Running and Stuff

I decided to write the introduction to this book myself. I could not trust even my closest friends to do the job for me. I was worried that they might try to sell you a lie. I feared that they might come up with some words like "e;James is an above average runner"e; or worse still, "e;James is actually quite good at this running thing"e;. I am not. But I have run across America, 3200 miles in ten weeks during the worst heat wave in living memory. Not many people have done that. I have run in many amazing places over really long distances. Ernest Hemmingway said there is no skill to writing, you just have to sit at the typewriter and bleed . That has been my approach to both my running and my writing. I am not sure Churchill had ultra running in mind when he famously quoted his qualifications but that is all I have to offer you here: no skill or talent just blood, sweat, toil and tears smeared over 350 pages and six years. This is not a treatise on how to achieve ultra marathon awesomeness. It is an honest account of what ultra marathon running does to a person. I sincerely hope you don t finish reading this book with the opinion that I am any good at this. I hope you don t describe me as being super human or crazy or other terms I have grown used to over the years. Instead, my goal is that you might complete the fourth line of this series of logical statements in a similar way to the way that I did at the start of this journey:1. James is a pretty regular guy2. He s done some amazing stuff3. I m a pretty regular guy/girl4. -