Run or Die

Kilian Jornet

This memoir, written while he was still a very young man, is the story of the world’s greatest mountain runner.

Jornet is the perfect storm of mountain athlete. Slight of stature, he was born at altitude, to parents who routinely went on epic adventures with him and his sister. As is chronicled here, the lifestyle his parent’s choose set him up to love the mountains deeply and have a world class aerobic base by the time her was a teenager. From there, passion, and genetics, took over and he would go on to win every major ski mountaineering and mountain ultra-race in the world.

He is a one of a kind athlete and we’re lucky to be alive at the same time he is.

This book chronicles Jornet’s childhood and adventures in the mountains as an ultra-runner and ski mountaineer. It isn’t a great book. The writing is fair to middling, and the structure is, at times, poor. Jornet doesn’t spend much time talking about the things I’m interested in (his training, his diet, his routines) but he does chronicle many of his major accomplishments and what a passion for the mountains has given him, and taken away. It is an honest, if modest book. If you want to read about the journey of a man who is not only supremely gifted, but deeply passionate about the mountains, you could do worse.  Runners and wannabe mountaineers will likely enjoy this, others will be bored.

 

Recommended for the enthusiasts.