14 Minutes: A Running Legend's Life and Death and Life

Three-time New York Marathon winner Salazar suffered a heart attack in 2007, and was clinically dead for 14 minutes. While admittedly incredible, the author's harrowing experience ultimately proves too unsubstantial to keep this memoir moving. The book chronicles the author's life from boyhood, to competitive success (including a world record at the 1981 New York Marathon), to the career-ending slump that followed. Now a coach, Salazar's message honors determination and drive, but warns against the dangers of "extreme athletic excess" (years of punishing training and an "absolute refusal to lose" may have contributed to Salazar's attack). These sentiments, while valuable, are not sufficiently unique or compelling for the book to transcend the category of the running memoir. The most interesting strand of the narrative is actually Salazar's rocky relationship with his father, a Cuban %C3%A9migr%C3%A9 who was "a friend and comrade" of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, but who later felt betrayed by the revolution's embrace of communism. Salazar Sr. never recovered from his "obsession" with Cuba, and the author suggests that it is this "inherited%E2%80%A6passion" that pushed him to succeed. Paradoxically, running was also a way for the Salazar to escape the "atmosphere of rage%E2%80%A6that [his] father had engendered." Despite the grander familial, political, and existential themes, Salazar's biography will nevertheless appeal mainly to runners. 8 b/w photos. (Apr.)