The rise of the ultra runners
In a nutshell
Adharanand Finn explores what it takes for a road runner to become a trail runner and where people's urge to find their limits comes from. He travelled the world for the book and attempts UTMB himself. A thoroughly researched book.
Who it's for: Road runners tempted by trail and ultra.
What does it take for a road runner to become a trail runner? And where does people’s urge to go and look for their limits, both physical and mental, come from? The author asks these questions in his third book and actively looks for the answers. Finn is a British journalist who writes regularly for the Guardian and the Financial Times and for magazines such as Runner’s World and Men’s Health. His books Running with the Kenyans and The Way of the Runner have come out in Czech.
Adharanand is an active runner, with a very respectable marathon PB of 2:50. So he runs fast and he loves running. What made him start looking at ultras? He got an offer from the Financial Times that you don’t refuse: take part in a desert marathon in Oman and write an article about it. Well, several marathons in a row. The whole event is 165 km spread over six days or stages. He answered with a clear NO. He’s not mad, after all.
An offer like that might appeal to people who have no idea what they’re getting into. What probably helped was a cup of tea with a colleague in the London office. And three innocent questions. I hear you do triathlon? No. I see. Ultramarathons then? No. So just marathons? The marathon isn’t what it used to be. Nobody is impressed any more that you can run that distance. Ultra is in fashion today. His wife Marietta also helped, and in the end she persuaded Adharanand.
People pay a lot of money to take part in something like this, so why not go and give it a try? Before long, Finn is getting off a plane in Muscat and preparing for his first ultra. The reader is drawn into this world of strange people driven by some unknown urge to go towards suffering and exhaustion. The author himself gets to scrape the bottom of his reserves.
Adharanand Finn
After returning from Oman, it’s clear it won’t stop at one race report. Finn has discovered a topic he dives into. He meets Steve Diederich, editor of the website runultra.co.uk, which lists ultra races from all over the world. In 2007 there were only 160; today there are over 1,800. No wonder the number of ultrarunners is also skyrocketing. This trend isn’t just in the UK, but practically all over the world.
Today it’s practically impossible to get into the big classic marathons: without a super-fast time, a charity place or luck in the ballot, you simply can’t. The same now applies to ultras too. One example is the Marathon des Sables, held in the Moroccan Sahara: 250 km in six stages. The entry fee alone is around 130,000 Czech crowns, and the race still sells out within minutes.
Lots of runners were also inspired by other people’s stories. The example and book pioneer is Dean Karnazes and his first book, Ultramarathon Man.
Ultra, as the author writes, is a tree with many branches. Finn is from England, so he can’t leave out fell running and its history. The first race dates back to 1040, when King Malcolm Canmore held a contest to find the fastest messenger. Other branches of ultrarunning are flat 100 km or 24-hour races, or the originally huge walking races in the USA.
At the Lavaredo finish
But the book doesn’t stop at mapping history. Adharanand tries everything on his own skin. The “holy grail” of ultrarunning, and the measure of when you become a real ultrarunner, is taking part in UTMB. No wonder it becomes Finn’s dream goal too. As a journalist with accreditation, he only needs one thing: to collect the required ITRA qualifying points. You get them by successfully completing races all over the world. So Finn runs forward and takes us along to the individual races. Besides his personal experience, he also brings the views of well-known faces on the world of ultra. The book features Kilian Jornet, Jim Walmsley, Zach Miller, Tom Evans, Hillary Allen and also plenty of amateurs from the other end of the results lists.
Adharanand spent a few months in Kenya, where he has lots of friends. In his first book, Running with the Kenyans, he tried to find out what makes these runners so unique that they completely dominate the running world. Would they be just as successful in the world of ultra? He turned this idea into an experiment. It wasn’t easy to find a Kenyan willing to line up at the start of an ultra. After all, that isn’t normal. Why destroy your own body? Especially when these races offer practically no prize money. Finn didn’t give up and found one. You’ll find out in the book how it turned out. And whether the road runner turned into an ultrarunner who can handle UTMB.
Personally, I liked this book a lot. It’s a thoroughly researched topic for which Adharanand literally travelled the whole world. I believe his book will inspire many others.
