Beyond Running: The Road As Mentor. This item is unavailable.Beyond Running: The Road As Mentor

The road is a good teacher. Like a zen master or psychoanalyst, it teaches you to become your own teacher. The road is long, it goes everywhere; it will teach you many things if you are patient and willing to learn.

A now retired psychiatrist, Whitis was one of the early long-distance runners--long before running shoes and gator-aid. In fact, he did his first Boston Marathon wearing a pair of Keds. He was a charter member of the American Medical Joggers Association, wrote several medical articles and for two years wrote a popular weekly newspaper column on the health and spiritual benefits of running. He has run multiple marathons, including Boston twice and the original route from Marathon, Greece. In 1985, he was honored by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) with their Midwest Award (one of four regional awards in the country). That year the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (PSR was the American branch) received the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1988, he was one of thirty American peace activists chosen to visit the Soviet Union and meet Secretary-General Gorbachev. He and his wife Martha have four sons, one of whom is an Ironman competitor. In 2007, Whitis placed first in his age group in the Galena, Illinois duathlon. His book BEYOND RUNNING: THE ROAD AS MENTOR describes the odyssey of his life as a runner, finally gaining the prize of self-knowledge and evolving as a social activist.