Somewhere in the review column for this audiobook, sandwiched between an Olympic marathoner's account of rebuilding her own head and a serious recreational runner's four-star breakdown of that account, sits a five-star note that reads: so fun to get a child to imagine, I bought four of them as gifts, an easy read that opens up a child's mind to endless possibilities. Nine hours of elite distance running, and somebody has parked a picture book underneath it. Nothing anywhere flags the mismatch, and a shopper scanning stars would never catch it.
Where This One Lands
Deena Kastor's name sits in the author field and in the narrator field, which is the single most consequential fact about this recording. A memoir about learning to talk to yourself differently, delivered in the voice that did the talking. Nine hours and two minutes of it. The whole thesis of the book is that the sentences running through an athlete's head during the hard miles are trainable, not fixed, and hearing somebody else read that claim would be a different proposition from hearing the person who tested it say the sentences out loud.
Kastor was a star youth runner whose career almost ended after college, the copy says, because her competitive method amounted to running as hard as possible out of fear of losing, and it carried her to the edge of burnout. Joe Vigil, who had started the first professional distance-running team in the US, took her on at his Colorado training center and proposed something that sounds soft and is not: that a mind shaped toward encouragement, kindness and resilience would make her faster than she had imagined possible. American records from the 5K to the marathon followed, and America's first Olympic medal in the marathon in twenty years.
What KavehM's four-star response adds is the honest qualifier. Written a month after release, by somebody who declares upfront a fairly serious recreational running habit and a fondness for Kastor, it describes an easy-to-read chronicle of a running career interwoven with the development of a positive mental attitude, and says that for at least the first half it was genuinely enjoyable and helpful, before the words stop mid-syllable. Four stars from the most engaged reader of the five, with whatever reservation it held sitting inside the part nobody can read. No other response here comes close to being that useful to a prospective listener, and it stops mid-word.
Nine hours and two minutes is a well-judged length for this kind of book, and the structure the responses describe explains why. A career runs chronologically. An argument about mental training accumulates. Put the two on one track and each half carries the other: the racing gives the psychology its stakes, the psychology gives the racing a reason to be retold. PETER R. MCDONALD, writing in capitals, calls it easily the best book on running and says it helps when you are struggling through the tough miles. Connie, in six words, says it works for recreational runners too, which is the whole audience question settled in a line.
Desi Houze calls it a favorite book of all time, reports a profound effect every single time, and has read and listened to it more often than can actually be counted. That is the nearest thing to an audio comment anywhere here, and it does not quite qualify, because the same response finishes by praising the workbook at the end of the Kindle edition, which no recording can deliver. If the exercises are what you want, the text is the format that has them. If the delivery is what you want, the recording is the only place the author says any of it aloud.
Weak Spots in Let Your Mind Run
Two votes. That is what the counter under the title reports, while five people have written beneath it. A 4.7 average cannot be assembled from two whole-star ratings under any rounding convention, so the number sitting above this book is not describing the votes it claims to be counting. Somewhere between the display and the responses the arithmetic came apart, and the page has no interest in explaining itself. Treat the badge as decoration, read the five write-ups, and keep in mind that one of them concerns a children's picture book.
Nik's entry deserves the second look. Five stars, a date in December 2025, and a body about four copies bought as gifts to open up a child's mind to endless possibilities. Nothing in nine hours of marathon training and mental discipline resembles that. Either the note migrated across from another product during some merge, or a buyer reviewed the book they thought they had ordered. Either way it stands in the column at full marks, and anyone skimming for consensus will count it as one more voice in favor.
Chronology is the other detail worth pausing on. The four-star response, easily the most detailed of the five, went up in May 2018, a month after release. The remaining four landed between November 2024 and December 2025, six and seven years later, in a cluster. That pattern usually means something sent people back to a title long after publication, and the page declines to say what. It also means the one substantive reservation on record was written in 2018 by a runner, and nobody has revisited it since.
Recommended For
Runners in the middle of a bad patch are the obvious audience, and the book was apparently built for precisely that moment: the copy describes a career nearly ended by a method of running as hard as possible for fear of losing. Anybody who recognizes themselves in that sentence should hear the rest of it from the person who lived through it and came out the other side with records attached. Coaches belong here too, and anyone working with athletes on the mental side, since the argument throughout is that this is a trainable skill, never a temperament you either have or you lack.
Anybody who wants the workbook should buy the text instead, on the direct evidence of a reader who owns both formats. Anybody hoping for a race-by-race competitive memoir should weigh the four-star caveat first, which describes a chronicle interwoven with mental strategy and not a straight record of results. And nobody at all should let that 4.7 decide anything. The nine hours are the number worth trusting here, not the two votes.
Before You Listen
Does Deena Kastor narrate the audiobook herself?
She does. The author field and the narrator field carry the same name, so an account of retraining an inner voice arrives in the voice that did the retraining. Nine hours and two minutes, with no second reader credited anywhere. For a memoir whose entire argument concerns the sentences you say to yourself, that casting does real work.
Why does the badge read 4.7 when the counter says two votes?
Because those two numbers cannot both be right. A 4.7 average is unreachable from two whole-star ratings under any rounding rule, and five written responses sit below a counter reporting two. Something in the display is stale or partial. Read the five write-ups and give the number above them no weight at all.
Is the audiobook worth it if you already own the ebook?
That depends on what you are after. Desi Houze owns both and returns to both, but singles out a workbook at the end of the Kindle edition that no recording can reproduce. If the exercises are the draw, the text wins outright. If hearing Kastor deliver her own reframing is the draw, the recording is the point.
Do you need to be a runner to follow this audiobook?
Not at all. Connie says in six words that it works for recreational runners too, and the copy pitches it as a primer on cultivating possibility for anyone after a competitive edge. The racing supplies the stakes, the mental training supplies the part that transfers. Some patience with split times and race reports helps.
