North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail

a worse read when compared with Eat & Run, i think. reading these ultrarunners' books...i find my mind is completely boggled. not at the distance, necessarily, but because they really end up putting their health on the line, but they seem so health-obsessed, too. maybe these just aren't for me. still going to read Born to Run though.

jurek really tends to paint a bleak picture with practically every race he describes, and then turns around at the last minute and describes how he won handily seemingly out of nowhere. this gets both old and confusing; he spends way too much time describing pure struggle for me to really comprehend how he won or made it through to the end in many instances. wish he would get into that more in his writing.

this particular journey was somewhat mindnumbing and frustrating to read. jenny's sections help break it up, and i probably wouldn't have even finished this if it were just scott's perspective. overall it's a very interesting juxtaposition with how this FKT is shown in the Game Changers film. the worst part for me was realizing that jurek basically admits he fucks around and wastes a ton of time early on, then at the end he's dangerously sleep-deprived, delirious, and metabolizing his own muscle (cardiac risk) because of how he mismanaged the trip...because of his ego. didn't feel a bit of sympathy at that point. the last sections, especially, sounded very dangerous, and i was definitely annoyed with how they seemed to approach that.

the fkt seems like it was a herculean, community effort, and i admire scott's grit, but reading about it definitely took the luster off the record for me. also solidified how much of sports can be about resources. i doubt some no name with similar capabilities to jurek would get away with messing about like he did, because they wouldn't get nearly as much help. he called in like eight lifelines to push and pull and drag him along.