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Book Downright Filthy Pitching Book 3

    Book Details:
  • Author : Perry Husband
  • Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
  • Release : 2007-10-09
  • ISBN : 9781536937145
  • Pages : 182 pages

Download or read book Downright Filthy Pitching Book 3 written by Perry Husband and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2007-10-09 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Downright Filthy Pitching Book 3 - The Science of Pitch Sequencing is the 3rd book of the series on Effective Velocity. Book 1 is the introduction into the science and understanding of what Effective Velocity is all about. Book 2 describes the Hitters' Attention or the human limitations of reacting to a pitch at such high velocities and the MLB studies that back the findings. Book 3 describes how to implement Effective Velocity into your pitching approach in the simplest and most innovative and creative ways. This is the first book to show you how the baseball actually works to create different types of movements, to aid in deception. This is the first book to scientifically show how to gain a significant advantage against hitters by learning to sequence pitches in the most deceptive way possible. This book shows pitchers how to design their most effective pitch assortment and how to use them at maximum efficiency. "I'm an old history teacher. In the history of man some innovations were so revolutionary that they forever changed the course of history. I believe Perry's study and innovation of EV is changing and will change the game of baseball...it has certainly changed the way we attack hitters at Pitching Central. Every day we have a choice. We can choose to stay current and ride the wave as the change alters the landscape...or stubbornly choose to be the cynic and swear the earth is flat...and be at the bottom of the wave when it moves through. Regardless, an innovation of this magnitude will affect us either way." Ron Wolforth Author of the Combat Pitcher- Preparing the Next Generation of Pitchers for Battle CEO Pitching Central

Book Downright Filthy Pitching Book 1

Download or read book Downright Filthy Pitching Book 1 written by Perry L. Husband and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2005-07-07 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Downright Filthy Pitching - The Science of Effective Velocity (EV) is the study of baseball pitch speeds and how location changes the reaction time of the hitter. This science answers why pitchers are great one day and awful the next and why hitters fall into slumps with no answers. For the first time there is scientific proof that will teach pitchers how to go from having 'Nasty Stuff' to becoming 'Downright Filthy'. This book series shows you how to maximize the effects of every pitch in your arsenal, like time management for pitch speed usage. This is the first provable explanation for why certain pitches are swung on and missed one day and hit out of the yard the next. EV gives pitchers a detailed plan to help them maximize their deception............and yes, deception is now measurable and can be practiced. The only scientific pitch calling method has been implemented by Collegiate programs in baseball and softball throughout the country and with many Major League pitchers, catchers and coaches. EV has uncovered the truth behind some longtime myths about pitching. Find out why: 'Shorter Pitchers' may actually be far more deceptive' - 'Outside fastball is not the best pitch in baseball' - 'Keeping the ball down is killing you' and many other myths explained through this new set of goggles that has changed the game. You will never look at the game of baseball the same way again.

Book Downright Filthy Pitching Book 2

    Book Details:
  • Author : Perry Husband
  • Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
  • Release : 2007-02-07
  • ISBN : 9781536936582
  • Pages : 138 pages

Download or read book Downright Filthy Pitching Book 2 written by Perry Husband and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2007-02-07 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Downright Filthy Pitching Book 2 - Hitters' Attention is the second book of the Downright Filthy Pitching Series, describing the incredible discovery of the science of Effective Velocity. Every hitter that ever stepped into a batters box is limited by the human condition. A fastball at the Major League level at 95 MPH travels to home plate in under .395 seconds. The average MLB hitter takes about 1/3 of that time or about .13 to .15 seconds to swing the bat, leaving only .267 seconds to see, identify the direction, identify the spin, which leads to identifying the pitch type, which leads to identifying the true reactionary speed of the pitch and finally to the decision to swing or not. When you factor in the time it takes for the brain to process the 2-5 possible pitch choices it could be, needless to say hitters are at a massive disadvantage. Couple all of this with the fact that Ev efficient pitchers hide the identity of pitches even further by what they learned in Book 1 about Ev Tunnels. This refers to the fastball and the off speed pitches being in the same vertical and horizontal planes for 1/3 to 1/2 of the way to the plate. It is all but impossible for hitters to accomplish all of this and maintain their optimum swing mechanics. Of course hitters can 'make contact' with elite offerings but their production goes down dramatically. After testing hitter's reactionary abilities for many years, Inside Edge, the first data collection service for MLB teams, opened their database to see if the same things were happening at the highest levels. The statistics backed the findings in the reactionary tests at every point. Hitters' Attention is very real and very misunderstood. Let's shed some light on that subject and 'Get Downright Filthy.' Perry Husband

Book Downright Filthy Pitching Book 1

Download or read book Downright Filthy Pitching Book 1 written by Perry Husband and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Downright Filthy Pitching - The Science of Effective Velocity - This is a study of baseball and softball pitching speeds and how location dramatically changes the reaction time of pitches to the hitter. This is the first in a series of three books covering this fascinating new science that has already changed the game at every level. This series is about answering some questions that have been a mystery since the very first at bat in organized baseball. Major League pitchers, hitters, pitching coaches and managers have embraced Effective Velocity to help them enhance their approach to the game sine 2004. Collegiate coaches in both baseball and softball have revamped both their hitting and pitching philosophies based on this exciting new concept. NCAA championships - MLB Division Championships and countless other milestones have been accomplished using the laws that govern the confrontation between pitcher and hitter; Effective Velocity. Discover the reason why pitchers can execute a pitch in what is thought of as a perfect location and it ends up a homerun. Find out why hitters swing and miss belt high fastballs right down the middle of the plate one day and hit out of the park the next. Are taller pitchers really more Filthy? Is outside fastball really the best pitch in baseball? Is movement the most crucial factor in a pitcher's success? These and many other answers await you in this series describing this brand new paradigm for baseball and softball.

Book Getting Filthy

    Book Details:
  • Author : Perry Husband
  • Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
  • Release : 2013-05-28
  • ISBN : 9781536937503
  • Pages : 106 pages

Download or read book Getting Filthy written by Perry Husband and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Getting Filthy - Implementing Effective Velocity When a pitcher of any level has great "Stuff", which means high velocity, good movement etc..... they are referred to as 'Nasty'. 'Filthy' is the term used when a 'Nasty' pitcher learns how to pitch. Teaching pitchers of all levels to get 'Filthy' is a process, just like all skill sets. This book is set up in a series of lessons to take on one element at a time. EV as a whole can seem very complex, although when you break each facet down into bite sized chunks, they are much easier to understand. 'Filthy' is a whole new chapter in the art of pitching. Getting 'Filthy' is a process that has steps and none of the steps are very complicated all by themselves. Step one is knowledge about gravity, but not the gravity that keeps your spikes firmly planted on the mound, rather the gravity that determines who wins the battle between the pitcher and the batter. This gravity is called Effective Velocity or EV for short. EV is timing and timing is what has determined the outcome of every at bat in the history of baseball and softball. And.....just as it does not matter whether you understand how gravity keeps you attached to the earth or not.......it also does not matter if you understand how EV works or not, it is still working all the time and in every at bat. Effective Velocity for pitchers is a complex subject that has a lot of layers. EV is a lot like math, in that you could not learn math in one day, at least not all of it. You can learn one aspect of math each day, such as addition or division or geometry, but when you try to learn math all at once, it's a cluttered mess. It becomes something like geovision or addometry, both of which are crazy versions of what was intended. And although you will see bits of the truth in addometry, it will never quite be exactly right. The same is true with EV. Most coaches or instructors read about EV and try to combine it with what they already 'know' about pitching, which usually turns into a watered down version of the truth. When you are ready to implement the most scientifically sound system in pitching, then it is time to start Getting Filthy.

Book Off Speed

    Book Details:
  • Author : Terry McDermott
  • Publisher : Vintage
  • Release : 2018-03-13
  • ISBN : 0307741982
  • Pages : 226 pages

Download or read book Off Speed written by Terry McDermott and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. The lively and fascinating story of baseball’s 150-year hunt for the perfect pitch. In August 2012, Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners pitched a perfect game against the Tampa Bay Rays in what Terry McDermott calls “one of the greatest exhibitions of off-speed pitches ever put on.” For McDermott, a lifelong fan and student of baseball, the extraordinary events of that afternoon inspired this incisive meditation on the art of pitching. Within the framework of Hernandez’s historic achievement, Off Speed provides a vibrant narrative of the history and evolution of pitching, combining baseball's rich tradition of folklore with the wealth of new metrics from a growing legion of statisticians who are transforming the way we think about the game. Off Speed is also the personal story of a fan’s steadfast devotion, first kindled in McDermott by his father at the local diamond in small-town Iowa and now carried forward with the same passion by his own daughters. Approaching his subject with the love every fan brings to the park and the expertise of a probing journalist, McDermott explores with irrepressible curiosity the science and the romance of baseball.

Book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Download or read book A Thousand Splendid Suns written by Khaled Hosseini and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-09-18 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting and powerful story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship and an indestructible love

Book Red Country

    Book Details:
  • Author : Joe Abercrombie
  • Publisher : Hachette UK
  • Release : 2012-10-18
  • ISBN : 0575095857
  • Pages : 611 pages

Download or read book Red Country written by Joe Abercrombie and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2012-10-18 with total page 611 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Joe Abercrombie is doing some terrific work' George R. R. Martin, author of GAME OF THRONES. They burned her home. They stole her brother and sister. But vengeance is following. Shy South hoped to bury her bloody past and ride away smiling, but she'll have to sharpen up some bad old ways to get her family back, and she's not a woman to flinch from what needs doing. She sets off in pursuit with only a pair of oxen and her cowardly old stepfather Lamb for company. But it turns out Lamb's buried a bloody past of his own, and out in the lawless Far Country, the past never stays buried. Their journey will take them across the barren plains to a frontier town gripped by gold fever, through feud, duel and massacre, high into the unmapped mountains to a reckoning with the Ghosts. Even worse, it will force them into alliance with Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, and his feckless lawyer Temple, two men no one should ever have to trust... The past never stays buried...

Book The Tactics of Pitching

Download or read book The Tactics of Pitching written by Branford McAllister and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are two basic ways to win the pitcher versus hitter war:• Overpower the hitter (like Justin Verlander)• Fool the hitter (like Barry Zito).The first requires dominating stuff, generally velocity. (Verlander's average fastball in 2012 was 94.3 mph. He also showcased a superb curveball.) And, it requires a fair amount of control to go with the overpowering velocity. Not many pitchers have that kind of ability, even in the major leagues. At lower levels, very few pitchers have the kind of overpowering stuff to rely just on that to get hitters out throughout a game. Those who do have electric stuff can dominate hitters. They are the fortunate ones, but not everyone has this advantage. For them, and for the overpowering pitchers at higher levels, something more than great stuff is required. So, in general, we need a more strategic, mental approach to get hitters out consistently.Pitching is a complex endeavor—both physical and mental. While there are many views on how to succeed as a pitcher, there are several principles that lead to success on the mound. Among these are the following: There is a limited number of things you can do with a ball: give it speed, give it direction, impart spin, and select an orientation of the seams. You can also combine pitches in different sequences and combinations. Otherwise, there is nothing you can to the ball. Every other factor that you can control is mental, and therefore absolutely essential to success. You cannot succeed consistently on the hill without having a plan in mind beforehand. So, if you prepare well, with solid mechanics, you can win each battle with hitters.The objective on the mound is getting outs. There is a strategy to doing this and it relies upon a thoughtful approach that considers your abilities and the situation. If you combine great physical preparation with a sound mental approach, you greatly increase your chances to get those outs, succeed on the hill, and give your team the best opportunity to win games.There are many books on baseball, a few of them about pitching. But, there are very few good books on the art and strategy: the tactics of pitching—specifically, books dealing with how to throw specific pitches, why they do what they do, when to throw them, to what locations, and how to set up hitters. There are few books that help pitchers “pitch” a good game—the subtleties of how to throw pitches and how to formulate game plans for pitching. The Tactics of Pitching is a practical manual for learning and teaching the science, mechanics, and strategy of pitching, suitable for amateur players and coaches through the college level.The book focuses on the following topics:• Pitching Philosophy• How Air Resistance Affects the Flight of a Ball• The Strikezone• Pitches• Situational Pitching• Mechanics Checklist• Correcting Problems• Mental Aspects of Pitching.

Book Wicked

    Book Details:
  • Author : Gregory Maguire
  • Publisher : Harper Collins
  • Release : 2009-10-13
  • ISBN : 0061792942
  • Pages : 558 pages

Download or read book Wicked written by Gregory Maguire and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestseller and basis for the Tony-winning hit musical, soon to be a major motion picture starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande With millions of copies in print around the world, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked is established not only as a commentary on our time but as a novel to revisit for years to come. Wicked relishes the inspired inventions of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, while playing sleight of hand with our collective memories of the 1939 MGM film starring Margaret Hamilton (and Judy Garland). In this fast-paced, fantastically real, and supremely entertaining novel, Maguire has populated the largely unknown world of Oz with the power of his own imagination. Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin—no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. Still, Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters Shiz University, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz’s most promising young citizens. But Elphaba’s Oz is no utopia. The Wizard’s secret police are everywhere. Animals—those creatures with voices, souls, and minds—are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals—even if it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance. Ever wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas. Recognized as an iconoclastic tour de force on its initial publication, the novel has inspired the blockbuster musical of the same name—one of the longest-running plays in Broadway history. Popular, indeed. But while the novel’s distant cousins hail from the traditions of magical realism, mythopoeic fantasy, and sprawling nineteenth-century sagas of moral urgency, Maguire’s Wicked is as unique as its green-skinned witch.

Book Someone

    Book Details:
  • Author : Alice McDermott
  • Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Release : 2013-09-10
  • ISBN : 1429969423
  • Pages : 242 pages

Download or read book Someone written by Alice McDermott and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fully realized portrait of one woman's life in all its complexity, by the National Book Award–winning author An ordinary life—its sharp pains and unexpected joys, its bursts of clarity and moments of confusion—lived by an ordinary woman: this is the subject of Someone, Alice McDermott's extraordinary return, seven years after the publication of After This. Scattered recollections—of childhood, adolescence, motherhood, old age—come together in this transformative narrative, stitched into a vibrant whole by McDermott's deft, lyrical voice. Our first glimpse of Marie is as a child: a girl in glasses waiting on a Brooklyn stoop for her beloved father to come home from work. A seemingly innocuous encounter with a young woman named Pegeen sets the bittersweet tone of this remarkable novel. Pegeen describes herself as an "amadan," a fool; indeed, soon after her chat with Marie, Pegeen tumbles down her own basement stairs. The magic of McDermott's novel lies in how it reveals us all as fools for this or that, in one way or another. Marie's first heartbreak and her eventual marriage; her brother's brief stint as a Catholic priest, subsequent loss of faith, and eventual breakdown; the Second World War; her parents' deaths; the births and lives of Marie's children; the changing world of her Irish-American enclave in Brooklyn—McDermott sketches all of it with sympathy and insight. This is a novel that speaks of life as it is daily lived; a crowning achievement by one of the finest American writers at work today. A Publishers Weekly Best Fiction Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2013 A New York Times Notable Book of 2013 A Washington Post Notable Fiction Book of 2013 An NPR Best Book of 2013

Book The Anatomy Lesson

    Book Details:
  • Author : Philip Roth
  • Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Release : 2013-07-02
  • ISBN : 1466846399
  • Pages : 263 pages

Download or read book The Anatomy Lesson written by Philip Roth and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Roth's The Anatomy Lesson was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. A comic masterpiece and brilliant finale to the Zuckerman trilogy. The writer Nathan Zukerman comes down with a mysterious physical affliction--pure pain, beginning in his neck and shoulders, invading his torso and taking possession of his life. Zukerman, whose work was his life, is unable to write a line. Now his work is trekking from one doctor to the next--from orthopedist to osteopath to neurologist to psychiatrist--but none can find a cause for the pain and nobody can assuage it. So begins Philip Roth's strangely comic new novel, The Anatomy Lesson. In it, we find Nathan Zukerman beset at age forty not only by his pain but by his past. He seriously wonders if he ought to be a novelist at all. At his wit's end, bewildered by both the obstinate pain and the isolating profession, and unconsolable by his "harem of Florence Nightingales"--Gloria, his accountant's wildly mothering wife; Jaga, the depressed Polish refuge from the hair-treatment clinic (to add to his suffering, Zukerman is going bald); Diana, the distressingly self-possessed Finch College heiress; and the temptingly levelheaded painter Jenny--Zukerman tries to pin his catastrophe on some source he can confront. There is no shortage of candidates. Zukerman's brother blames his acerbic bestseller Carnovsky, for ruining the lives of their late parents, and will have nothing to do with him. There's the critic Milton Appel, once Zuckerman's literary conscience, now his scourge--the Grand Inquisitor of Inquiry magazine, the New York Jewish cultural monthly. Searching desperately for a diagnosis that will lead to a cure, Zuckerman asks himself if the pain can have been caused by his adversaries, or by his astonishingly intractable grief for his mother, or by the disgust he has come to feel for the literary vocation he once loved. And while he is wondering, his dependence on painkillers grows into an addiction to Percodan, marijuana, and hundred-proof vodka. In the last half of The Anatomy Lesson, Zuckerman breaks out of invalid imprisonment in his Manhattan apartment and sets off on a journey to escape the pain, the adversaries, the grief, and the career--a journey into a new existence, a search for a "second life." Persuaded that a doctor's life is everything a writer's is not, Zuckerman flies to Chicago with the intention of applying to medical school at his alma mater. Though the pain he encounters there is worse even than what he's fled, the startling quest for the second life provides some of the funniest scenes in all of Roth's fiction. With the serious playfulness and extravagant insistence characteristic of his work, Roth, in his fourteenth published book, presents an astonishing antithesis to The Magic Mountain: The Anatomy Lesson is a great comedy of illness. Roth's strength has always been the ability to depict the boisterous, the farcical, and the extreme in human behavior while revealing at the same time a world that immediately strikes the reader as real--what the English critic Hermione Lee has called, in writing of Roth's career, "a manner at once...brash and thoughtful...lyrical and wry, which projects through comic expostulations and confessions of the speakers a knowing, humane authority." The Anatomy Lesson is one of Roth's finest achievements in this vein.

Book A  500 House in Detroit

Download or read book A 500 House in Detroit written by Drew Philp and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young college grad buys a house in Detroit for $500 and attempts to restore it—and his new neighborhood—to its original glory in this “deeply felt, sharply observed personal quest to create meaning and community out of the fallen…A standout” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Drew Philp, an idealistic college student from a working-class Michigan family, decides to live where he can make a difference. He sets his sights on Detroit, the failed metropolis of abandoned buildings, widespread poverty, and rampant crime. Arriving with no job, no friends, and no money, Philp buys a ramshackle house for five hundred dollars in the east side neighborhood known as Poletown. The roomy Queen Anne he now owns is little more than a clapboard shell on a crumbling brick foundation, missing windows, heat, water, electricity, and a functional roof. A $500 House in Detroit is Philp’s raw and earnest account of rebuilding everything but the frame of his house, nail by nail and room by room. “Philp is a great storyteller…[and his] engrossing” (Booklist) tale is also of a young man finding his footing in the city, the country, and his own generation. We witness his concept of Detroit shift, expand, and evolve as his plan to save the city gives way to a life forged from political meaning, personal connection, and collective purpose. As he assimilates into the community of Detroiters around him, Philp guides readers through the city’s vibrant history and engages in urgent conversations about gentrification, racial tensions, and class warfare. Part social history, part brash generational statement, part comeback story, A $500 House in Detroit “shines [in its depiction of] the ‘radical neighborliness’ of ordinary people in desperate circumstances” (Publishers Weekly). This is an unforgettable, intimate account of the tentative revival of an American city and a glimpse at a new way forward for generations to come.

Book A Clergyman s Daughter

    Book Details:
  • Author : George Orwell
  • Publisher : Wildside Press LLC
  • Release : 2022-09-28
  • ISBN : 1667640577
  • Pages : 346 pages

Download or read book A Clergyman s Daughter written by George Orwell and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 2022-09-28 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Clergyman's Daughter tells the story of Dorothy Hare, whose life is turned upside down when she suffers an attack of amnesia. It is Orwell's most formally experimental novel, featuring a chapter written entirely in dramatic form. Includes a bibliography and brief bio of the author.

Book How the Other Half Lives

Download or read book How the Other Half Lives written by Jacob Riis and published by Applewood Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Cigarette Century

    Book Details:
  • Author : Allan Brandt
  • Publisher : Basic Books
  • Release : 2009-01-06
  • ISBN : 0786721901
  • Pages : 640 pages

Download or read book The Cigarette Century written by Allan Brandt and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-01-06 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From agriculture to big business, from medicine to politics, The Cigarette Century is the definitive account of how smoking came to be so deeply implicated in our culture, science, policy, and law. No product has been so heavily promoted or has become so deeply entrenched in American consciousness. The Cigarette Century shows in striking detail how one ephemeral (and largely useless) product came to play such a dominant role in so many aspects of our lives—and deaths.

Book Born to Run

    Book Details:
  • Author : Christopher McDougall
  • Publisher : Profile Books
  • Release : 2010-12-09
  • ISBN : 184765228X
  • Pages : 296 pages

Download or read book Born to Run written by Christopher McDougall and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-12-09 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller 'A sensation ... a rollicking tale well told' - The Times At the heart of Born to Run lies a mysterious tribe of Mexican Indians, the Tarahumara, who live quietly in canyons and are reputed to be the best distance runners in the world; in 1993, one of them, aged 57, came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing a toga and sandals. A small group of the world's top ultra-runners (and the awe-inspiring author) make the treacherous journey into the canyons to try to learn the tribe's secrets and then take them on over a course 50 miles long. With incredible energy and smart observation, McDougall tells this story while asking what the secrets are to being an incredible runner. Travelling to labs at Harvard, Nike, and elsewhere, he comes across an incredible cast of characters, including the woman who recently broke the world record for 100 miles and for her encore ran a 2:50 marathon in a bikini, pausing to down a beer at the 20 mile mark.