The history of the Leadville Trail 100 Mile Running Race was a story waiting to be told. This legendary race, founded in 1983, has attracted Tarahumara runners from Copper Canyon, Mexico, world champion athletes such as Ann Trason and ultra-marathoners from around the world to run along rocky forest trails, through swiftly flowing streams as well as climbing a majestic 12,600 foot mountain pass in their quest to become a race champion or simply finish this grueling race. How did the creative genius of Jim Butera lead him to Leadville, a remote mining town in the Colorado Rockies, to create the Leadville Trail 100 mile running race? What transpired to make this 100-mile race the premier high altitude running event in North America? The history, stories and facts of the Leadville Trail 100 are contained in this book, as seen through the eyes of those who have been there and run upon those magical trails. Listen to stories by Frank Shorter, Marshall Ulrich, Ann Trason, Bill Finkbeiner, Tom Sobal, Tony Post, the two authors and many others who have run upon those magical trails. Learn about the history of the race with detailed descriptions about every race, championship runs, tales from the trail, training trips on how to finish the race or even win the race, detailed course descriptions, a running cult called Divine Madness Ultra Club, the legendary Tarahumara runners from Mexico, year by year finishing results and so much more. There is no other 100-mile race on the planet having a more storied legacy as rich and vivid as the Leadville Trail 100. Settle down into a comfortable chair while opening your mind to learn how reality and previously untold stories destroy myths and untruths about the Leadville Trail 100, along with thirty-six years of amazing race history, great antidotes and maybe a twinge or two of nostalgia in reliving glory days from the past and infinite hope for future races.

Running to Leadville is a story about a runner who finds himself and his love of running, only to lose nearly everything. The story captures the connection between life, love, loss and the battles within. The story also tells the tale of running away from your past and everything you've ever known to find yourself and your future. Running to Leadville centers around a character, a fictional High School runner, who perhaps as a result of his parents' divorce and an absent father just doesn't fit in. Then one day during English class he meets a girl. This girl and their growing relationship help him for the first time discover who he is, uncovers his love of long distance running and exposes a hidden talent. The years after high school reshape his life in ways he never thought possible nor could have ever seen coming. During a long training run his life and his future plans take a detour as a result of a violent and terrible twist of fate. Running to Leadville is also a story about the rigors of the ultra-endurance world. Set on the stage of one of America's toughest Ultra-Marathons, the Leadville Trail 100. This race affectionately known as the race across the sky, introduces to the reader to extreme adventure running. This race set within the high altitude terrain of the Colorado Rockies is not for the weak. The race covers elevations ranging from 9,200 to 12,600 feet above sea-level. The race and the mountains it covers demands respect. It is one thing to run 100 miles, it's another thing to stay awake for over 24 hours and it's exponentially harder to do all of this while at altitudes above 10,000 feet. This story promises to take the readers to the highest peak of Hope Pass and the lowest of lows as doubting yourself emotionally and your ability to physically take the very next step. Mostly, Running to Leadville is a story about running the race of your life, overcoming and finding the true YOU whom may have been hiding all along. Running to Leadville is about taking back your life.

The undisputed classic of running novels and one of the most beloved sports books ever published, Once a Runner tells the story of an athlete’s dreams amid the turmoil of the 60s and the Vietnam war. Inspired by the author’s experience as a collegiate champion, the novel follows Quenton Cassidy, a competitive runner at fictional Southeastern University whose lifelong dream is to run a four-minute mile. He is less than a second away when the turmoil of the Vietnam War era intrudes into the staid recesses of his school’s athletic department. After he becomes involved in an athletes’ protest, Cassidy is suspended from his track team. Under the tutelage of his friend and mentor, Bruce Denton, a graduate student and former Olympic gold medalist, Cassidy gives up his scholarship, his girlfriend, and possibly his future to withdraw to a monastic retreat in the countryside and begin training for the race of his life against the greatest miler in history. A rare insider’s account of the incredibly intense lives of elite distance runners, Once a Runner is an inspiring, funny, and spot-on tale of one individual’s quest to become a champion.

In the tradition of Wild and H Is for Hawk, an Outside magazine writer tells her story—of fathers and daughters, grief and renewal, adventure and obsession, and the power of running to change your life. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE I’m running to forget, and to remember. For more than a decade, Katie Arnold chased adventure around the world, reporting on extreme athletes who performed outlandish feats—walking high lines a thousand feet off the ground without a harness, or running one hundred miles through the night. She wrote her stories by living them, until eventually life on the thin edge of risk began to seem normal. After she married, Katie and her husband vowed to raise their daughters to be adventurous, too, in the mountains and canyons of New Mexico. But when her father died of cancer, she was forced to confront her own mortality. His death was cataclysmic, unleashing a perfect storm of grief and anxiety. She and her father, an enigmatic photographer for National Geographic, had always been kindred spirits. He introduced her to the outdoors and took her camping and on bicycle trips and down rivers, and taught her to find solace and courage in the natural world. And it was he who encouraged her to run her first race when she was seven years old. Now nearly paralyzed by fear and terrified she was dying, too, she turned to the thing that had always made her feel most alive: running. Over the course of three tumultuous years, she ran alone through the wilderness, logging longer and longer distances, first a 50-kilometer ultramarathon, then 50 miles, then 100 kilometers. She ran to heal her grief, to outpace her worry that she wouldn’t live to raise her own daughters. She ran to find strength in her weakness. She ran to remember and to forget. She ran to live. Ultrarunning tests the limits of human endurance over seemingly inhuman distances, and as she clocked miles across mesas and mountains, Katie learned to tolerate pain and discomfort, and face her fears of uncertainty, vulnerability, and even death itself. As she ran, she found herself peeling back the layers of her relationship with her father, discovering that much of what she thought she knew about him, and her own past, was wrong. Running Home is a memoir about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our world—the stories that hold us back, and the ones that set us free. Mesmerizing, transcendent, and deeply exhilarating, it is a book for anyone who has been knocked over by life, or feels the pull of something bigger and wilder within themselves. “A beautiful work of searching remembrance and searing honesty . . . Katie Arnold is as gifted on the page as she is on the trail. Running Home will soon join such classics as Born to Run and Ultramarathon Man as quintessential reading of the genre.”—Hampton Sides, author of On Desperate Ground and Ghost Soldiers

A New York Times bestseller 'A sensation ... a rollicking tale well told' - The Times At the heart of Born to Run lies a mysterious tribe of Mexican Indians, the Tarahumara, who live quietly in canyons and are reputed to be the best distance runners in the world; in 1993, one of them, aged 57, came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing a toga and sandals. A small group of the world's top ultra-runners (and the awe-inspiring author) make the treacherous journey into the canyons to try to learn the tribe's secrets and then take them on over a course 50 miles long. With incredible energy and smart observation, McDougall tells this story while asking what the secrets are to being an incredible runner. Travelling to labs at Harvard, Nike, and elsewhere, he comes across an incredible cast of characters, including the woman who recently broke the world record for 100 miles and for her encore ran a 2:50 marathon in a bikini, pausing to down a beer at the 20 mile mark.

After 20 years of talking about it, life-long friends Bud Hasert and Joel Hinkhouse finally qualified for, trained for, raced in and completed the 2015 Leadville Trail 100 MTB, an epic 100-mile mountain bike race at 10,000 feet in Leadville, Colorado. But their path was not without their fair share of mistakes, setbacks, successes and failures. In this book, you will see how these two Texans aspired, planned, prepared, and finished the "Race Across The Sky." It is not a training plan. Instead, this book is meant to inspire you to prepare to climb YOUR OWN Leadville, whether it's actually Leadville or not. Much of what is shared will dissolve some of the unknowns about America's premier mountain bike race. Questions that they had in their preparation and on race day are answered here. These stories will encourage you to follow your passion toward its peak. And once you get to that peak, keep climbing!

Rebecca Rusch is one of the great endurance athletes of our time. Known today as the Queen of Pain for her perseverance as a relentlessly fast runner, paddler, and mountain bike racer, Rusch was a normal kid from Chicago who abandoned a predictable life for one of adventure. In her new book Rusch to Glory: Adventure, Risk & Triumph on the Path Less Traveled, Rusch weaves her fascinating life's story among the exotic locales and extreme conditions that forged an extraordinary athlete from ordinary roots. Rusch has run the gauntlet of endurance sports over her career as a professional athlete-- climbing, adventure racing, whitewater rafting, cross-country skiing, and mountain biking--racking up world championships along the way. But while she might seem like just another superhuman playing out a fistful of aces, her empowering story proves that anyone can rise above self-doubt and find their true potential. First turning heads with her rock climbing and paddling skills, Rusch soon found herself spearheading adventure racing teams like Mark Burnett's Eco-Challenge series. As she fought her way through the jungles of Borneo, raced camels across Morocco, threaded the rugged Tian Shan mountains, and river-boarded the Grand Canyon in the dead of winter, she was forced to stare down her own demons. Through it all, Rusch continually redefined her limits, pushing deep into the pain cave and emerging ready for the next great challenge. At age 38, Rusch faced a tough decision: retire or reinvent herself yet again. Determined to go for broke, she shifted her focus to endurance mountain bike racing and rode straight into the record books at a moment when most athletes walk away. Rusch to Glory is more than an epic story of adventure; it is a testament to the rewards of hard work, determination, and resilience on the long road to personal and professional triumph.