‘And So I Run’ by Jamie Doward.

A running book – first one of the year.

I wasn’t really enjoying this book too much at the start, it was a bit depressing and a bit repetitive. The simplified summary is the author is trying to run a sub-3 hour marathon. Although it is much more than that, it follows his journey as he uses running as an escape from life, his guilt, his grief, his despair, finding a way through a life that is unravelling.

He talks a lot about his life and about life and ‘shameless posturing of our global leaders when everything is going to shit’ and how they have a ‘complete lack of empathy for normal people, a collective failure to act in an era of existential crisis’. Which, of course, I couldn’t agree more.

But about running, he also says:

These days I run to feel powerful in an era when it is all too easy to feel powerless. I run because I believe running is a supreme of of defiance, a refusal to obey norms and conventions. To run is to fight.