The End of the Trail: A 100 Mile Odyssey

This is one of the most terribly written books I've ever encountered. As such, it's great fun to have around so I can pull it out late on drunken nights to read in an appropriately pompous, Shakespearean tone to friends.

Here's a gem from the first page: “The runners' garb is a kaleidoscope of colors and style, punctuated by the domination of the color white mixed with smatterings of all the other colors of the rainbow.”

Paints quite the picture, eh?

We don't even have to leave that page to find another laugh-out-loud masterpiece: “Each runner brings a unique, individualistic, but practical color of white, the sun-reflective brightness that will protect him from the burning brutality of the sun's rays as the long, summer daylight hours drone on to their completion with the arrival of the blackened night many hours down the trail.”

Terrific, hilarious, awful stuff.

I bought this in preparation for my own running of Western States, but everything aside from the training diary reprint is useless unless you need a chuckle.