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.

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.

This by far was one of the worst books on ultra running i have ever read. I was very disappointed from start to finish. Nothing in the book jumped out and captured my attention. The book read more like a, "My side of the story" rather than what the title implies. Pam is an ultra running legend and, in my opinion, shouldn't have to give countless excuses as to why her relationships failed, why her diets failed, why she lost races. If it wasn't the tv's fault for putting skinny women on during the olympic gymnastics then it was her ex husbands fault for her infidelity. If it wasn't Dean K.'s fault eating so much during a race then the media (oh brother) would love her more. The book read like she was blaming everyone for her problems. Like it was always someone elses fault but her own. I am sure there are some people who would benefit from reading a book like this but they are so few and far between that only a handfull would have been sold. I really wish someone would have warned me about this book before i wasted an entire day drudging through it. Consider yourself warned.