Book review: Blood, Sweat & Spikes: Running the Wetmore Way

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Review

Who better to chronicle the memoir about running the Wetmore Way, than a Wetmore athlete?

Author Lyle Smith (Why Yellow Matters), penned Blood, Sweat & Spikes: Running the Wetmore Way. It was released in 2025 and currently sits dust-free in the Athletics Illustrated Magazine library, having just cooled off from a marathon reading season.

Historically, hotbeds — even temporary ones — emerge, often from the most unlikely places. Auckland New Zealand now seems legendary, but at one time had two surprise uprisings with Arthur Lydiard. The first group included Peter Snell, Barry Magee, and Murray Halberg among others, during the late 1950s to late 1960s. Then followed Rod Dixon, Lorraine Moller, Dick Quax, John Walker (adjacent to the Lydiard program) and others during the 1970s and 1980s.

Lydiard also influenced Finland during the 1970s as he became their national coach. He gave rise to the second wave of Finnish elites. Japan soon followed. Then the Rift Valley in Kenya with Brother Colm O’Connell. And how about the rarified and spiritual air of rural Ethiopia? Colorado, Arizona, California and certainly Oregon have had their bursts of world-class athletes emerging to take on the greats. So why not New Jersey?

During the early 1970s at the height of the American running boom, Bernardsville, NJ saw the rise of many sub-elite, elite and international-level athletes.

They toiled in the Somerset Hills.

And it was a young and very experimental Wetmore who helped inspire a generation. Wetmore studied Lydiard and made it his own, ever adjusting and scrutinizing.

Wetmore then became one of the greatest coaches in NCAA history, right up there with the legendary Arkansas Razorbacks coach John McDonnell.

The author starts with a surprise, “It’s race day and I didn’t know and I’m terrified. School lets out and the feeling is overwhelming my sixth-grade, 10-year-old self. Instead of trotting down to the field to warm up with the others, I turn tail and run home.”

You will laugh in places unexpected; this is one of them.

“How did I get into this situation in the first place? I can’t think of it. I’m just a kid. Why am I scared? I don’t know. Fear of what? Embarrassment? Not being prepared? Losing? It’s only a race across a bright green field on a sunny fall day. But it feels like a threat to my very existence. So, I run. And I hide. And I hope none of the others will notice me missing.”

…But Mark notices.”

The voice on the page stands out, in Smith’s first-person account of being scared, then experienced. He gives us context through history and understanding. There is race day narration and details of training sessions. How he gets to race day and ever improving fitness, is a journey for the reader as you turn each page and each new chapter.

Blood, Sweat & Spikes is just one entertaining story of potentially many by those who were affected by the boom, the heroes, and the genius of Mark Wetmore. Athletics Illustrated recommends this read.