I didn’t expect to like this book. That’s why I didn’t read it. I listened to it.

Here’s the thing: I listen to audiobooks I have no intention of reading. Mostly autobiographies as long as they’re read be person themselves. I like to hear their own story in their own words and listening to an autobiography is better than reading it to get a sense of who they are.

Matthew Perry sounded like he hated himself but, also, stories that had sounded harsh on paper when mentioned in reviews, were told more as jokes when read by him. Billy Connolly’s autobiographies are frequently broken by the sound of him laughing while Patrick Stewart had a powerful resonant voice that could make anything interesting but didn’t he know it.

So I started listening to the Hardest Geezer: Mind Over Miles to find out more about Russ ‘The Hardest Geezer’ Cook’s record breaking run from the southern most tip of Africa to the northern most point. But as his story unfolded, I gave him the highest compliment I can give an audiobook – I bought the book and read it instead. The story was too good to only to in the car. I wanted to read it when I got home too.

With a working class perspective and what felt like an open and honest assessment of his own failings, this felt like a truthful account of a hard journey that involved illness, danger, kidnapping and many many miles of running.

Four stars.

Two ‘big races’ for this year.

June

Celtman Solo Point Five

August

The Reckless

I’ve covered Celtman Solo before – see here and here – but The Reckless is a new event: an extreme triathlon with an off-road bike route. As it’s only a couple of hours away and takes places among a stunning part of the west coast I wanted to try it out. However, as I don’t have an off-road bike I might have to add ‘borrow bike’ to my important training goals!

We have no expectation that anyone wants to read TwinBikeRun but it is ever so slightly annoying that last year we were just a couple of hundred views shy of 20,000. 🙂

But, as even one view is much appreciated, we won’t complain… that much.

The summer proved the most popular months for readers and we suspect that’s due to people wanting to find out more about open water swimming. In December there’s a lot less people googling “How do I get to the White Loch Glasgow”, unless they have an ice axe and the tolerance of a polar bear.

And a big hello to our single reader from Greenland, who is probably the one person who would be looking for a swim in Glasgow in December as it would be warm compared to Greenland!

Plus 79 swims for 95,473m.

This year it appears that Veloviewer has not only started charging £10 to view your infographic it has also dropped swimming so that it only shows running and cycling. Maybe next year they’ll charge a £20 option to get all your data?