Out On Your Feet

In 2004 Aurum published Richard Askwith's Feet in the Clouds, his book about the remarkable sport of fell-running. It was quickly acclaimed as a classic sports book, and has gone on to sell, at the most recent count, over 30,000 copies. Now Aurum publishes another book which promises to be a similarly maverick sports book classic. For some years Julie Welch edited the magazine of the Long Distance Walkers Association (a remarkably large group of people who meet up most weekends to accomplish arduously long walking challenges 30, 40, 50 miles long). And she became more and more intrigued, even obsessed, with the highlight (others might say nadir) of the long-distance-walking calendar: the annual Hundred. Walking a hundred miles, non-stop, within 48 hours - watching the sun come up twice...So eventually she decided she had to have a go herself. This is the story of what happened: of the 50-mile walks she took part in to build up to the big day; the singular, admirable, sometimes eccentric and above all tough as old boots members of the long-distance fraternity, and finally (as far as she can remember) recollects the full wonder, pain, horror, exhilaration, even hallucination (from groups of nuns to children's roadside picnics at 4 in the morning) of walking a Hundred. Julie Welch is a highly regarded sports writer and journalist. Her previous book was 26..2, about running the London Marathon. The writes regularly on football and was the first female football correspondent for a national newspaper. She lives in London.