I did a bit of searching on the best movies on running when I was looking for some inspiration. And I found quite a number of them. Here is a list from one of LetsRun website which did a poll and ranked these movies (a bit old though, dated 2001) :
(1) Fire On The Track: The Steve Prefontaine Story (1995) – Documentary on Steve Prefontaine, America’s top distance runner in the 1970, who held every American record from 2,000m to 10,000m at one time, and narrowly missed an Olympic medal in 1972. Prefontaine died at a very young age in a car crash
(2) Without Limits (1998) – Another Steve Prefontaine story
(3) Chariots of Fire (1981) – Story of two Olympic sprinters from Great Britain, Erick Liddell and Harold Abrahams
(4) Running Brave (1983) – Story of any American-Indian Billy Mills who had perhaps the greatest upset win ever in the Olympics in the 1964 Tokyo Games 10,000m
(5) Endurance (1999) – Story of the greatest runner of all-time, Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie
(6) Prefontaine (1997) – Another story of life of Steve Prefontaine
(7) Jericho Mile (1979) – Movie about man serving life sentence in prison who find hope in running
(8) Jim Ryun: America’s Greatest Miler (1999) – Documentary on the life of runner Jim Ryun and his record setting 3:58.3 mile run
(9) Loneliness of a Long-Distance Runner (1962) – Story of rebellious youth who begins running and competing at a boarding school
(10) On the Edge (1985) – Story of a promising amateur athlete banned for violating his amateur status
Some other recent movies worth mentioning:
(1) Run for Your Life (2008) – A feature film about New York City Marathon founder Fred Lebow
(2) Spirit of the Marathon (2007) – captures the passion, drama and essence of the famed 26.2-mile Chicago Marathon
(3) ChiRunning (2007): A revolutionary approach to effortless, injury-free running
(4) Running On The Sun (2000): The Road to Hell is 135 Miles Long – story of the Badwater 135 mile run, where the finishers under 48 hours are given a “belt buckle”
Any other recent movie you might want to share and is worth a look?