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"One of the greatest athletic achievements I have witnessed in 20 years of extreme sports."-Chris Kostman, race director Badwater Ultra marathon."
Product Description
One year after her astonishing victory at the Badwater Ultramarathon, Pam Reed again made distance running history when she braved the hottest weather in years—135 degrees—to successfully defend her title. How does this 100-pound mother and stepmother of five muster the endurance and courage for the 28-hour climb from the hottest desert floor on Earth to the shadow of the continental United States’ tallest point?
In The Extra Mile we watch this ultramarathon champion seek balance in her life as a wife, mother, athlete, and entrepreneur. With astonishing candor she tells of her 15-year-long battle with anorexia. And she helps us to understand her passion for ultrarunning—to discover how far the human body can be pushed.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
My first book on Ultrarunning,
By
This review is from: The Extra Mile: One Woman's Personal Journey to Ultrarunning Greatness (Paperback)
I am a relative novice in running which I should say at the start of this review but relatively experienced in reading. Pam Reed provides 251 pages where she says very little.From other books by elite athletes she fits the general narcissistic personality. She repeats that there are no secrets in running, that is especially suited to running due to unique health conditions (no help to reader). She incessantly lists the races she has run. Regularly contradicts things she had said in as little as a paragraph before eg: She explains how she didn't do the 300mile race to compete with Dean Karnazes but then said she decided to do it right after he had publicly said he was hoping to do one. She doesn't compete for publicity but is mad that she didn't make the cover of a magazine when a male runner did. Her chapter on parenthood has my favourite quote:"Lots of parents practically do the work for their kids. I want my boys to figure it out. That's real life. I will answer the occaisional question, but I'm not going to sit down every night to make sure their homework is done...." Apparently her favourite quote is: "Mom makes me do chores and stuff. Our family isn't lazy." a quote by her son which she has highlighted. The book does give some insight into the demands that are placed on an elite athlete in this sport but really should have been better edited, if so, a potentially interesting story would not have been lost in such poor telling.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.1 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews) 9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Badly written,
By Running Reviewer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Extra Mile: One Woman's Personal Journey to Ultrarunning Greatness (Paperback)
I've never understood why famous (or semi-famous) people needed ghost writer until I reading this book. I was excited to pick up the book and read about the incredible story of a woman who can run hundreds of miles in one go and still have a family and kids. Unfortunately, this turned out to be possibly the worst published book I've ever read in my life. Compared to Dean Karnazes' Ultramarathon Man which was full of passion and detailed account of how painful ultrarunning can be, Pam Reed somehow makes it possible for the world's toughest endurance sport sound like a boring trip to the grocery store. She includes entirely too many apostrophes and adds strange comments about her from people that she knows in random places in the book that seem completely out of place. Overall, I didn't get a good sense of ultramarathon running by reading this book and was not in the least bit inspired.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing beginning, enjoyable last half...,
By Brian Hawkinson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Extra Mile: One Woman's Personal Journey to Ultrarunning Greatness (Paperback)
I was hoping for a lot more when I delved in to this one, but I started warming up to The Extra Mile the more I read, which was mostly due to the fact that the later half of the book was all about her running. The sole reason why I purchased this book.The beginning is a little bit of a dull read and the reason why I wasn't really enjoying her book. The writing style is very personal and honest, but lacks the polish of a good writer. Add to this that Pam writes about the small stuff in her life that really is not interesting, and is also not why anyone wanted to read her story. What particularly annoyed me in the beginning is that we didn't hear about anything that explained how she became a great runner, or how she started running. Instead she tells us of her childhood fantasies of gymnastics, then that she swam a lot, which moved to Ironmans, and then to Ultramarathons. There wasn't anything that showed how she began to run, for example, her first marathon of half marathon or whatever. The type of background that other runners want to read about, especially from such an accomplished runner as Pam. She does treat generously her battle with anorexia, which is appreciated just for the mere fact that it showed a human side to her and it was able to, in some way, shed some light on a subject and show how she overcame it, or is at least battles it to this day. What saved this book was that she spent the last half of the book talking about her actual running. Her two Badwater wins, pacing and other aspects of running, her 100 mile races, 300 mile run and so on. Her style of writing also picked up quite well once she actual starting writing about her accomplishments, which was an added bonus that made the story more readable and enjoyable. I only wish she wrote like this the whole book. Don't get me wrong, a back story is definitely needed for any memoir or biography, but she completely skipped over the necessary background of how she started running and didn't incorporate this in to her early adult life of other sports and her battle with anorexia. I think I would recommend only after you have read other accounts of ultramarathoners, but her memoirs is definitely one that should be on the list of other runners. 3.5 stars. 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Role Model Fail!,
By Crash - Published on Amazon.com
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This review is from: The Extra Mile: One Woman's Personal Journey to Ultrarunning Greatness (Paperback)
I was really excited to read this book, a female ultrarunner memoir sounded so amazing, and then I started reading it... Her behavior as both a wife and mother along with her inability to actually own her disease have caused me to reshelve this book despite only being a quarter of the way through. I just can't get behind her, now had she owned the fact that she is an anorexic instead of coming up with excuses about how she doesn't really fit the criteria and had she not had an affair and been an absentee parent I would have considered her a role model. I am just really sad that she thinks this behavior is acceptable and I feel sad for her family, and most of all for her.
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