Mindful Ultramarathon Running

I’ll admit I side-eyed the title at first—*mindful* and *ultramarathon* feel like oil and water, like slapping a ‘namaste’ sticker on a mud-caked hydration vest. But D’Aulerio pulls it off by treating the trail as a moving meditation cushion, not a battleground. His best chapters dismantle the myth of the ‘tough’ runner, arguing that endurance isn’t about gritting your teeth but *noticing* the teeth-gritting—the way your mind latches onto a knee twinge at mile 40 and spins it into a catastrophe. The audiobook’s strength lies in these psychological deep dives, though I wished for more concrete examples from his own races (we get glimpses of a 100-miler in the Rockies, but I craved the *sensory* details—the smell of pine at 3 a.m., the taste of tailwind after 12 hours). Frank Gerard’s narration grows on you. His voice is weathered but not weary, like a runner who’s logged the miles but still finds them fascinating. The pacing is deliberate, almost slow, which might frustrate listeners expecting a hype-beast performance—but it suits the material. My only real critique is the occasional tangent into abstract mindfulness jargon (a section on ‘non-dual awareness’ during a race report felt jarring). Still, this is one of the few running books that doesn’t make you feel inadequate for not being elite. It’s for the back-of-the-packer who’s there to *experience* the distance, not conquer it. And in an era of Strava brags and sub-3-hour marathon obsessions, that’s refreshingly subversive.