Andy Blackford was 29 when he was told to give up smoking or die. He decided running was the answer even though he came second-to-last in the school cross-country, only beating a classmate with rickets.
'Running on Empty' is the story of one man's devotion to a sport for which he had no natural aptitude whatsoever. It is chiseled out in twenty years of columns commissioned by 'Runner's World' magazine. It chronicles his participation in lunatic events that had him running up the Himalayas, across the Sahara, on the Greenland ice-cap, and through the Amazon rainforest.
"A dashing, not to say breathless, collection of essays in which monomaniac marathon vet and enviable wordsmith Andy Blackford touchingly sends up his obsession with rare and appealing wit."
Frank Keating, The Guardian
