During
the pandemic, running has become even more important since it’s the one thing
that I can do consistently and safely. Not only do I like to get out there and
pound out the miles, but I like to read about other peoples’ experiences. While
I may not run 200 miles across the Sahara Desert or have the fastest time in a
race,
After her husband died of cancer, 57-year-old Rosie set off to run around the world, raising money in memory of the man she loved. Followed by wolves, knocked down by a bus, confronted by bears, chased by a naked man with a gun and stranded with severe frostbite, Rosie's breathtaking 20,000-mile solo journey is as gripping as it is inspiring.
Rosie's
solo run around the world started out of sorrow and heartache and a wish to
turn something around.
Heartbroken when she lost her husband to cancer, Rosie set off from Wales with nothing but a small backpack of food and equipment, and funded by the rent from her little cottage. So began her epic 5-year journey that would take her 20,000 miles around the world, crossing Europe, Russia, Asia, Alaska, North America, Greenland, Iceland, and back into the UK.
Kilian Jornet has conquered some of the toughest physical tests on the planet. He has run up and down Mt. Kilimanjaro faster than any other human being, and struck down world records in every challenge that has been proposed, all before the age of 25. Redefining what is possible, Jornet continually pushes the limits of human ability, astonishing competitors with his near-superhuman fitness and ability.
In his book, Jornet describes his record-breaking runs at Lake Tahoe, Western States 100, Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, and Mount Kilimanjaro--the first of his ambitious Summits of My Life project in which Jornet will attempt to break records climbing the highest peaks on each continent.
The ultimate endurance athlete, Marshall Ulrich has run more than 100 foot races averaging over 100 miles each, completed 12 expedition-length adventure races, and ascended the Seven Summits - including Mount Everest - all on his first attempt. Yet his run from California to New York- the equivalent of running two marathons and a 10K every day for nearly two months straight - proved to be his most challenging effort yet.
Featured in the recent documentary film, Running America, Ulrich clocked the 3rd fastest transcontinental crossing to date and set new records in multiple divisions. In Running on Empty, he shares the gritty backstory, including brushes with death, run-ins with the police, and the excruciating punishments he endured at the mercy of his maxed-out body. Ulrich also reached back nearly 30 years to when the death of the woman he loved drove him to begin running - and his dawning realization that he felt truly alive only when pushed to the limits.
Filled with mind-blowing stories from the road and his sensational career, Ulrich's memoir imbues an incredible read with a universal message for athletes and nonathletes alike: face the toughest challenges, overcome debilitating setbacks, and find deep fulfillment in something greater than achievement
When Mimi first started jogging on a treadmill as an unfit 36-year-old mother-of-three, she never imagined she would go on to become a World-Record-breaking ultrarunner.
After
coming to terms with the anorexia that had impacted her life from a young age,
Mimi begins to reassess her relationship with food and finds a new resolve in
running. With a renewed sense of purpose, she decides to take the sport that
saved her life to the next level, training hard and throwing herself in at the
deep end by entering the epic Marathon des Sables in the Sahara desert, despite
still being a novice runner. One startling success leads to another, as she
finds herself taking on ever-more-challenging races – from the Badwater
Ultramarathon in Death Valley, USA, to the 6633 Arctic Ultra – all building up
to her biggest challenge yet: attempting to gain the Guinness World Record time
for a female running 840 miles from John o’Groats to Land’s End.
This incredible story of how an ordinary mum ran her way into the record books will inspire beginner runners and die-hard marathon devotees alike, proving that, no matter where life takes you, it’s never too late to achieve your dreams and do the impossible.
For more than a decade, Katie Arnold chased adventure around the world, reporting on extreme athletes who performed outlandish feats—walking high lines a thousand feet off the ground without a harness, or running one hundred miles through the night. She wrote her stories by living them, until eventually life on the thin edge of risk began to seem normal. After she married, Katie and her husband vowed to raise their daughters to be adventurous, too, in the mountains and canyons of New Mexico. But when her father died of cancer, she was forced to confront her own mortality.
His death was cataclysmic, unleashing a perfect storm of grief and anxiety. She and her father, an enigmatic photographer for National Geographic, had always been kindred spirits. He introduced her to the outdoors and took her camping and on bicycle trips and down rivers, and taught her to find solace and courage in the natural world. And it was he who encouraged her to run her first race when she was seven years old.
Now nearly paralyzed by fear and terrified she was dying, too, she turned to the thing that had always made her feel most alive: running. Over the course of three tumultuous years, she ran alone through the wilderness, logging longer and longer distances, first a 50-kilometer ultramarathon, then 50 miles, then 100 kilometers. She ran to heal her grief, to outpace her worry that she wouldn’t live to raise her own daughters. She ran to find strength in her weakness. She ran to remember and to forget. She ran to live.
In July 2008, Moire O'Sullivan made a solo attempt on the Wicklow Round, a gruelling endurance run spanning a hundred kilometres over twenty six of Ireland's remotest mountain peaks. After twenty one and a half hours she collapsed, two summits from the end. Battered and bruised, yet undeterred, she returned a year later to become the first person ever to complete the Round in less than twenty four hours. "Mud, Sweat, and Tears" is the first book to tell one woman's story about her passion for mountain running, a passion that has brought her to the heights of some of Ireland's most impressive mountains and to the depths of her own human limitations. "Inspiring stuff: an awe-inspiring tale of guts, passion and pig-headed refusal to surrender." Richard Askwith, Author of Feet in the Clouds.
Mighty Moe, the untold true story of runner Maureen Wilton, whose world record-breaking marathon time at age 13 was met first with misogyny and controversy, but ultimately with triumph.
In 1967, a girl known as Mighty Moe broke the women’s world marathon record at a small race in Toronto. This was an era when girls and women were discouraged from the sport and the longest track event at the Olympics for women was 25.6 miles shorter than a marathon. Thirteen-year-old Moe’s world-beating victory was greeted with chauvinistic disapproval and accusations of cheating—as were many of her achievements in the sport she had excelled at from the age of ten. Within less than two years, the controversy took its toll and Maureen quit running.
At the age of nine, Jamie's family feared he would never walk again. Twenty years later, he set off to run 5,000 miles coast to coast across Canada. When Jamie decides to repay the hospitals that saved his life as a child, he embarks on the biggest challenge of his life: running the equivalent of 200 marathons back-to-back, solo and unsupported, in –40 degree weather, surviving all kinds of injuries and traumas on the road, and wearing through 13 pairs of trainers. And he does it all dressed as the superhero, the Flash. Though his journey was both mentally and physically exhausting, it was the astounding acts of kindness and hospitality he encountered along the way that kept him going. Jamie soon came to realize that every person who helped him towards his goal was a superhero, too.
Katherine Switzer ran the Boston Marathon in 1967 where she was attacked by one of the event's directors who wanted to eject her from the all-male race. She fought off the director and finished the race. From the childhood events that inspired her to winning the New York City Marathon in 1974, this liberally illustrated book details the struggles and achievements of a pioneering women in sports.
Terry Fox, the one-legged runner from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, made an indelible impression upon people across Canada and around the world. An outstanding athlete with a stubborn and competitive spirit, he lost his leg to cancer at 19, but said “nobody is ever going to call me a quitter.”
On April 12, 1980, Terry Fox set out from St. John’s, Newfoundland to begin the run across Canada that he named the Marathon of Hope. His ambition was to raise a million dollars for cancer research. It wasn’t easy. Initial support from communities varied from terrific to nothing at all. His prosthetic leg was painful to run on, and there were always traffic and extreme weather conditions to deal with. But, by the time he reached Ontario – a journey of more than 3,000 kilometres – word of his achievement had spread, and thousands cheered him and followed his progress. Terry’s spirits soared, and now he hoped to raise $22 million dollars – one dollar for every Canadian. He succeeded in this ambition, but the Marathon of Hope ended near Thunder Bay, Ontario on September 1, 1980. The cancer had spread to his lungs, and, after running 24 miles in one day, on the next he could run no further.
Weekly Run Recap
This week I ran 74.79 km for a total of 147.18 km. I have 265.69 km left before I’m finished the challenge.
On Sunday morning I got up early to go on my 30 kilometre run. I ran west to Broadview Ave and down Pottery Road, a steep hill that’s a lot of fun to run down (not as much fun to climb) and I relaxed my legs and let gravity do its job. As I descended the hill I could see the chimney stack from the Todmorden Mills Heritage Museum and Arts Centre before I could see the rest of the building. It has an interesting history as it started out as a lumber mill in the 1790s operated by the Skinners until about 1855 when it was sold to the Taylor family. The Taylors owned a number of industrial mills in the neighbourhood including the Don Valley Brick Works and they converted the mill to produce paper. The mill continued to operate until the 1920s when the building was converted into a riding stable. Then, in the early 1940’s, the site became the location of a small German prisoner of war camp. The camp housed men from the German merchant marine who were interned in Allied ports at the start of the war and often worked as labourers at the nearby Don Valley Brick Works. In 1945, the prisoners were repatriated and the camp was shut down.
From there the path connected with the Bayview multi-use trail which was approximately 2.6 km long. Although a guardrail separated the path from vehicular traffic on the right, it was a little unnerving to have traffic hurtling in your direction at 60 km an hour. On the left side there were railroad tracks that GO trains frequented during the week to take people into the city to work, but they were quiet today. At around kilometre 6 I passed Brickworks on the right side, a former quarry and industrial site which operated for nearly 100 years but was now an environmentally focused community and cultural centre.
After that the trail takes you away from Bayview
Ave into a more secluded area, surrounded by brush and trees and various
wildlife before you travel under an overpass and then meander back toward the
road again. Just after kilometre 7 I passed under the Prince Edward
Viaduct which I ran over last week. Today I got to see it from a different
angle and got a good view of the truss arch system and just as I took a picture
a subway train travelled across it.
Soon after I crossed Bayview Ave at a traffic light
and continued running north-east on Rosedale Valley Road. I was a little
worried the trail would be covered in ice since it isn’t maintained in the
winter, but I lucked out as only small sections were icy. The sides of
the ravine, which both slope steeply downwards, are wooded with tall maple,
elm, oak and pine trees, making you feel like you are in the middle of a
forest, not a large city. On the left I passed St James Cemetery, Toronto`s
oldest operating cemetery. Soon after I ran under the Prince Edward Viaduct
again—this time the subway train bridge was separated from the original bridge
as the curve on the main bridge was deemed too sharp for a train to safely run.
For this reason, a separate bridge was built over the Rosedale Valley, just
west of Castle Frank station.
I turned right on Park Ave and then right on Meredith Ave and then left on Mount Pleasant. For the next 4.5 km I ran on this main artery that, despite carrying a lot of traffic, is quite a peaceful run. I descended into Avoca Ravine, surrounded by many trees, then climbed to pass beneath the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks. I continued to climb along the eastern bank of the ravine, entering Moore Park and turned north at St Clair Avenue East where I left the peacefulness of the ravine and entered a more urban area with lots of businesses and shops.
At 12.5 kilometres the road passed through the
centre of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, my destination and the final resting place
of many prominent Canadians. The summer and fall would be absolutely beautiful
here with all the different trees and gardens, but right now it was typical
winter grey. It’s a very popular place for runners and walkers, so much
so that on the cemetery website they have created 1 km, 3 km and 5 km routes
with maps that can be downloaded. Unfortunately it wasn’t as peaceful as I was
hoping as I had to spend a lot of time dodging people.
As I was running, the Tom Waits song ‘Come on up to
the House’ came through my headphones. Throughout the song he offers a safe
haven and hope to the listener--‘Does life seem nasty, brutish and short? Come
on up to the house. It’s not my home, I’m just a-passing through. Come on up to
the house.’ Listening to this song in a graveyard seemed fitting.
After running 5 km in the cemetery and thankfully
not getting lost, I retraced my steps and headed back home. At kilometre 26
I got the privilege of running up Pottery Road, a .41 km hill with an 8.9 %
grade. It’s a pretty punishing climb, but you feel pretty hard-core tackling it
at the end of a long run.
Monday and Tuesday I ran my normal 9 km’s, but on
Wednesday morning when I ran outside my door I soon realized that the freezing
rain we had the night before had not melted yet and the sidewalks were slick
with ice. It was impossible to run. After a lengthy go of it, I threw in the
towel and headed home to run in my underwear and bra on the treadmill. (I
couldn’t be bothered to go looking for more appropriate clothing). It was a
terrible run, but I got 8 kilometres done, with the time I had left after the
debacle outside. Thursday the ice was gone and I ran my regular 9 km route.
Friday was like spring had returned with temperatures of 5ºc. Cilla had a PA
day, so I didn’t have to rush out of bed to get in my run, but I got to sleep
in a little and enjoy my cup of coffee before going for a run in the trail. It
was still a little slick on the path, but it was doable and a nice treat after
running on the street the last few weeks.
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