New book captures the spirit of the running boom

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

A Memoir That Captures the Spirit of the Running Boom: Blood, Sweat & Spikes: Running the Wetmore Way

At the height of the first American Running Boom, on nearly any weekend in New Jersey, you could find a folding table, a ballpoint pen, and a stack of entry forms. Runners of every age and ability would pin numbers to their shirts, toe the line, and set off together in a celebration of movement. It was a time when running wasn’t about technology, splits, or likes on social media—it was about community, joy, and the pursuit of something deeper.

In Blood, Sweat & Spikes: Running the Wetmore Way, author Lyle Smith takes readers back to one of those rare places where the boom took root most powerfully: the tiny town of Bernardsville in the Somerset Hills of New Jersey. From its winding roads and wooded trails emerged a flood of champions—local, state, national—and a high school program that became the stuff of legend.

At the center was a young coach named Mark Wetmore. Long before he became one of the most renowned collegiate coaches in the world, Wetmore was experimenting, inspiring, and connecting with a generation of athletes who would go on to define their own excellence.

Smith, himself a two-time high school All-American and 16-time New Jersey state champion, writes not just of his own journey, but of the collective spirit of “The Long Red Line” of Bernards distance running. The book is both a personal memoir and a love letter to a time and place that shaped the sport in America.

Elite marathon coach Brad Hudson captures it well:

“We chase happiness in grace, pleasure and more importantly, what the Greeks called arete—excellence. Lyle Smith, with Blood, Sweat & Spikes, has shown us a peek of a world once lived before the internet and social media. A time and place and story that should be told.”

Today, Smith lives in Colorado, in the shadow of the mountains that first drew him west at age 11, when he ran in the Junior Olympic Cross Country Nationals. With Blood, Sweat & Spikes, he returns to the beginning—to the magic of Bernardsville, the wisdom of Coach Wetmore, and the enduring lessons of running that shaped him and so many others.

Blood, Sweat & Spikes: Running the Wetmore Way is available now lylesmith.net

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