If you live in Washington DC or Chicago: I will be in your city May 6 (DC) or May 8 (Chicago) delivering a goofy presentation called “30 Questions You May Or May Not Have About Ultrarunning” at your local Arcteryx store. It’s based on my new book, which is only for sale at these events until May 23. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, but the events we’ve done in Seattle, Portland, and Boulder have all been standing room only and not a single attendee has thrown a rotten vegetable at me. Come hang out! RSVP for Washington DC, May 6: https://brendanleonardbooktourdc.splashthat.com/ RSVP fo ..read more

  The evening of September 4th, 2013, freshly zipped into my sleeping bag next to my friend Jim, inside a lightweight backpacking tent near the ridge of the north end of the Sangre de Cristo range in southern Colorado, I opened a copy of Moby-Dick, Bantam Classic edition. I read the opening line, one of the most famous in the history of western literature: “Call me Ishmael.” Then I read maybe five pages before I clicked off my headlamp and went to sleep. I had bought the book at Tattered Cover on Colfax in Denver a few days earlier, looking for a dense, lightweight book to take on a back ..read more

BOOK TOUR UPDATE: I will be signing and selling copies of my new book, Ultra-Something, at the Arc’teryx store in Boulder next week at 6 p.m. April 24. It’s full, but so were the events in Seattle and Portland, and we still had room for people who just showed up the night of the event. More info here. I’ll also be in Washington DC and Chicago, and if you can make either of those events, RSVP here: Washington DC: May 6  Chicago: May 8 The book goes on sale in mid-May, and if you want to have a sample chapter of it emailed to you and a notification when it comes out, here’s the info for tha ..read more

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: I have a new book called “Ultra-Something” coming out May 23rd, but I’m doing a sort of advance book tour April 17-May 8, in Arc’teryx stores in the following cities: Seattle: April 17 Portland: April 18 Boulder: April 24 Washington DC: May 6 Chicago: May 8 If you’re in one of those cities, here’s a page with more info and RSVP links. If you’re not in one of those cities, and you want info about the book, here’s the basic gist (and a link to get a one-time email when the book is available). — I would guess anyone who has ever done any creative work for clients will feel som ..read more

I think it’s a testament to Beau Miles’s YouTube following that he can make a 7-minute video about sorting old screws and it gets half a million views. Did I watch the whole thing? I did. In one shot. (video)   IMPORTANT: If you missed this announcement last week, TODAY is the LAST DAY to order a limited edition Periodic Table of the Elements of Adventure Nalgene bottle. You have until midnight MST tonight. We’ve sold 200+ so far, so thanks to everyone who’s ordered.   OK this definitely doesn’t start out as what you might call “optimistic,” but I think the last quarter or so of th ..read more

After 45-ish seconds of this, I was kind of thinking, “Is this just a video of a guy running to my favorite The War on Drugs song?” and then at exactly the 1:44 mark, which I have been long convinced is the greatest “woo!” in the history of recorded music, I was like Yeah, this is a video of a guy running to my favorite The War on Drugs song, and that’s why it’s so great. It’s very simple, but captures the feeling of running in a city, and I think that’s why I like it so much. (video) ANNOUNCEMENT: There’s a longer story about this on the DFTBA store page, but we are putting my “Periodic Tabl ..read more

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  I Hate Running and You Can Too on Bookshop I Hate Running and You Can Too on Amazon I Hate Running and You Can Too at your public library The post A Story About The Making Of My Book ‘I Hate Running and You Can Too’ appeared first on Semi-Rad.com ..read more

I have a quick favor to ask: If you have two minutes, would you help me out and take this 9-question anonymous survey about this newsletter? I’ve never collected any information about anyone who reads this (I’m trying to be polite), but that also means I have no real way of knowing who is reading it. So I created a quick survey, sort of “what do you like/dislike about the newsletter” and a few demographic questions, and some optional space for additional comments. It’s totally anonymous. Thanks! Survey link: https://forms.gle/NvCshWKEL3Fb2hAY8 — This is a super-interesting video summary of how ..read more

You don’t have much time to grab people’s attention nowadays: This is one of the things I emphasize in my annual writing workshops, before we read through a handful of first sentences that do just that—grab our attention, make us sit up, engage, and dive into the rest of the story. One of them, which I have memorized: “We are waiting in the desert to kill our dog.” (Terry Tempest Williams, “The Questions Held By Owls”) Writing stories for readers is tough nowadays—we all have overflowing inboxes, or we’re on phones or computers where something less boring is literally two taps or clicks away ..read more