Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness by Scott Jurek and Steve Friedman

A personal and revealing account of one of the greatest runners within ultramarathons. Jurek manages to blend his phenomenal running with a good argument to at least try to experiment with eating a vegan diet, which is made even more compelling by the fact that he advocated veganism before it became a part of today’s mainstream discourse on diet. Ultimately Jurek’s account goes beyond what it takes to succeed at the highest levels of ultra-running, and provides us with an insight into the man who came to dominate the sport in the 1990s and 2000s.

With the current running boom that we are experiencing it can be hard to find a reason to buy another book about another accomplished runner. How many times can one person read the same template of: I set the goal to win this major event, trial and tribulation ensues and finally victory occurs? Furthermore this notion to write running memoirs has spread to the everyday runners of our time, so that we can recognise the story of ourselves within them, finding a common suffering with the author we are reading. In many, but not all of these accounts, we find very little in the way of who these people actually are; in that we don’t know about what molded them or the uncomfortable parts of their running. This is what is so refreshing about Jurek’s book, we get to learn about the man behind the runner and how that has shaped him. This includes the uncomfortable moments of his personal life as well as his running.

Why the London Marathon can’t win and an annoying tick

I’m standing in one of the start pens of the Great Eastern Run 2019 (also known as the Peterbough Half Marathon); it’s cold, windy and everyone has been standing around for 45 minutes. We were meant to start at 10:30am, time is ticking away and we have only been drip fed information by the race organiser. The tannoy announcer asks for everyone’s attention and says that the race has been cancelled, due to a recommendation by the police. It is my first time at this race and it is not a great introduction, as runners go off in all directions; some go to get changed and others to do their 13 miles at whatever the cost. It turns out that the reason for the cancellation was because of a man acting suspiciously at mile 11, though the exact reason for why the police decided it was a threat will remain a mystery. From my personal perspective the race organisers could have been more adaptable to how they dealt with this problem. That said in this day and age of social media witch-hunts being conducted on a regular basis, it would have only taken one thing to go wrong and then the race organisers would have been crucified for not exercising caution. So after my initial frustration I can see why the race was cancelled.