{"id":11099,"date":"2016-08-01T11:28:01","date_gmt":"2016-08-01T15:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/?p=11099"},"modified":"2016-08-01T11:28:01","modified_gmt":"2016-08-01T15:28:01","slug":"running-with-the-champ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/2016\/08\/the-bookworm-sez\/running-with-the-champ\/","title":{"rendered":"Running With The Champ"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AugBookworm\"<\/a>Another body can make work lighter, both in mood and in task. A partner can support you, encourage you, inspire you and sympathize with you. You solve easier with another mind on the problem. Yes, two heads are better than one, and in the new book \u201cRunning with the Champ\u201d by Tim Shanahan (with Chuck Crisafulli), so are four feet. People who knew Muhammad Ali probably wouldn\u2019t be surprised that he met Tim Shanahan in 1970 because of a charity event. Shanahan was working with a Chicago organization, and needed big-name sports heroes to \u201cdeliver a motivational speech to the students.\u201d His connections led to Ali, who invited Shanahan into his home and his life. They were friends almost instantly; days later, they became regular running partners. It was a rather informal situation, says Shanahan: they ran when they could, near a park in Chicago. This was after Ali\u2019s three-year boxing suspension, and both knew that the Champ needed encouragement, and Shanahan, the better runner, gave it to him. The unlikely friendship began to deepen \u2013 the black Muslim athlete who came from the wrong side of the Louisville tracks and the Catholic white guy born in Wisconsin would lay in the grass after their runs, discussing their childhoods, favorite things, dreams, and life in general. Being Ali\u2019s friend was a wild ride through the years. The Champ was often abrupt with his demands, both to Shanahan and to others, but he was also generous \u2013 monetarily and otherwise \u2013 with nearly everyone he saw, giving away a good portion of his income (and, supposedly, some of Shanahan\u2019s, too). Ali loved meeting celebrities, hated unsolicited advice, could be stubborn, and had a surprising jealous streak, but he was funny and larger-than-life. Then, around the time Ali retired, things changed: he started losing his patience with many in his inner circle \u2013 including Shanahan. In 1984, a diagnosis of \u201cparkinsonism\u201d explained everything. In many such memoirs based on celebrity, you\u2019ll often find a distracting amount of name-dropping and braggadocio. You might even expect that in a memoir about Muhammad Ali, but the surprise is that this author doesn\u2019t focus on that alone. Instead, \u201cRunning with the Champ\u201d is a loving tribute to a friendship. And yet \u2013 as in so many relationships between famous and not-famous \u2013 there were the not-so-good-times, and Shanahan includes those among his stories. Here, we see a big-hearted athlete in action, and sometimes struggling. We also get a heartbreaking glimpse of Ali and his determination to hang on to the shreds of a career that was done. For fans who\u2019ve read everything they can on Ali\u2019s fights, this is a look from a different angle at the man himself, from a fan-turned-friend. If you need a book about The Greatest, then \u201cRunning with The Champ\u201d may be one of the better ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another body can make work lighter, both in mood and in task. A partner can support you, encourage you, inspire you and sympathize with you. You solve easier with another mind on the problem. Yes, two heads are better than one, and in the new book \u201cRunning with the Champ\u201d by Tim Shanahan (with Chuck<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":11100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11099","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bookworm-sez"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11102,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11099\/revisions\/11102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tenfourmagazine.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}