According to our calculations, he should be able to cover the 13.4 miles of trail to Spivey Gap in just over three hours.
At Sams Gap, I noticed he had the slightest limp, but I shrugged it off because he started every morning stiff as a board until his muscles loosened up around midday. What Southerners call a gap is what I call a pass and the French call a col the lowest point of a ridge, or a saddle between two peaks. Being from the West, I had never heard the term before. I last saw him at a parting between two mountains, which out here in the Deep South they call a gap. Somehow, maybe thanks to his twenty-five years of trail-running experience, he always manages to avoid serious injury. I call him “Big Thump” for a reason-he’s constantly catching his size 11½ feet on some root or rock, sending his six-foot-two frame crashing to the ground with a resounding thud. It’s been pouring all day, a bona fide deluge, and I’m not sure if he’s twisted his ankle in the mud or taken a bad fall and is sitting on a rock waiting for me to find him. He should have emerged from the sea of trees and met me at this road crossing more than an hour ago. It will inspire runners and non-runners alike to keep striving for their personal best. 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. 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. 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. He would have to run nearly 50 miles a day, every day, for almost seven weeks. When he set out in the spring of 2015, Jurek anticipated punishing terrain, forbidding weather, and inevitable injuries.
North is the story of the 2,189-mile journey that nearly shattered him. 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. But after two decades of racing, training, speaking, and touring, Jurek felt an urgent need to discover something new about himself.
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. Scott Jurek is one of the world’s best known and most beloved ultrarunners. 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.
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