My dad was hiking the Appalachian Trail before it was cool. And for 2000+ miles, there are going to be a lot of $hitty miles. I’ve heard Jenny discuss this on a podcast so I was psyched when it got brought up in the book… Type 2 fun is the kind of fun that is TERRIBLE in the moment but afterwards, you look back and think, ‘Wow, that was fun.’ ( AKA how I felt in my first ultra last summer.) Scott and Jenny don’t romanticize the effort of trekking through the entire Appalachian Trail, which was admittedly what I was worried about… Sometimes the way people describe running can be a little annoying because, let’s be honest, it sucks a lot of the time. Being married to another athlete myself, I’ve written a ton on the topic and I’m still figuring it out, so it was cool to see how another couple makes it work in really truly hectic circumstances. When Scott wants to quit, that’s not just a huge thing for him, it’s a year out of Jenny’s life as well. Which I love, because it’s the best part of the book: This great look at the inner workings of a couple who adventures together, and who’s livelihood, to a great extent, depends on it. But they actually do a surprisingly good job of it, and it’s (unintentionally, I think) really funny in some places where Jenny will be saying one thing and explaining an argument, and in the next chapter, you really get an unfiltered take on it from Scott that reads like he hadn’t read what Jenny wrote before he put his thoughts down. A lot of memoirs like this are super-sanitized, so it’s refreshing to read such open language! It’s a fun experiment in cowritingĬo-writing is really freaking hard to do and have things flow smoothly, so I wasn’t sure how Scott and Jenny would pull it off. Jenny talks about feeling unsafe with certain people at certain trailheads, Scott gets real about on-trail injuries and wanting to quit… They really don’t hold back, and it makes it a much more compelling read as a result. It’s full of semi-inside jokes, very casual/natural language, and no fears about telling it like it was. Unlike my normal reviews where I pull quotes and talk through the key concepts that I highlighted, since this one was a memoir versus something more how-to oriented, I figured I would make this review a bit less formal. I like a good memoir, but this one could have gone a couple different ways. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t really know what to expect. And in North, his second book, he and Jenny chronicle his attempt to set the FKT (fastest known time) on the Appalachian Trail. This month, we started the year with a bit of inspiration mixed with a bit of holy $hit I never want to do that by reading North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail by Scott Jurek and Jenny Jurek. Scott is an ultrarunner who’s run pretty much every race there is to win.

Books by scott jurek