|
Feet In The Clouds - RRP £9.00 - Our Price - £9.00 VAT Free
|
|
If you don't realise how unpleasant it's going to be, says Richard Askwith, you're at risk of not enjoying yourself properly.
In his bracing and inspiring account of fell-running, Askwith argues that this demanding but little-understood sport has given rise to some of the British Isles' unsung sporting and folk heroes over the past 150 years.
Bob Graham is one of these heroes. In 1932, to celebrate his 42nd birthday, this Keswick B&B landlord decided to run 42 Lakeland peaks in under 24 hours. He trained barefoot so as not to wear out his plimsolls, and completed what was then considered an impossible feat. The "BG" is now a classic fell-running test and one which Askwith, a "yomping yuppie" from the South, miserably failed at his first attempt. This initiated a decade-long quest to conquer the BG, a quest which gives the book its structure: a 13-stone ex-smoker with dodgy ankles explores the history of the sport and meets its legendary runners to glean their secrets.
There is an undeniable nostalgia here for an ageing generation of rural Britain, epitomised by its great fell runners, many of whom have never moved more than a few miles from the villages in which they were born. But perhaps the sport is changing rather than dying - a book as entertaining as this, and by an "off-comer" such as Askwith, is surely a positive sign. You're left in no doubt as to the pleasures of running up and down mountains: "If you're not cold, or wet, or lost, or exhausted, or bruised by rocks or covered in mud, you're not really experiencing the mountains properly. You need to feel it, to interact with it; to be in it, not just looking from the outside. You need to lose yourself - for it is then that you are most human."
The Sunday Times says - Askwith brings the men and the mountains to life, focusing on the indomitable spirit that drives otherwise sane people to drag their bodies mile after mile in pursuit of an obsession that few of us can comprehend.
The Independent on Sunday says - One of the best books about the extremes of sporting endeavour that you will ever read.
Matthew Syed from The Times says - In this excellent book, Richard Askwith somehow manages to convey some of the charm of fell-running and the indomitable willpower of those who excel at it.
Shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year, the Boardman-Tasker Award and awarded Best New Writer at the British Sports Book Publishing Awards 2005