Adharanand Finn, on Writing The Rise of the Ultra Runners

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Adharanand Finn initially set out to complete an assignment about ultramarathons for The Guardian. What happened next involved a two-year journey comprised of hundreds of miles captured not in an article, but in a book, The Rise of the Ultra Runners: A Journey to the Edge of Human Endurance. 

Officially, an ultramarathon is anything past the marathon distance of 26.2 miles, though races vary from 50 kilometers (31.06 miles) to 500 kilometers (310.68 miles), and more. When Finn began his adventure for The Guardian, he planned to run his first ultramarathon, the 165km (102.53-mil) Oman Desert Marathon, and write an article about it. After running this race, he realized he wanted to run more, and write more about it than one article could contain.

Once he decided a book was due course, he scheduled ten races. His narrative takes readers on a journey across scorching sand, over jagged mountains and across luscious moors. 

His final destination? The Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB), a 106-mile race through the (literally) breathtaking French Alps. Finn’s training plan provided him with a natural narrative where he had to run certain races to accumulate the 15 points needed to compete in the UTMB. 

“It was a journalistic endeavor as much as a personal story—that was the idea. It was the two things combined,” Finn said. 

He felt compelled to cover numerous other races, including the Comrades Marathon, the world’s oldest and largest ultramarathon, and the 24-hour Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 24-hour Track Race in London’s Tooting district in September of 2017, where he ended up running 89 miles worth of 400-meter circles around the track.  

Famous and interesting characters from his journey come to life in his book, runners like Zach Miller, who lives halfway up Pike’s Peak in Colorado, isolated in an off-the-grid cabin. “I interlaced my story with whoever I came across on the way of my journey,” Finn said.

The author-turned-avid-ultrarunner took plenty of notes and interviewed everybody he met, organically. No one could manage to run away from Finn’s questions—not agents, sponsors or race organizers. And especially not those he ran alongside across deserts and mountains, for hours on end. 

For two years, he lived his ultramarathon journey and wrote everything in notebooks, approximately 30 of them. All the raw materials were prepped and ready to go. “And then I realized I had about a month to write the book,” Finn said. 

After his final race, Finn managed to capture his journey on paper for the rest of the world to read, in just 10 days. 

“Hopefully the intensity of the race comes across in the intensity of the writing because of that.”

When asked if there are parallels between the extreme sport of ultrarunning and the articulate act of book writing, Finn said, “I sometimes think there are more differences than similarities.”

Although both running and writing are long processes, when you run, you go from A to B, and it’s a very linear process, Finn shared. Writing, on the other hand …

“The way that I write, I splurge everything out and then go back and edit,” Finn said. “Once a race is over, you can’t go back and fix all the mistakes, and go back and fix the mistakes again. So that’s quite different. And also, I think the way my mind works … it’s almost the opposite.”

When Finn runs, he allows his thoughts to roam wild and free. Logic and order have no place in Finn’s running world. Writing is the time to capture thoughts and solidify them, bringing ideas into coherent formats. 

“The contrast is the most beneficial thing,” Finn said. 

What does it take to be an ultrarunner? “You can call it determination and will,” Finn said with a chuckle. Perhaps the very same traits enabled Finn to write a book in nearly the same amount of time it took him to complete an ultramarathon. 

Find Finn online at thewayoftherunner.com and on Twitter @adharanand.

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