Life is an ultramarathon

I just read "Extreme running", a new coffee table book by Kym McConnell and Dave Horsley. It's all about extreme races across the globe, and written in quite a sensationalist way, full of superlatives, as each race seems to be the toughest on Earth, taking place on the most hostile environment . I guess it's hard to tell whether it's more dangerous to be lost in the Sahara desert, attacked by a jaguar in the jungle or stuck in a blizzard by -40°C near the North Pole...


A total of 24 races are introduced, eg. 3 or 4 races per continent. For some reason, one race per continent is much more detailed than the others, including loads of anecdotes, and a subjective day-by-day race report. This creates a strange contrast with other races described somehow more objectively in only 2 to 4 pages. I guess the aim was to show the overall challenges given by each continent, but I'd prefer something a bit more consistent across the races.

Nevertheless, it's full of great pictures and definitively inspiring!

Just for fun, a list of superlatives inspired from the book:

• The northern-most: North Pole Marathon
• The southern-most: Antarctic Ice Marathon
• The highest: Everest Marathon
• The hottest: Badwater Ultramarathon
• The wettest: Jungle Marathon
• The largest: Comrades Marathon

We don't even talk about distances here, as it is only a minor factor with respect to other issues...

Ultra coffee table book.

Yesterday, I read Coureurs Solitaires (Solitary Runners) by Franck Braine. It's a novel about ultra, so I felt like reading the 270 pages in one go to get properly into it

This is the story of a truly crazy race in an apocalyptic, post nuclear war future. Most of the Earth surface has been swept off. The Race consists of running days in the desert, in bogs and in the mountains. Runners get their "road-book" at the control points every 500km or so. Therefore, the route and final destination are unknown at the beginning, and the runners need to adapt to the changing conditions during The Race.
Running is not all, competitors need a lot of surviving skills in agressive and isolated environments to finish the race alive. This is even more essential from the third day on, as runners got the right to kill their opponents (without firearms, though...). Team building is encouraged to face troubles, although extremely risky as your mates will soon or later necessarily turn into competitors.
Due to an efficient world-wide 3D broadcasting of The Race deployed by a totalitarian government, the winner is entitled to become a sort of God. The previous winner is competing again this year. He's making a team with a feline-like woman. I can't tell you much more without spoiling the story ...
Most of the characters seem quite real, with human motivations you can sometimes identify with, although maybe not to the same extend. Runners seem to be powered by some sort of primitive instincts such as hate, love, vengance or domination. The book is quite easy reading, but intense. The more the story goes on, the more you feel like putting energy and speed in the reading, as if you wanted to run faster.


Unfortunately for you, my dear English reader, this book is only available in its original French version.

Ultra novel.

I've started to read Tim Noakes' Lore of running (4^th ed.), considered by some as the runner's bible. In 950 pages it covers everything you can imaging about running, from the muscles structure to the food assimilation, from mental preparation to overtraining, from 10km to ultra... It is written in an scientific (yet accessible) style. The references, that can be downloaded separetely, cover 100 pages (probably about 1700 of them). I may write a couple of entries about intersting ideas I find in it.


I started by reading the ultramarathon section, which may not be optimal as it refers a lot to the previous chapters.

• The training volume for my level should be around 50 to 100km per week ! I think I've never been much over 50km on a regular basis. To be assessed...
• Noakes reckons running only one ultra a year or even every other year is preferable for performance.
• Cross-training is of importance, particularly non weight-bearing sports such as cycling and swimming.
• It's better to run faster the second half of an ultramarathon. That means setting a time objective for the second half alone. I'm wondering to what extend this applies to races such as the UTMB, where even the best runners show slowing down coefficients of about 0.8. How is it possible to stay over 1 ?
• Women sometimes perform better in ultra mostly because ... they have more fat.

Ultra book.