Mental – World’s Toughest, Bloodiest and Toughest – BionicOldGuy

This is a fantastic book by Helen Summer about the world’s toughest ultramarathons. It’s a combination of jaw-dropping descriptions of the courses and the accounts of the people who ran them. Most of the events are high speed, but there are also other activities like kayaking and triathlons that are thrown in. It covers the world’s highest mountain range, “La Ultra” (“The High”) in the Himalayas in India, to some of the coldest, such as the Yukon Arctic Ultra in Canada. My favorite line was the description of the runners from China who read the story of the Sahara race in Jordan, and were inspired to run themselves. As the author said “reading can be a dangerous game”. My wife would agree, that’s why she tries to take books like this away from me. But I enjoy it because it makes me look smarter by comparison. It’s also safe because I can no longer run after having two hip replacements. Now if I had read this 20 years ago when I had cartilage in my hip, it would have been terrible.

I really liked this book and it tells about different events.