Ultra-Something

By: Brendan Leonard

Narrated by: Brendan Leonard

In this quirky deep dive, Outside Magazine columnist Brendan Leonard explores humans’ weird proclivity for endurance, and how we express it—including, but not limited to distance running, factory work, benign masochism, improv comedy, and rooting for the Buffalo Bills.

©2024 Brendan Leonard (P)2024 Brendan Leonard

Everybody does something..

Humble, hardcore, and humor - what's not to like? Greatful to get to follow along on the Ultra journey. For those of us who have never participated, you may even be momentarily convinced you want to do it too. In my reality at least, I'll happily live vicariously on this one. Thanks for the audio book version, loved it.

Awesome book and good motivation

Just started this as I was beginning my training for a new 50 miler — great, visceral stories with lots of cool facts made it an enjoyable book and one I’ll come back to. Big fan!

Like reading his comics in book form!

His experience is inspiring but this book seems disconnected— there were several very interesting anecdotes that were hard to connect to the story he was telling. I bought ti for a long car ride but ended up just listening to it while running.

the answer for "What is ultra running?"

I thoroughly enjoyed this book—in fact, I bought both the print and audiobook versions. It’s one of my favorite books about running. While I'm not quite inspired to get barefoot shoes and embrace an indigenous lifestyle, the book is incredibly entertaining and relatable. I don’t think another book captures the ultra-running experience quite as well. Like you, I’m just another worker rat chasing a Fruit Loop.

instant favorite, super fun

Incredibly fun. This stuck with me and feels like the antidote to all the heaviness in the world now: "Well, everybody does something, usually anyways. So we thought we would do this and it would be fun."