North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail Audiobook

From the author of the bestseller Eat and Run, a thrilling memoir about his grueling, exhilarating, and immensely inspiring 46-day run to break the speed record for the Appalachian Trail.

Scott Jurek is one of the world's best known and most beloved ultrarunners. Renowned for his remarkable endurance and speed, accomplished on a vegan diet, he's finished first in nearly all of ultrarunning's elite events over the course of his career. But after two decades of racing, training, speaking, and touring, Jurek felt an urgent need to discover something new about himself. He embarked on a wholly unique challenge, one that would force him to grow as a person and as an athlete: breaking the speed record for the Appalachian Trail.

North is the story of the 2,189-mile journey that nearly shattered him. When he set out in the spring of 2015, Jurek anticipated punishing terrain, forbidding weather, and inevitable injuries. He would have to run nearly 50 miles a day, every day, for almost seven weeks. He knew he would be pushing himself to the limit, that comfort and rest would be in short supply -- but he couldn't have imagined the physical and emotional toll the trip would exact, nor the rewards it would offer.

With his wife, Jenny, friends, and the kindness of strangers supporting him, Jurek ran, hiked, and stumbled his way north, one white blaze at a time. A stunning narrative of perseverance and personal transformation, North is a portrait of a man stripped bare on the most demanding and transcendent effort of his life. It will inspire runners and non-runners alike to keep striving for their personal best.

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"Scott Jurek's record-setting journey on the Appalachian Trail was the most punishing, most demanding, most grueling feat I've ever personally witnessed. By mile 2,000, he was a hollowed-out, broken-down carapace of a person. And unless he found something, some way not just to keep going but to speed up, he was going to miss the record. Over those final 200 miles, I watched him dig deeper than I thought humanly possible: he not only claimed the fastest known time, but - most impressively - never failed to greet a fellow blaze-hiker with a smile and a cheery, 'How far ya' going?' Now, reading his immersive and engaging book, where he asks and pushes himself to find the answers to all of the 'whys,' I almost don't want his suffering to end, just so I can enjoy another chapter."

— Aron Ralston, adventurer and author of 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place