An Accidental Athlete

An Accidental Athlete PDF Author: Bingham John
Publisher: VeloPress
ISBN: 1937716007
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
Known by fans as "The Penguin" for his back-of-the-pack speed, John Bingham is the unlikely hero of the modern running boom. In his new book, the best-selling author and magazine columnist recalls his childhood dreams of athletic glory, sedentary years of unhealthy excess, and a life-changing transformation from couch potato to "adult-onset athlete." Overweight, uninspired, and saddled with a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoking habit, Bingham found himself firmly wedged into a middle-age slump. Then two frightening trips to the emergency room and a conversation with a happy piano tuner led him to discover running--and changed his life for the better. Inspiring, poignant, hilarious, and heartbreaking, An Accidental Athlete is a warm and engaging book for the everyday athlete. Bingham tells stories of the joys of running--the pride of the finisher's medal, a bureau-busting t-shirt collection, intense back-of-the-pack strategizing. An Accidental Athlete is about one man's discovery that middle age was not the finish line after all, but only the beginning.

An Accidental Athlete

An Accidental Athlete PDF Author: Bingham John
Publisher: VeloPress
ISBN: 1937716007
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 104

Get Book Here

Book Description
Known by fans as "The Penguin" for his back-of-the-pack speed, John Bingham is the unlikely hero of the modern running boom. In his new book, the best-selling author and magazine columnist recalls his childhood dreams of athletic glory, sedentary years of unhealthy excess, and a life-changing transformation from couch potato to "adult-onset athlete." Overweight, uninspired, and saddled with a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoking habit, Bingham found himself firmly wedged into a middle-age slump. Then two frightening trips to the emergency room and a conversation with a happy piano tuner led him to discover running--and changed his life for the better. Inspiring, poignant, hilarious, and heartbreaking, An Accidental Athlete is a warm and engaging book for the everyday athlete. Bingham tells stories of the joys of running--the pride of the finisher's medal, a bureau-busting t-shirt collection, intense back-of-the-pack strategizing. An Accidental Athlete is about one man's discovery that middle age was not the finish line after all, but only the beginning.

Flow in Sports

Flow in Sports PDF Author: Susan A. Jackson
Publisher: Human Kinetics
ISBN: 9780880118767
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
With help from sports psychology researcher Jackson, Csikszentmihalyi (human behavior, U. of Chicago) pares down his now-famous concept of flow to basic explanations and self-assessment exercises. Emphasis is on achieving a balance between challenges and skills, setting goals, taking advantage of feedback, focusing on the present, controlling the controllables, and having fun. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Sports Gene

The Sports Gene PDF Author: David Epstein
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 161723012X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
The New York Times bestseller – with a new afterword about early specialization in youth sports – from the author of Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. The debate is as old as physical competition. Are stars like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, and Serena Williams genetic freaks put on Earth to dominate their respective sports? Or are they simply normal people who overcame their biological limits through sheer force of will and obsessive training? In this controversial and engaging exploration of athletic success and the so-called 10,000-hour rule, David Epstein tackles the great nature vs. nurture debate and traces how far science has come in solving it. Through on-the-ground reporting from below the equator and above the Arctic Circle, revealing conversations with leading scientists and Olympic champions, and interviews with athletes who have rare genetic mutations or physical traits, Epstein forces us to rethink the very nature of athleticism.

The Accidental Billionaires

The Accidental Billionaires PDF Author: Ben Mezrich
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385532199
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER “The Social Network, the much anticipated movie…adapted from Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires.” —The New York Times Best friends Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg had spent many lonely nights looking for a way to stand out among Harvard University’s elite, competitive, and accomplished student body. Then, in 2003, Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard’s computers, crashed the campus network, almost got himself expelled, and was inspired to create Facebook, the social networking site that has since revolutionized communication around the world. With Saverin’s funding their tiny start-up went from dorm room to Silicon Valley. But conflicting ideas about Facebook’s future transformed the friends into enemies. Soon, the undergraduate exuberance that marked their collaboration turned into out-and-out warfare as it fell prey to the adult world of venture capitalists, big money, and lawyers.

Long-term Athlete Development

Long-term Athlete Development PDF Author: Istvan Balyi
Publisher: Human Kinetics Publishers
ISBN: 9780736092180
Category : Athletic Performance
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Long-Term Athlete Development offers an in-depth explanation of the long-term athlete development model, an approach to athlete-centered sport that combines skill instruction with long-term planning and an understanding of human development to produce athlete growth.

Handsome Ransom Jackson

Handsome Ransom Jackson PDF Author: Ransom Jackson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442261552
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Millions of America’s youth dream of playing major league baseball or in a college bowl game on New Year’s Day. Growing up in Arkansas during the Great Depression, Ransom Jackson had no idea that one day he would not only play in back-to-back Cotton Bowls for two different colleges—the first and only player to do so—but that he would also become known as “Handsome Ransom,” all-star third baseman for the Chicago Cubs. He was in Chicago in 1953 when Ernie Banks became the first African American to play for the Cubs. He was in Brooklyn in 1956, the year Jackie Robinson retired. In 1957, Jackson was the last Brooklyn player to hit a home run before the team moved to LA. Jackson’s major league career spanned the entire decade of the 1950s, a time when the landscape of baseball changed dramatically as teams moved to new cities, built new stadiums, and integrated their rosters. Handsome Ransom Jackson: Accidental Big Leaguer is an autobiographical account of Jackson’s fascinating journey from his boyhood days in Arkansas to playing in the major leagues, where many of his teammates were future Hall of Famers. It’s a fun and nostalgic visit to the past, with Jackson sharing such memories as spring training with the Cubs on Catalina Island, befriending a Mafia boss in Massachusetts, batting behind Hank Sauer and getting knocked down by pitchers retaliating for Sauer’s home runs, rooming with Don Drysdale on an historic baseball tour of Japan, and sitting in the dugout in LA with Dodger teammates looking for movie stars in the stands. In addition, Jackson remembers being brought to Brooklyn to take over third base for the aging Jackie Robinson, and quickly discovering that nobody replaces a legend like Jackie. While many of the players from the 1950s are no longer with us, Jackson’s invaluable and timeless stories celebrate the greatness of the game and preserve a sliver of history from the heart of the golden age of baseball. Featuring many never-before-published photographs from Ransom Jackson’s personal collection, including photos of Dodger and Cub greats Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Carl Erskine, Ralph Kiner, and Ernie Banks, Handsome Ransom Jackson will take the reader back to an era when baseball was truly the national pastime.

A Life Without Limits

A Life Without Limits PDF Author: Chrissie Wellington
Publisher: Center Street
ISBN: 1455510939
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
In 2007, Chrissie Wellington shocked the triathlon world by winning the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. As a newcomer to the sport and a complete unknown to the press, Chrissie's win shook up the sport. A LIFE WITHOUT LIMITS is the story of her rise to the top, a journey that has taken her around the world, from a childhood in England, to the mountains of Nepal, to the oceans of New Zealand, and the trails of Argentina, and first across the finish line. Wellington's first-hand, inspiring story includes all the incredible challenges she has faced--from anorexia to near--drowning to training with a controversial coach. But to Wellington, the drama of the sports also presents an opportunity to use sports to improve people's lives. A LIFE WITHOUT LIMITS reveals the heart behind Wellington's success, along with the diet, training and motivational techniques that keep her going through one of the world's most grueling events.

Surf, Sweat and Tears

Surf, Sweat and Tears PDF Author: Andy Martin
Publisher: OR Books
ISBN: 1682192334
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
“I don’t normally read books about surfers, but this is like Truman Capote, with shorts.” —Lee Child “Andy Martin, to his immense credit, knows that surfers are misfits and accidental comics, as well as great athletes.” —Matt Warshaw “A sublime mixing of stoke and sorrow, hedonism and the macabre—skillfully and deftly penned by someone who had, and still has, intimate access to many of the key players." —Tom Anderson, author of Riding the Magic Carpet: A Surfer's Odyssey to Find the Perfect Wave This is the true story of Ted, Viscount Deerhurst, the son of the Earl of Coventry and an American ballerina who dedicated his life to becoming a professional surfer. Surfing was a means of escape, from England, from the fraught charges of nobility, from family, and, often, from his own demons. Ted was good on the board, but never made it to the very highest ranks of a sport that, like most, treats second-best as nowhere at all. He kept on surfing, ending up where all surfers go to live or die, the paradise of Hawaii. There, in search of the “perfect woman,” he fell in love with a dancer called Lola, who worked in a Honolulu nightclub. The problem with paradise, as he was soon to discover, is that gangsters always get there first. Lola already had a serious boyfriend, a man who went by the name of Pit Bull. Ted was given fair warning to stay away. But he had a besetting sin, for which he paid the heaviest price: He never knew when to give up. Surf, Sweat and Tears takes us into the world of global surfing, revealing a dark side beneath the dazzling sun and cream-crested waves. Here is surf noir at its most compelling, a dystopian tale of one man’s obsessions, wiped out in a grisly true crime.

Losing Isn't Everything

Losing Isn't Everything PDF Author: Curt Menefee
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 006244008X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
A refreshing and thought-provoking look at athletes whose legacies have been reduced to one defining moment of defeat—those on the flip side of an epic triumph—and what their experiences can teach us about competition, life, and the human spirit. Every sports fan recalls with amazing accuracy a pivotal winning moment involving a favorite team or player—Henry Aaron hitting his 715th home run to pass Babe Ruth; Christian Laettner’s famous buzzer beating shot in the NCAA tournament for Duke. Yet lost are the stories on the other side of these history-making moments, the athletes who experienced not transcendent glory but crushing disappointment: the cornerback who missed the tackle on the big touchdown; the relief pitcher who lost the series; the world-record holding Olympian who fell on the ice. In Losing Isn’t Everything, famed sportscaster Curt Menefee, joined by bestselling writer Michael Arkush, examines a range of signature "disappointments" from the wide world of sports, interviewing the subject at the heart of each loss and uncovering what it means—months, years, or decades later—to be associated with failure. While history is written by the victorious, Menefee argues that these moments when an athlete has fallen short are equally valuable to sports history, offering deep insights into the individuals who suffered them and about humanity itself. Telling the losing stories behind such famous moments as the Patriots’ Rodney Harrison guarding the Giants' David Tyree during the "Helmet Catch" in Super Bowl XLII, Mary Decker’s fall in the 1984 Olympic 1500m, and Craig Ehlo who gave up "The Shot" to Michael Jordan in the 1989 NBA playoffs, Menefee examines the legacy of the hardest loses, revealing the unique path that athletes have to walk after they lose on their sport’s biggest stage. Shedding new light some of the most accepted scapegoat stories in the sports cannon, he also revisits both the Baltimore Colts' loss to the Jets in Super Bowl III, as well as the Red Sox loss in the 1986 World Series, showing why, despite years of humiliation, it might not be all Bill Buckner's fault. Illustrated with sixteen pages of color photos, this considered and compassionate study offers invaluable lessons about pain, resilience, disappointment, remorse, and acceptance that can help us look at our lives and ourselves in a profound new way.

The Ideal Team Player

The Ideal Team Player PDF Author: Patrick M. Lencioni
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119209617
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player. In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues. Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.