“Again to Carthage“, by John L. Parker Jr.,published in 2007,  is the sequel to Once a Runner published in 2007. Quinton Cassidy the collegiate mile runner in Once a Runner is now 10 years older. He has gone to law school and is doing quite well. He hangs out with his buddies and has a cute girlfriend and all that but he isn’t happy. He feels his youth slipping away from him and he wants to prove that he still “has it.”

He mulls it over and decides that he wants to make the Olympic Marathon Team so he excuses himself from his law practice and heads to a family cabin up in the hills and commences a brutal training regimen running over 120 miles a week (about two and half months worth of running for me.)

The book is pretty good but the end of it is the best when Cassidy runs the Olympic trials to see if he made the team. Parker is a former competitive runner himself and his best writing is describing the races and how brutally hard they are for the top competitors. (Like I’ll ever know.)

Parker waited 29 years between the two books. The writing style of the second book is much more mature without sacrificing any of the passion. The first book is a runners cult classic, I’ve seen it on the counters of some of the running stores in town. (My brother, who started running long before it became cool and still runs about 40 miles a week gave it me, he gave me the second book also.)

The book is well written and very interesting if you want to know about the life of a competitive runner.

I give it three stars out of five.