Essential reading for every runner (Men s Fitness), Two Hours is about the world s greatest distance runners and one of the most courageous and gifted athletes of the modern era as he attempts to beat the marathon world record. Two hours to cover twenty-six miles and 385 yards. It is running s Everest, a feat once seen as impossible for the human body. Running a sub-two hour marathon will require an exceptional combination of speed, mental strength, and endurance. The pioneer will have to endure more, live braver, plan better, and be luckier than anyone who has run before. So who will it be? Capturing the lives, training routines, and proud ancestry of these amazing runners, not to mention the pitfalls and dangers they face before and after they achieve fame journalist Ed Caesar proves himself an engaging storyteller with a book whose time has come (Publishers Weekly). In his zippy, engaging book (Financial Times), Caesar takes us into the world of elite marathoners: some of the greatest runners on earth. Through the stories of these rich characters, in particular Kenyan Geoffrey Mutai, Caesar traces the history of the marathon as well as the science, physiology, and psychology involved in running so fast for so long. And he shows us why this most democratic of races retains its brutal, enthralling appeal and why we are drawn to test ourselves to the limit. Two Hours is a book about a beautiful sport few people understand. It takes us from big-money races in the United States and Europe to remote villages in Kenya. It s about talent, heroism, and refusing to accept defeat. As becomes clear not long after its starting gun, it transcends the search for a two-hour marathon (The Washington Post). This is a book about running that is about much more than running. It is a human drama like no other."
Show moreEssential reading for every runner (Men s Fitness), Two Hours is about the world s greatest distance runners and one of the most courageous and gifted athletes of the modern era as he attempts to beat the marathon world record. Two hours to cover twenty-six miles and 385 yards. It is running s Everest, a feat once seen as impossible for the human body. Running a sub-two hour marathon will require an exceptional combination of speed, mental strength, and endurance. The pioneer will have to endure more, live braver, plan better, and be luckier than anyone who has run before. So who will it be? Capturing the lives, training routines, and proud ancestry of these amazing runners, not to mention the pitfalls and dangers they face before and after they achieve fame journalist Ed Caesar proves himself an engaging storyteller with a book whose time has come (Publishers Weekly). In his zippy, engaging book (Financial Times), Caesar takes us into the world of elite marathoners: some of the greatest runners on earth. Through the stories of these rich characters, in particular Kenyan Geoffrey Mutai, Caesar traces the history of the marathon as well as the science, physiology, and psychology involved in running so fast for so long. And he shows us why this most democratic of races retains its brutal, enthralling appeal and why we are drawn to test ourselves to the limit. Two Hours is a book about a beautiful sport few people understand. It takes us from big-money races in the United States and Europe to remote villages in Kenya. It s about talent, heroism, and refusing to accept defeat. As becomes clear not long after its starting gun, it transcends the search for a two-hour marathon (The Washington Post). This is a book about running that is about much more than running. It is a human drama like no other."
Show moreEd Caesar is an author and a contributing writer to The New Yorker. Before joining The New Yorker, Caesar wrote stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Outside, The Smithsonian Magazine, Esquire, The Sunday Times (London), British GQ, and The Independent. He has reported from a wide range of countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kosovo, Russia, and Iran. He has won a number of awards for his journalism, including the 2014 Journalist of the Year from the Foreign Press Association of London. His first book, Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon, was awarded a Cross Sports Book of the Year award.
"A fabulously entertaining and thought-provoking ode to
perseverance, Ed Caesar's Two Hours will make you fall in love with
elite marathoning even if you can barely jog a mile. It is a tale
filled with richly drawn characters whose grit and talent are
wonders to behold, as well as keen observations about the twists
and turns of the human mind. Read it and you'll yearn to attend as
many marathons as possible, so you can marvel at the athletic
geniuses who've sacrificed so much to run so beautifully."
--Brendan I. Koerner, author of The Skies Belong to Us
"A fascinating insight into the clockwork of what it means to be an
elite athlete, always pushing at the edge of possibility. Like a
good runner, Caesar carries the story along with grace and ease and
generosity. He brings us to Kenya, New York, London, and Berlin,
but ultimately allows us to look inside ourselves. It's the human
story that shines through." --Colum McCann, author of Transatlantic
and Let the Great World Spin
"A zippy, engaging book . . . The writing is stylish and evocative
. . . Two Hours centers on the sport's most hotly debated question:
will a runner ever clock up their 26 miles and 375 yards in under
this time? Caesar follows Geoffrey Mutai, the great Kenyan athlete,
in his quest to silence the doubters. In big, confident strides, he
also covers marathon history, the science of endurance and the
thorny matter of doping." --Financial Times
"Caesar is not the first to explore what it will take to break the
two-hour barrier, nor is he the first to go to East Africa in
search of what fuels today's great marathoners, but the strength of
Two Hours is in combining copious research and emotional human
storytelling into a fast-paced narrative." --Stephen Kurczy, Vice
Sports
"Caesar, who has reported widely from Africa, does great work
capturing the lives, training routines, and proud ancestry of these
amazing runners, not to mention the pitfalls and dangers they face
before and after they achieve fame. This strong tale covers the
joys of athletic triumph and the pain of missed opportunities,
while investigating what it means to be born or bred a champion and
what it will take to for someone to make running history. Caesar
proves himself an engaging storyteller with a book whose time has
come." --Publishers Weekly
"Combining real drama and pinpoint reportage, Ed Caesar has
delivered an absolutely fascinating book about the mother of all
endurance events, the marathon, and the outer limits of the human
body. Two Hours had me at the ten seconds, and Caesar sets such a
compelling, genial pace, synthesizing history, science, and
psychology, that his globe-spanning quest to understand everything
about the marathon becomes ours. This is a gifted, award-winning
writer in full stride, and a must-read pleasure, for you'll never
see the great race, or the human body, in the same way ever again."
--Michael Paterniti, author of The Telling Room
"Compelling . . . Instructive . . . As becomes clear not long after
its starting gun, this book transcends the search for a two-hour
marathon." --The Washington Post
"Ed Caesar's treatment of the near-mythical two-hour marathon is
both implacably scientific and wonderfully reverential. As a former
marathoner I deeply appreciate both. The prose hums along
effortlessly and the topic is one of the most profound there is:
the absolute limits of human performance. Reading a book that
combines those two things is one of the great pleasures in life."
--Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm
"Entertaining and informative . . . Caesar's winning prose will
keep even armchair readers turning pages, perhaps tuning in to
watch the next marathon. . . . Wide-ranging and compelling."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Essential reading for every runner . . . Caesar's conversational
voice grabs your attention instantly, making you feel as if you're
running alongside elite marathoners, visiting hometowns of the
greats like Mutai and Haile Gebrselassie--and ultimately you will
think you're reading a fictional story rather than an intensely
research-heavy non-fiction book. But that's what it is. . . . Is it
possible that things are only impossible when we think they're
impossible? That's the question you're left pondering after you put
Two Hours back on the shelf." --Men's Fitness
"For a human being--for one of us--to run 26.2 miles in 120 minutes
will require a belief in everything but our limits. Only a reporter
of Ed Caesar's diligence, and a writer of his ease, could make such
an improbable achievement feel more than likely. He makes Two Hours
feel like destiny." --Chris Jones, author of Out of Orbit
"There seem to be so few grand pursuits left in sports. Ed Caesar
chases one of the last--the two-hour marathon. As he writes, it is
sport's Everest, an utterly impossible thing that, like the
four-minute mile, the moon landing, and the flying car, people
obsessively chase. Ed Caesar is a wonderful writer and he takes us
on the brilliant chase and gets us thinking about what impossible
even means." --Joe Posnanski, author of Paterno and The Secret of
Golf
"You might think, at first, that you're going for a very long
morning run with a small African man through the streets of Berlin.
Before you know it, you're chasing the white whale of human
endurance--the two-hour marathon--down every one of its
psychological, physiological, geographical, historical, and
cultural side streets, running with a tailwind that only great
narrative craftsmen like Ed Caesar can exhale." --Gary Smith,
author of Beyond the Game
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