The Art of Ultrarunning w/ Ian Sharman

It's, it's, it's so much fun to, to watch, and it's fun to talk about and, um, so much fun to write about, uh, too-

[laughs]

...

I imagine.

Um, so The, The Art of Ultrarunning, um, I want to start with the title.

Um, why did you go with that title and, you know, maybe not The Science of Ultrarunning, but The Art of Ultrarunning?

I think it's largely because the, the, the aim of the book was to bring together insights and things that I'm frequently talking about in my coaching.

It's things that I've written about in Ultrarunning Magazine, things that I've talked about on podcasts for years.

But there's certain things that when I describe them in certain ways, it, it just, it kind of hits home a little bit more.

So rather than being the bumper book of everything about ultrarunning with all the sports science, all the physical training, all the nutrition, the crewing, the gear, you know, there's lots of places to get most of that.

So I was trying to instead add just the stuff that, that is more unique to kind of the insights that I'll be able to give people.

So-

Mm

... um, it covers physical, mental, tactical, uh, longevity in the sport.

It's kinda, it's still covering a very wide selection of ultrarunning, but it's more about some of the higher-level stuff.

So it doesn't talk as much about the basics.

I mean, uh, the first chapter is admittedly just some gra- general training concepts, so there are basics in there, 'cause I think there's a lot of those basics that people get wrong still, uh, or that they make mistakes and, and, uh, hold themselves back unnecessarily.

But the majority of it is more about the key principles and philosophies that I have.

So, um, these are things that are tried and tested, that are in line with what you see in other sports.

One, one thing I've found over the years is how much I'll, I'll hear a coach in a totally different sport talking about something, and it's in a totally different context.

Maybe it's a team competition, just a one-day big pressure match with 100,000 people in the stadium, but it's the same principles.

Uh, a, a good example of that would be when you get those boring interviews after a big professional sports game and they ask them, "How, how did you do today?" It's like, "Oh, we just focused on, uh, doing the right stuff, and we didn't get focused on the next game, and we're just trying to beat the, the people today and do our thing right." And it, it's really dull, but unfortunately, quite a few of the core concepts across all sport are simple.

It doesn't mean they're easy to do, and I think a lot of the things in the book fit in with that idea, that it's telling you something that is not so groundbreaking, you go, "Oh, I've never heard that before." But it's not an easy thing to do in practice, so it's hopefully giving people practical ways that they can, they can put this stuff, uh, into a race or into training, rather than just a high-level idea like, "You should pace better." It's like, well, how do you pace better? And so I talk about, there's multiple chapters that kind of overlap with each other that'll talk about pacing, talk about, um, how you keep things sustainable and, uh, avoid overdoing it in training, avoid overdoing it in racing.

Um, but, uh, you know, each of the chapters I feel is, is a topic that I, I find I talk about a lot, and so I then was able to refine it into something a bit more cohesive, a bit more in-depth so that it explains things to people in, in slightly different ways.

And then on top of that, I thought I'd bring it to life a bit more with stories in each of them.