North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail

Ultramarathoner Jurek (Eat & Run) shares the grueling story of his quest to run the Appalachian Trail—“2,189 miles while climbing and descending a million vertical feet”—faster than anyone before him. Much of the power in Jurek’s writing comes from his honesty about his limitations and how his expectations have changed as he’s aged: “I’m forty and I need to feel what it’s like to go to the edge again and go further.” As he moves north from Georgia to his destination in Maine over the course of six weeks, Jurek details the “tug-of-war between me and my younger self,” as he deals with fatigue, injury, hunger, and various well-wishers he meets on the way who often slow him down. His writing evokes the terrain: he feels as “free as the grassy fields rolling beneath me out to the Blue Ridge horizon”; while running in stormy weather, he “ran into mud pits unlike anything I had ever seen.” His wife, Jenny, who accompanied him for the entire journey in a black cargo van converted into a “home on wheels,” contributes passages throughout. Jurek’s exciting narrative presents the pain and joys of ultra-running at the end of a long and successful running career. (Apr.)