Billy Squires

It's a lot less than you might think, according to legendary Boston area coach Billy Squires. But you have to do enough to break through to a decent level of fitness.

When that happens, you will find yourself running like "a kite in the wind", he says in his book Speed with Endurance, co-written with Bruce Lehane.

To establish fitness, they say: "You have to work your way up to covering six miles per day on average six days a week." Now this will sound like nothing to some people here, and a lot to others. Whatever: it is do-able, isn't it? Squires and Lehane virtually guarantee that if you do this minimum, you will lift yourself beyond the ranks of "recreational running" and be able to produce "lower" levels of performance.

Legend has it that Dick Beardsley, the two-time Olympic marathon qualifier and the fourth fastest American ever to run 26.2 miles, coached himself from a book.

The story had intrigued me for years. Call me slow, but I only recently realized that Dick's own story, "Staying the Course" was still in print. I finally got a copy and laid the legend to rest. Having just run 2:20 for 44th place in the 1979 Nike/Oregon Track Club marathon, Dick realized he had a good crack at becoming world-class - if he kept improving. (By the way, he still tops the Guinness Book of World Records list for the longest consecutive series of faster marathon times - 13 in all.) At that point, as he puts it: "I didn't have a coach, but I had a book: 'Self-Made Olympian' by Ron Daws. It was my bible. I referred to it constantly for workouts."