You Run Ultras? Funny, Never Mentioned It!: A Tale of Middle Age Obsession

It's mostly walking. Says Deano.Paul Hadley is forty-six, works in Operations, and last ran for a bus in 2019. He didn't catch it. On Boxing Day, after three glasses of port and a scroll through a colleague's Instagram, he enters the ballot for a hundred-mile race in the Peak District, because you never get in.On 4 January, he gets in.What follows is a year. There is the running shop, where a man called Finn reads his gait and sells him two pairs of shoes. There is the vest with fourteen pockets, the ski poles that the whole street sees, and the watch that tells him every morning how disappointed it is. There is Strava, and kudos, and a man called Trail_Gaz who nobody has met. There is the Tuesday Night Lot, a terrifying sixty-three-year-old called Sue, and a lane behind a pub that goes straight up. There is a wall above a village, a farmer who may have waved, and a spreadsheet called Fuelling v3. There is a first fifty, a toenail in a jar, a fortnight in Cornwall with seven rules, and a laminated crew plan with an appendix.And there is Claire, his wife, who did not tell him to do this, wants it on record, and has been keeping a list since Boxing Day.The second book in the Funny, You Never Mentioned It! series, following You Play Padel?, is a warm, very British comedy about a man who takes up something ridiculous in middle age and discovers, somewhere around mile seventy-one, that it matters.For anyone who has ever said "it's just a long walk with snacks", and for everyone who has had to listen. The perfect gift for the ultra runner, trail runner or parkrun convert in your life, or for the partner who crews them.There is a fox. Everyone sees the fox.