Relentless Forward Progress: A Guide to Running Ultramarathons

I won't be running an ultra-marathon any time soon, in fact, unless I manage to be lucky with my entry for the London Marathon next year I can't see myself running much further than about 10 miles any time soon. Despite this. every time I start running regularly again I find myself drawn to reading about those who run ultra-marathons. I noticed that I had this book on my bookshelf the other day and as luck would have it, I have been running more recently and this piqued my interest in the book.

I haven't heard of the author Bryon Powell but to be fair I only know a handful of ultra runners, after a bit of research it appears that he runs probably the biggest ultra running website, irunfar.com. This is pretty much the go to website for show more anyone interested in ultra running so the author clearly knows his stuff. This book covers pretty much everything you might need or want to know about ultra running, including why people seem to be drawn to it. There is one very important message in the early chapters, you need to have a good running base before thinking about doing an ultra-marathon and this means having marathon running experience. There are a range of training programs to suit various types of people depending on how much time you have available to train each week. This is a nice departure from a lot of running books which tend to be very rigid in their training structure. Another thing that I really liked about the book was that Powell presents different opinions on many subjects. One such example is barefoot or minimalist running shoes. He has an article from a someone who is a minimalist and someone who isn't and what they feel are the pro's and con's of both options. I really like this non dogmatic approach and this seems to be a theme throughout ultra running.

I have the feeling that a lot of the information presented in this book can be found on the website but the book presents it really well and all in one place. show less

As an aspiring ultrarunner, I found this guide to be a good introduction to what I might expect in this adventure. While it does read as a series of guides and has less discussion of why people do this than I'd like, as a practical introduction, I found it to be reassuring and also realistically eye-opening.

Maybe this book would have been useful when it was first published, but it's hard to recommend in 2024. Although targeted at runners who have successfully completed at least a marathon or two and have run 30+ miles per week for the past 6+ months, most of the advice is more suited for people thinking about running their first 10k. The chapters are short, and the information quite basic. Rather than delve into any useful details, the book instead refers the reader to other books on the topic, which begs the question of why bother with this one.

It also appears to have been hastily compiled from previous articles, including a bunch of contributions by others. In fact, a good deal of the info in the book appears on the author's excellent show more website (https://www.irunfar.com/ultramarathon-training-a-guide-to-everything), including links to the references and other sources of additional information, which is likely going to be more useful for most runners, who have particular needs or interests. show less