A Major Running Addiction

There are easier ways to see the world than running 26.2 miles through its biggest cities. Cheaper ways too. But where's the fun in that?

After completing an Ironman and writing Tri Again, Chris Sheard should probably have taken up something sensible. Golf, perhaps. Or gardening. Instead, he became fixated on the World Marathon Majors: London, Tokyo, Berlin, Chicago, New York and Boston. Six cities. Six start lines. One very expensive, occasionally painful, and increasingly obsessive mission.

A Major Running Addiction follows Chris as he attempts to complete the original six Marathon Majors and earn the coveted Six Star Medal. What begins as a running challenge quickly becomes something bigger: a story about travel, family, ambition, ageing, self-doubt, questionable decision-making and the strange things ordinary people will do in pursuit of extraordinary goals.

Across this journey, there will be personal bests, medical tents, brutal weather, dodgy gels, lost toys, jet lag, prams on public transport, and a lot of lessons learned along the way. Some lessons are funny. Some lessons are painful. A few are learned the hard way, usually somewhere around mile twenty.

This is not a marathon training guide written by an elite athlete. There are no attempts to pretend marathon running is all discipline, sunrise photos and perfectly measured porridge. It is a painfully honest, often funny account of trying to chase big goals while juggling real life: marriage, young children, work, book deadlines, nursery bugs, travel chaos and the constant suspicion that everyone else at the start line knows exactly what they are doing.

This is a love letter to running, cities, and the people who keep showing up even when common sense suggests they probably shouldn't. For anyone who has ever entered a race they weren't sure they could finish, packed running shoes before anything else, or wondered why they keep signing up for things that hurt, this book will feel familiar.

Funny, honest and full of heart, A Major Running Addiction is the story of one runner's attempt to chase the world's most famous marathon medal - and the lessons found along the way.