Rise of the Ultra Runners

I recently completed the book Rise of the Ultrarunners by Adharanand Finn and really enjoyed the book.  The book does a great job of capturing the experiences of what an ultrarunner feels as they go through a race and many of the mental challenges that runners overcome to not call it quits.  Many of the stories captured in the book are quite inspiring and have upped my determination to conquer a 50 miler.

I thoroughly enjoyed how it also touched on the history of ultrarunning and discussed similarities to sports from days gone by such as pedestrianism.  What I liked best, however, was the coverage of the various types of ultra-races in the book and what they entail (backyard ultra, multi-stage, etc) as well as many ultra-adjacent activities such as FKTs and fell racing.  The chapters where he focused on fixing his form were also quite interesting as were the coverage of some of the approaches he tried such as Anatomy in Motion. 

The book left me full of ideas for ultra-related activities that I now can’t wait to try and many ideas for researching ways to improve my form.