“Meghan Hicks and Bryon Powell of irunfar here with…”
You’ll hear the voices of ultrarunning’s prolific documentarians in this line if you’ve spent time following trail and ultrarunning in the past decade. Hicks and Powell host the website irunfar, which quickly became the go-to source for news and resources on ultrarunning. Their live-tweeting at major races around the world, pre- and post-race interviews and multiple weekly and monthly columns have become the epitome of documenting the sport.
In Where the Road Ends: A Guide to Trail Running, Hicks and Powell provide a great overview of trail-running as exercise, sport and how one can transition to trail-running from road-running or even start running altogether. The writing is conversational, which makes it accessible for readers to follow their concepts and make sense of the advice and exercises offered in each chapter.
The insights and information shared in Trail are accompanied through a multitude of illustrations, photographs, graphs and sidebars. These supplements create a book that is colourful in its presentation and clear in its message. Trail is written in a way to introduce the sport to those, likely, not overly familiar with it. And it does so in fine fashion. Trail is a great resource for those interested in the sport and who are beginning to explore trails on foot. That said, exercises and insights provided throughout would make Trail a great reference book even for those with much experience in the sport.
