In his book Pro Cycling on $10 a Day, Phil Gaimon brings the full powers of his wit to tell his story.

Plump, grumpy, slumped on the couch, and going nowhere fast at age 16, Phil Gaimon began riding a bicycle with the grand ambition of shedding a few pounds before going off to college. He soon fell into racing and discovered he was a natural, riding his way into a pro contract after just one season despite utter ignorance of a century of cycling etiquette.

Presented here as a guide–and a warning–to aspiring racers who dream of joining the professional racing circus, Phil’s adventures in road rash serve as a hilarious and cautionary tale of frustrating team directors and broken promises. Phil’s education in the ways of the peloton, his discouraging negotiations for a better contract, his endless miles crisscrossing America in pursuit of race wins, and his conviction that somewhere just around the corner lies the ticket to the big time fuel this tale of hope and ambition from one of cycling’s best story-tellers.

Pro Cycling on $10 a Day chronicles the racer’s daily lot of blood-soaked bandages, sleazy motels, cheap food, and overflowing toilets. But it also celebrates the true beauty of the sport and the worth of the journey, proving in the end that even among the narrow ranks of world-class professional cycling, there will always be room for a hard-working outsider.

Great cyclists are born, but winning cyclists are made by the brains of their managers. The craft of racing requires a non-stop obsession with detail: watching rivals, judging the strength of a break, knowing the course, and picking the right moment to seize a fleeting opportunity and turn it into a big win.

How the Race Was Won investigates the fine details of bicycle racing through extensive interviews with the sport’s brightest minds. Author Peter Cossins has interrogated the riders, managers, and directors who have shaped the sport, and reveals how they learned to navigate the invisible undercurrent that sweeps their riders to the finish line.

From the moment when George Pilkington Mills was paced to victory by a wily teammate in the 1891 edition of Bordeaux–Paris to Chris Froome’s modern emphasis on marginal gains, How the Race Was Won embraces the full sweep of cycling history, making stops along the way to analyze how tactics first evolved and how today’s winning minds continue to build on what came before.

Behind every great cyclist is a race wizard reading the race, watching the rivals, outwitting the competition, and anticipating the one perfect moment to launch a rider to victory. How the Race Was Won is a thrilling and unprecedented look at how victory is won, how rivals are vanquished, and how pure speed can only prevail when supported by deep brainpower.

Spend two hours with Pete Magill’s Fast 5K and you’ll know how to run your fastest 5K.
 

In his fast-paced, ultimate guide to 5K running races, celebrated running coach Pete Magill reveals the 25 crucial keys to setting your next 5K personal record. Magill shares hard-earned lessons he gained while leading 19 teams to USA national championships and setting multiple American and world age-group and masters records.
 

To run your fastest 5K, you’ll need smart preparation. Magill shows how you can achieve top running fitness and racing readiness. The 25 crucial keys to unlock your fastest race include how to:

• Figure out optimal training volume and intensity
• Pace tempo runs for maximum benefit
• Strengthen and build muscle fibers with hill running
• Design strength, plyo, and technique routines that really work
• Prevent injury with strategic tapering, recovery, and drills
• Utilize a healthy diet to reach your ideal racing weight
• Race tactically from start line to the finish
• And much more!

In addition, Fast 5K includes 12-week and 16-week training plans to suit runners of all abilities. Whether you are new to the distance or toeing the line again for a personal best, Fast 5K is a must-have resource for reaching your goals.

The speed you need to outsprint the competition, juke your opponent on the field or court, set personal records, and achieve peak performance. In SpeedRunner, celebrated running coach Pete Magill reveals his 4-week training plan to make any athlete into a faster runner, no matter the sport, age, gender, experience, or goals.
 

In every sport that includes running, the difference between the best and the rest is tenths of a second. From team sports like football, soccer, basketball, and baseball to individual sports like distance running, track, and triathlon, faster leg speed makes champions. By targeting the neuromuscular system and strengthening muscle and connective tissue, Magill’s SpeedRunner program builds speed, strength, endurance, agility, coordination, balance, proprioception, and explosive power so athletes can excel.
 

Developed over decades of experience coaching athletes of all ages from short sprints to the marathon, Magill’s SpeedRunner program is your key to speed. Magill has led his club to two dozen US National Masters Championships in road running and cross country. As a 5-time USA Masters Cross Country Runner of the Year and multiple American and world age-group record holder himself, Magill is proof that his training methods are effective.
 

Along with its core 4-week program, SpeedRunner offers speed only training, once-a-week speed work for distance runners, and single-day sessions focused on injury prevention and whole-body strength.
 

SpeedRunner will make you faster, stronger, quicker—no matter your sport!

The Athlete’s Gut is an in-depth look at a system that plagues many athletes. This guide offers a much-needed resource for troubleshooting GI problems.

The majority of endurance athletes suffer from some kind of gut problem during training and competition. Symptoms like nausea, cramping, bloating, side stitches, and the need to defecate can negatively impact an athlete’s performance. Why are gut problems so common during exercise? And what can athletes do to prevent and manage gut symptoms that occur during training and competition?

The Athlete’s Gut makes sense of the complicated gastrointestinal tract and offers solutions to the tummy troubles that keep athletes from enjoying and excelling in their sport. Written by Patrick Wilson, professor of exercise science and registered dietitian, this gut guide for athletes combines the latest research on exercise and the gut with humorous descriptions and relatable stories. Athletes will better understand the inner workings of their own gut and will be equipped to make the needed changes to diet and exercise to performand feelbetter.

Stronger muscles last longer. Stronger triathletes bring more power, speed, lean mass, and muscular endurance to race day.

Strength Training for Triathletes is a comprehensive strength training program for triathletes to build power, speed, and muscular endurance for faster racing over any race distance. While time is a precious commodity for every triathlete, every bit of time spent strength training pays off so you can become a stronger, faster, and more resilient athlete.

Certified USA Triathlon coach and NSCA Personal Trainer of the Year Patrick Hagerman’s focused, triathlon-specific strength training program enables triathletes to push harder during training and on the racecourse. Triathletes who master this progressive strength training program will also become more resistant to injury, meaning fewer missed workouts. The sport-specic exercises make it easy to target your training for improved performance in any or all of the three events. In as little as 90 minutes a week:

• Improve endurance, build muscle, or increase strength and power
• Focus your training on one event, or build an all-around program
• Target imbalances with exercises for specific muscle groups
• Create workouts for home and travel using minimal equipment
• Find the perfect mix of core, upper-body, and lower-body exercises for total body strength
• Build more powerful, longer-lasting muscles that resist fatigue and injury
• Develop body composition with stronger, leaner muscle mass
• Perform better without added bulk.

Hagerman will help you design a personalized strength training program that does exactly what you need it to do—whether that be improving your speed, addressing a muscular imbalance, or overcoming a weak area. Strength Training for Triathletes features 75 of the most effective strength training exercises for triathlon swimming, cycling, and running as well as core strength and general conditioning. Every exercise is clearly explained and fully illustrated, taking the guesswork out of good technique, and exercises are grouped so athletes can focus on their own individual performance limiters. In addition, Hagerman clearly explains the science underlying strength training, offering easy-to-follow guidelines on resistance and reps that will make triathletes stronger through every phase of the season.

New in this second edition are sample strength training programs for the most popular triathlon race distances and for each of triathlon’s three sports, photographs showing detailed body positions for each exercise, several new exercises, new indexes that specify body-weight exercises and weighted exercises to improve usability, and an exercise log template to track your goal weights.

Strength training often separates the top performers in triathlon from the middle of the pack. Even small improvements in muscle strength can add up to big race results. Strength Training for Triathletes is the ultimate guide to take your training and your race to the next level.

“Besides drooling over the gorgeous photos, it is guaranteed that you will salivate over the recipes that accompany each adventure and hopefully utilize Morgan’s sustainable outdoor cooking tips.” ―American Trail Running Association

Outlandish is a sun-soaked starter manual to fueling your own epic, equal parts fuel for the body and food for the soul.

In this guide, the canyoneering wordsmith and adventurer Morgan Sjogren shows how outdoor adventure can become your lifestyle. Through her riveting personal stories, flavorful recipes, and the book’s gotta-go-there photographs, Sjogren shares her advice and lessons learned from years exploring the desert Southwest while living out of her canary-yellow Jeep Wrangler. Outlandish is a gorgeous guide to a more adventurous life.

In Outlandish, Sjogren shows how to sleep better in a car, build a cooking fire, overcome calamity, repurpose bacon grease, leave no trace, sun-dry tomatoes on your car hood, cook food on a hot engine block, and select practical gear for your tailgate kitchen. Equipped with little more than Outlandish, a backpacking stove, a cooler, and a few staple foods, you can seek out your own adventures fueled by Sjogren’s inspiring outdoor lifestyle as well as her favorite burritos, dandelion salads, campfire blondies, and prickly pear margaritas.

Sjogren offers up dozens of recipes that draw from the places she’s been―Sedona, Bears Ears, Yosemite, Silverton, Utah―and help her tell intoxicating tales of exploration and mishap. There are taco recipes remembered from the highest mountain in Mexico and “50 Shades of Burritos” with flavors taken from around the Four Corners.

This smart and meaningful guide comes straight from the Utah canyon country and deserts of Arizona to share lessons learned from a life lived in wilderness. Sjogren’s exhilarating guide will stoke your desire for adventure while offering tools, tips, and tricks that can help you launch your epic.

Running can shape a young athlete in healthy, positive ways for the rest of her life.

Girls Running offers the guidance and tools girls need to thrive on their running journey, right from the start. With straight talk on training, physiology, menstruation, sports nutrition, a winning mindset, body image issues, gear, team-building, and competition, Girls Running educates and empowers young runners to achieve their potential and love running more.

Inspired by high-school phenom Melody Fairchild’s groundbreaking running journey, and with the coaching insight from Fairchild and coauthor Elizabeth Carey, Girls Running is a valuable toolkit for middle- and high-school runners. Backed by science, research, and over 100,000 miles of experience, this resource answers the most timely and sensitive questions that girls face when their bodies change and the miles increase. Girls, parents, and coaches will see ways to navigate puberty, mental health, eating disorders, and the pressures of competitive running.

Girls Running is a go-to guide for everything girls need to know to run betterand love the journey while doing it!

In Rocket Fuel, award-winning dietitian Matt Kadey offers up delicious, creative, and convenient real-food recipes to power your everyday exercise and weekend adventures.

Kadey’s ingenious Rocket Fuel foodslike easy-to-make muffins, bars, pies, bites, gels, smoothies, balls, wraps, and cookieswill inspire how you fuel for your favorite sports. Since studies show that real food works just as well as processed sports food products, you’ll enjoy a huge variety of flavors and a healthier, more nutritious performance fuel that’s free of artificial stuff and high price tags. Kadey’s DIY performance foods include dozens of new flavors and innovative forms that ensure you’ll always look forward to your next exercise snack.

Rocket Fuel is more than a cookbook of easy, healthy recipes. Kadey simplifies the rocket science of sports nutrition into easy-to-follow guidelines that will work for anyone in any sport or activity. Rocket Fuel foods are grouped into Before, During, and After Exercise so your body will get exactly what it needs at exactly the right times. For those with special dietary restrictions, each recipe is flagged as dairy-free, freezer-friendly, gluten-free, paleo-friendly, and vegetarian or vegan-friendly.

Rocket Fuel offers:

• 126 recipe ideas for power-packed foods, snacks, and light meals including bowls, puddings, wraps, sandwiches, bites, balls, squares, bars, drinks, patties, cakes, stacks, drinks, smoothies, shakes, soups, muffins, sliders, pies, rolls, DIY energy shots, and all-natural sports drinks.
• 33 Before, 43 During, and 50 After Exercise recipes
• 79 dairy free, 85 gluten free, 76 vegetarian, and 33 paleo-friendly recipes
• Smart-yet-simple sports nutrition guideliness for before, during, and after exercise
• Complete nutrition facts for every recipe

What you eat for energy can make the difference between an epic day or a disappointment. Rocket Fuel makes it easy to power up for workouts, recharge during halftime, or stay energized on the trail.

Matt Kadey is a James Beard Award-winning food journalist, registered dietitian, and recipe developer. He has written for top health/fitness and sports magazines. Kadey holds a masters degree in sports nutrition and is the author of Muffin Tin Chef and The No-Cook, No-Bake Cookbook.

A good comeback makes a great story. In The Comeback Quotient, sports journalist Matt Fitzgerald shares the stories of top athletic comebacks, to give you inspiration and tools for your own comeback in sport or life.

Every sports fan loves a great comeback. Is there a special quality shared by top athletes who triumph over great challenges? And can anyone acquire it? In The Comeback Quotient, celebrated sportswriter Matt Fitzgerald supplies the answer to both questions. He identifies these mega-achievers of astounding athletic comebacks as “ultrarealists,” men and women who succeed where others fail by fully accepting, embracing, and addressing the reality of their situations. From ultrarunners like Rob Krar to triathletes like Mirinda Carfrae to rowers, skiers, cyclists, and runners all over the world, Fitzgerald highlights and speculates on just what makes these comebacks so compelling. As for whether anyone can stage his or her own great comeback, the answer is a resounding yes: Anyone can become an ultrarealist to some degree. In the tradition of his best-selling How Bad Do You Want It?, The Comeback Quotient combines gripping sports stories with mind-blowing science to deliver a book that will forever change how you perceive the challenges you face, giving you the inspiration and the tools to make the next great comeback you witness your own.