I ran competitive track and cross country in high school and college. This book would have been a god send back in the day. It very effectively combines advice with personal biographical stories that are so inspiring (and would have been even moreso when I was younger). A great reminder that natural talent is important but attitude, hard work and especially being smart and taking care of oneself will keep young athletes in it for the long haul.

I loved loved loved this book! As a marathoner in my late 20s I feel like this book was more written to younger athletes, but there was still a lot for me to learn from and love.

In How She Did It, Molly Huddle and Sara Slattery share stories from female runners throughout the history of the sport. It's an inspiring guide for helping young runners reach their potential in the sport.

Even though this book seems targeted toward younger athletes, like teenagers or college students, anyone can benefit from and enjoy reading this book. My local running group has picked this as our book club book for June, but I also would recommend this to my 16 year old cousin who's getting started in track and field.

This book was wonderful! As someone who works in the running industry, and often services highschool aged girls, this would be a great tool to reccomend for those that have dreams of turning running into a career. I also can’t wait to reccomend this book to my coworkers, because women in running is a big part of our brand!

Thanks to NetGalley for the E-ARC of this book, which is basically a series of vignettes about successful female American runners. I think it's meant to be inspirational, but to me it's not. They all have something I lack as a runner - natural talent. All these stories of "I strapped on a pair of shoes and ran a 30 minute ten k. Then I started training hard".are actually a bit depressing for me. That said, both these women and the runners I have met out in the world have all been very supportive of middling runners like me. Anyway, the stories are interesting, although a whole book of them got a bit samey for me, particularly since it is a US based book, so I have not heard of many of the runners interviewed.
I think for the right person (a talented female athlete, or someone who is inspired by people with natural talent who work hard!) this would be a very good read, and a great gift in hardback.

In HOW SHE DID IT, by Molly Huddle and Sara Slattery, the book looks at what it means to be an elite female distance runner. It covers training, diet and the loving community of runners. It also covers some many of the challenges that women have to overcome like sexism, balancing motherhood with running, and finding a voice on the world stage of distance running that historically male centered.
Huddle and Slattery start the book covering their experiences on becoming top runners. They reflect on successes and failures and cover wide range of topics like a in-depth look at diet, how to train hard, but not too hard, and how female anatomy and how a woman's body matures has to be taken into account when training. As a male runner, parts of the book I couldn't connect to and didn't really impact me in my training, but I can only imagine a female runner will find it quite informative. That being said, I appreciated the section on diet because it was broken down very specifically, without getting too wrapped up in the science. Huddle and Slattery then collected thoughts on elite running from fifty top female distance runners. While all their stories differed, there seemed to be a mantra that they all have found running to be a rewarding part of their lives. Some seemed to only enjoy the moments of victory, while others enjoyed training the most and the races simply signified the end of that training period before they start the next training cycle. Injuries were a theme across most of their stories and how many of them overcame them and even used the rest and recovery as fuel for the fire to run faster was lots of fun to read about.
If you enjoy inspirational stories and finding success in overcoming obstacles, then you will enjoy HOW SHE DID IT.

Such a great compendium of stories from some of the biggest names in the sport. While the front of the book has some good general overview information on health, nutrition, and training, it doesn’t offer all that much actionable information for young female athletes - there are certainly other resources that offer more thorough information. The best part of the book is, as the title implies, the dozens of interviews with women who have hit the pinnacles of their sport, from short-distance track to endurance racing. The tidbits and information that they offer is as inspiring as it is helpful. This is a great book for any runner or fan of women's running.