from the beginning, I found myself unable to relate to her - she's a natural runner, highly competitve (duh), and very fast. Yes, I knew getting into this that she was probably all of those things but as someone who is not a natural runner, just does it for fun and fitness, and is slow, I found myself resenting her a bit, especially since that was pretty much all the first chapter was about.

I did like that her training plans only featured 3x a week running - that's what I do already and it made me confident that it would be sufficient to successfully complete my 1/2. A lot of other training plans out there have you running 5-6x a week which is just too much for me. She also puts a strong emphasis on strength training (yay!) and I really enjoyed the nutrition chapter as well - eat natural, non-processed foods and well balanced meals including healthy fats (yay!).

The "I Love This Quote" sections were annoying. There seemed to be a lot of ideas repeated throughout the book. I disregarded the chapter on pregnancy running entirely because it does not (and never will) pertain to me.

This book is definitely more of a sort of motivational book more than a technical know-how book which I guess was what I was looking for. I want to read a book by her coach! I would be interested in reading an autobiography from her as I very much enjoyed her story segments.