In The Long Run—A Father, a Son, and Unintentional Lessons in Happiness

It’s 2008. Jim Axelrod—once among the most visible correspondents on network news, the first TV reporter to broadcast from Saddam International Airport in 2003, and CBS’s chief White House correspondent—is covering Obama’s end run on the Democratic nomination. He’s forty-five and thirty pounds overweight. He’s drinking too much, sleeping too little, and scarcely seeing his family. He’s just figured out that the industry that pulled him up the ladder is imploding as he’s reaching for its final rungs. Then, out of the blue, Jim is sent his dad’s New York Marathon finish times. At forty-six, Bob Axelrod ran a 3:29:58. With everything going on in his life, the best Jim can come up with is, “Can I beat him?”

So begins Jim’s deeply felt, often hilarious, quixotic effort to run the 2009 New York Marathon. Along the way he’ll confront his listing marriage, a career caught in the implosion of the entire television news industry, the most god-awful shin splints and the worst-timed kidney stone, and the shadow of a loving father, who because he repeatedly lost his way still has a lesson to impart.