The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners

"The Examined Run provides an accessible treatment of what it might look like to use running as a laboratory for virtue development. This book engages many topics in the field of virtue ethics-virtue, vice, exemplarism, emotions, and competition-and places them in conversation with training and racing in endurance sports. The Examined Run explores happiness and success, competition and character. It investigates whether certain definitions of success conflict with being morally good, and whether certain virtues may be performance-enhancing in the world of sport. It asks whether athletes should strive to be "limitless," and it examines how to take seriously considerations of human nature in competitive sport. This book welcomes readers into a tradition of inquiry about character, flourishing, and suffering, so that they can ask better questions about what it means to live a happy life and how running might fit in"--