A review by tim_ohearn
The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike's Elite Running Team by Kara Goucher

4.0

The pacing and editing of this book is really tight, there's pretty much not a single wasted word in the entire work. Though it's written for the mass market, this is the closest hardcore runners will probably ever get to the truth of the Alberto Salazar scandal. The idea is that Salazar, with Nike's blessing, was bending or outright breaking the rules for Nike Oregon Project athletes, specifically Galen Rupp and Mo Farah. Goucher herself was subject to some gray area things, such as getting a prescription for a thyroid condition that she didn't have. Such a prescription could have boosted energy levels and metabolism. As a result, she's dependent on that medication for the rest of her life.

Make no mistake, Goucher was an awesome runner in her era, and with this tell-all book, she comes across as honest and likable. She suffered legitimate abuse at the hands of Alberto and was probably the original "got-totally-screwed-by-contract-reductions-during-pregnancy" runner. For the contract reductions, she planned for a pregnancy based on the word of a Nike executive who then claimed no memory of the conversation which created a pretty terrible situation for her in which she missed out on tons of money and was "used" for pregnancy marketing despite, effectively, not being paid.

Overall, a very good running book, though it does feel like the themes overlap widely with Lauren Fleshman's Good for a Girl