Let Your Mind Run: A Memoir of Thinking My Way to Victory

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Deena Kastor is one of the greatest bodies in distance running, but this book captures what is so groundbreaking about her mind.”—Alexi Pappas, Olympian, writer, and filmmaker

“Inspiring, fascinating, and insightful. Practical for anyone trying to overcome the biggest impediments to climbing that next hill of growth.”—Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage and Big Potential

Deena Kastor was a star youth runner with tremendous promise, yet her career almost ended after college, when her competitive method—run as hard as possible, for fear of losing—brought her to the brink of burnout. On the verge of quitting, she took a chance on legendary coach Joe Vigil, who had started the first professional distance-running team in the US. At his Colorado training center, she encountered the notion that shaping her mind to be more encouraging, kind, and resilient could make her faster than she’d ever imagined possible. Building a mind so strong would take years of effort and discipline, but it would propel Kastor to the pinnacle of running—to American records in every distance from the 5K to the marathon—and to the accomplishment of earning America’s first Olympic medal in the marathon in twenty years.
 
Let Your Mind Run is a fascinating, intimate look inside the mind of an elite athlete, a remarkable story of achievement, and an insightful primer on how the small steps of cultivating possibility can give anyone a competitive edge.

Deena Kastor is an Olympic medalist and the American record holder in the marathon. She lives in Mammoth Lakes, California.

Michelle Hamilton is a health and fitness journalist. Her work has appeared in Runner’s World, Bicycling, Women’s Health, and other publications.