Jared Beasley

In Search of Al Howie

The story of Al Howie is a remarkable adventure into the heart of the longest races in the world with one of modern history’s most eccentric ultra-marathon runners.

If you ran 2225 kilometres from Winnipeg to Ottawa, you’d be crazy. If you then showed up to a 24-hour race and started knocking back beers, you'd be stupid. If you then ran the 195 kilometre, 24-hour race, won it, and ran all the way back to Winnipeg, you’d be Al Howie. At 46 years old, he ran 4,500 miles across Canada in the world-record time of 72 days, 10 hours, and then followed it up two weeks later by breaking another world record (which happened to be his own) in the longest certified race on Earth, the Sri-Chinmoy 1,300-miler. He was a mega-distance alien, and for the runner, promise was always beyond some finish line he could never reach. Forever broke, he eluded Interpol with fake names and aliases, accused of kidnapping his own son. His life teetered on the edge of sanity and his running feats pushed the bounds of reason.

Based on interviews with Howie himself during his final two years (he died in 2016), this book takes the reader into the incomprehensible distances of a legendary runner and the amazing and complex world of an astounding figure in modern sports history.