Long Distance

by Bill McKibben

The best-selling author of The End of Nature shares his observations on training to become a world-class skier as a man approaching middle age. Reprint.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Sports, Fitness, Biography, Nature, Adventure

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Bill McKibben is the author of Eaarth, The End of Nature, Deep Economy, Enough, Fight Global Warming Now, The Bill McKibben Reader, and numerous other books. He is the founder of the environmental organizations Step It Up and 350.org, and was among the first to warn of the dangers of global warming. In 2010 The Boston Globe called him "probably the nation's leading environmentalist," and Time magazine has called him "the world's best green journalist." He studied at Harvard, and started his writing career as a staff writer at The New Yorker. The End of Nature, his first book, was published in 1989 and was regarded as the first book on climate change for a general audience. He is a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Rolling Stone, and Outside. He has been awarded Guggenheim Fellowship and won the Lannan Prize for nonfiction writing in 2000. He is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College and lives in Vermont with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, and their daughter.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/billmc...

Reviews

[Steve Kettmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review published in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2001:

A Zig-Zag Path to Enlightenment

Reviewed by Steve Kettmann


LONG DISTANCE
A Year of Living Strenuously By Bill McKibben Simon & Schuster; 191 pages; $23 It's an idea that many of us have considered, or will as we approach middle age: Why not devote a year or so to fitness, as in the kind of fitness to which top-level athletes aspire, the kind of fitness that reshapes the body and, one hopes, the soul?

Bill McKibben, author of "The End of Nature" and "The Age of Missing Information," chose to spend more than a year doing everything he could to become a better cross-country skier. He sought the advice of a coach. He lifted weights. He ran long distances. He eliminated fat from his diet. He interviewed the top people in the sport. He scoured the Internet for any fresh tidbits that might give him insight. But mostly he skied, and pushed himself in ways he never had in the first 37 years of his life.

"I hadn't dogged it after all; I'd chased old 2009 down twice, and I'd finally gone right through him," he notes after a race. "Even stronger, though,

was the feeling of total clarity that came over me in that small drama. For once in my life I was absolutely present, right there the whole time."

If that sounds like a predictable sentiment that will usher in an even more predictable narrative of huffing and puffing and gaining some inner peace that we get to hear about, McKibben wishes it had been that easy. In fact, even an extreme training regimen like the one McKibben undertakes cannot shield us from the surprises of real life -- and, in the middle of his year of living strenuously, McKibben faces the worst sort of surprise. He finds out his father has an aggressive "nonbenign" brain tumor, and ends up exploring the meaning of the word "endurance" in ways far more subtle and complex than he ever expected.

A less talented, less restrained writer than McKibben could have stumbled badly in relaying the details of his father's illness, even as he's still training and telling us about that as well. Too many pat homilies have accompanied too many tales of gaining spirituality through perspiration. But McKibben guards against that, starting with his first line: "I came seeking sweat and found only enlightenment."

This tone of gently self-mocking irreverence is much appreciated. It enables McKibben to tell his story with simple honesty. He didn't set out to write about his father, after all, and especially not about his father's death -- he has already embarked on his year of training when his father tells him about what at first seems like a mild stroke. But the material chooses him, and McKibben handles the challenge beautifully.

At times, he can be forgiven for casting his father as perhaps too saintly a figure to be believed. Gordon McKibben, like his son, was a newspaperman and a writer. He loved the outdoors. He loved his wife, devoted himself to his marriage, and, even in his final days, robbed of speech most of the time, "he never ceased following Mom with his eyes." As the son says in an elegy, he admired his father more than ever, watching him die.

"His example, frankly, is intimidating," he writes. "Sue and I have been married eleven years now, and I've come nowhere near the state of grace he seemed to come by effortlessly. But what a gift it was that he gave us, this understanding that you could be a man his way, full of love and kindness and good humor and hard work. But not full of yourself."

Those are beautiful words, and they cap a section in which the impulse comes often to put down the book and ponder. Both father and son come alive as vivid characters, and the truth and emotional clarity of much of the writing has the haunting quality we hope to find in fiction.

It should not be held against McKibben if the sections of the book telling of his year exploring top-level fitness falls a notch short of this high standard. Partly, this has to do with the incommunicable nature of much of what he's exploring here. Sit idling down after a long, grueling cross-country ski (or a long run or swim), and it's possible to feel a kind of thought- cleansing calm, but such calm defies description. That's the whole point.

To his credit, McKibben opts not to throw many words at something that transcends words. He caps his year of training with a race in Norway, where the sport is a kind of national religion, and squeezes his account of this fascinating material into a seven-page afterword, much of which focuses on ski wax. Still, some readers may feel disappointed that McKibben doesn't follow up at length on all the big themes laid out early in the book.

McKibben writes with good humor about having grown up as a wimp, musing, 'I'm not sure where my wimpiness came from" He says he aspires to feel the connection to his body that he lacked as a skinny, awkward kid. "I want to gain an intuitive sense of my body and how it works," he writes to himself, when his coach asks him to articulate his goals for the year.

It's hard to say for sure whether this goal fades for McKibben before the much more involving challenge of being with his father during the weeks leading up to his death, or whether he learns something from his father about keeping some important things quiet. Either way, it's hard not to admire both McKibbens, father and son, for showing strength and a sense of humor even in the most challenging circumstances.

Steve Kettmann is a former Chronicle sportswriter who lives in Berlin.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article...

[Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading the first section of Long Distance, I was already mentally starting to compose the middling to poor review I thought I would end up giving it in the end. McKibben, an incredibly gifted writer, had previously written what I term a "stunt book," the Age of Missing Information. A stunt book is a book that puts the author needlessly in the middle of a stunt so he or she (but usually he) can write about it. It's the Super Size Me phenomenon.

At first, Long Distance gave the impression of being another stunt book. McKibben sets out at age 37 to train for a year like an Olympic athlete, and report of the effects. As book concepts of this sort go, it's fine, I guess. But I had already given McKibben something of a pass for writing one of these, and two felt too self-indulgent.

Long Distance takes a sharp turn though, when McKibben's father is stricken with a sudden and aggressive brain cancer, which is heavily chronicled in the last two-thirds of the book, in parallel with McKibben's training regimen.

This writing about his relationship with his father, and how both men handled the illness and death, is some of the most memorable writing I've ever come across about dying and grieving. I've thought about this book every day since I finished it.

It certainly is a far cry from what I thought I was getting into. It was the sort of reading experience that made me frequently set the book down and look out the window and try to think seriously for a minute or two about my own life and how I'm spending these minutes that I have, and what it would (and ultimately, of course, will) mean to stare down the final curtain.

McKibben has volumes of excellent writing on the environment and global climate change but I've never been as affected as I was in this one of which I expected very little.

[Corrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I *adore* this book. It is coming out in print again in October and I am planning to give it to everyone for Christmas! There is something so wonderful about reading about someone "becoming" an athlete to themselves and the dual paths that you can go down - you can get very vain, self-important, insulated, and self-involved, or you can really get in touch with your body, learn and respect your limits, get to know who you are, and benefit from the mediation of endurance training. McKibben just leaves you in AWE with his honesty and openness on this journey and as his year is completely transformed and put into perspective when his father is diagnosed. He is fearless in his self-examination, and after meeting him, I think he must have been a bit harsh in his own self-judgement. I am not the biggest fan of memoirs (although my friend Lori is changing my mind on this), but this is one I'm going to enjoy re-reading and I truly hope those on my Christmas list enjoy it just as much!

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in three days on a spring vacation shortly after finishing my first American Birkie. For those XC ski lovers I found it timeless and compelling. I wish there were more like it. Great writing and storytelling overall.

[Niko Hinz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only read it cuz John sent it to me and wrote a funny inscription in the front cover. Kinda trauma porny and also nordorky. Idk just not my vibe with the winter I had 🤷‍♀️

[Pete Danko · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's funny, I actually came to Goodreads today intending to make an entry for Kirk Johnson's "To the Edge" -- which I am about two-thirds through and am enjoying -- but before doing so stumbled upon a review that included mention of "Long Distance." The reviewer saw the books as very similar and that's a fair enough point to make in offering a few sentences of analysis. But I want to suggest an important difference.

"To the Edge" is a story of man who embarks on a search for what it means and what it takes to do the seemingly impossible: to run Badwater, 135 miles in the middle of the summer from Death Valley to Whitney Portal. This search leads author Johnson to attempt the run himself. This is an immense physical and psychological challenge, one that few of us will ever have the courage to undertake. But it is not at all the same challenge that McKibben takes on. McKibben isn't trying to cover a ridiculous distance in ungodly conditions; McKibben is trying to become a racer. The distinction is huge.

McKibben tells about his coach John Freeman, who had a fine career as a collegiate runner then, after not having run in nine years, got back in shape and set a goal to win the World Masters Championship at the steeplechase. When he succeeded, doing so with a final-stretch sprint, Freeman called it his "greatest victory in thirty years of racing." McKibben writes:

"It's worth noting that this was essentially a private victory. The world barely notices the Olympic steeplechase champion; the sport's only exposure at the last Games came when a trailing American decided to amuse the crowd with a vault into the water pit. The forty-ear-old steeplechase champion of the World Masters Games is slightly more prominent than the employee-of-the-month at the Shop'N'Save. No, his triumph had nothing to do with fame and everything to do with the fact that down that last stretch he went when he could have eased up. And it is a victory (or a failure) equally available to the less genetically endowed stuck in the middle of the pack. As with writing a book, exactly one person knows if you've given it your best shot, or if you've been satisfied with something less."

I was talking to a client recently and it came up that she runs marathons, as do I. I was amazed that she had just run one the weekend before and yet had another on her schedule in just two weeks. I told her I could never run marathons just three weeks apart, that my legs and mind needed more time to recover. She said for her, that wasn't the case; after all, the races were just a few miles longer than the long runs she did pretty much every week. "But they're more intense, right?" I asked. No, not really, she said. "I don't take them seriously. I just run for fun. Usually with friends. It's about the enjoyment for me. I'm not serious about running a time or anything." OK. That's cool. We're all in it for our own reasons. But: There was a way in which she disavowed taking running "seriously" that annoyed me. Her remarks seemed in line with a tendency to view a non-elite's efforts to become better -- faster -- as silly, self-indulgent, misguided ... the list goes on. After all, who cares if you finish 254th, 255th or 789th for that matter?

Who cares? This is the question McKibben explores in "Long Distance," and which Johnson does not in "To the Edge." Which isn't to say one book is necessarily better than the other, but just to make the point they are very, very different.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his late 30's the author decides to test his body by becoming a competitive cross-c0untry skier. He was not athletic when he started his quest, but he is one at the end. While he has to physically prepare his body, he also spends much time discussing the state of his mind.

[Dbear · Rating 4 out of 5]

I happened upon Long Distance while looking for books on cross-country skiing in the nonfiction recreation section of the library and it was a fortuitous find. The literature on cross-country skiing is thin, something that McKibben addresses in Long Distance, and this book was everything I wished to find (while not even considering that it existed). His self-inflicted, year-long trial of endurance is what I imagine many lay outdoor enthusiasts dream of: total devotion toward a personal goal, setting everything on the back burner in the meantime. But his experiment is not without plenty of reflection, and he is forced to question if the route he has chosen will yield the results he sets out to achieve. This is complicated by unforeseen events that take place during the year of his experiment, causing him to double down his examination into the motives that guide not only him but men in general toward the pursuits that they devote themselves to.

[Xinh · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happens when a writer / environmental activist, who has never competed in sports in his life (though an experienced hiker and skier), takes a year off for Olympic-level cross country skiing training in the Adirondacks? Introspective, honest, and entertaining, the author records his insights about the draw and mental challenge of endurance sports.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think this book should be limited to those of us interested in endurance events. Bill's description of his father's death and the immediate family's accompanying experiences is poignant and realistic. Having just lost a parent this year, I was very moved.

[Lily P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very well written book capturing the angst agony victory euphoria and mental journey of endurance sports.
The opportunities for training, coaching, races and travel were just very interesting.

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. The whole damn thing.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Long Distance" is about Bill McKibben's year of serious/full-time training for cross-country skiing when he was 37. I could personally care less about skiing, but I'm an occasional ultra runner so was interested from an endurance sport standpoint, plus I've always enjoyed McKibben's writing on climate change (what he's best known for), so I hoped this would be a well-written account of endurance training. In this, I wasn't disappointed. McKibben spends too much time evangelizing for cross-country skiing and bemoaning its lack of popularity. Truthfully, it's dull and nearly impossible to watch. In a perfect world, the top athletes would be celebrated, but you could argue that about almost any sport that isn't baseball, basketball, football, soccer, or golf. In a short book - 200 or so pages - the author describes ski wax way too much, and not enough about his day-to-day training, how his body felt, and the sacrifices he made. How much did he pay for all this training and equipment? What were his family's reactions? Most of the way through McKibben's year of training, his father was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and the author recounts the last few months of his father's life. Other readers might find this an intrusion, but I thought it was integral to the book and helped set it apart from others in the genre. McKibben is not an elite athlete, and anyone coming here for tips on improving his/her performance will be disappointed. The book is more a meditation on "The Why." A lot of similar books start with "finding your why" and quickly move on to, say, weight training, running schedules, etc. McKibben really explores why the middle of the pack athletes still attempt hard things. They can't expect money or glory, so why push themselves to such extremes? His father's condition catches him off guard, and this is part of The Why. It's a truism that we can't predict how much time we have left, but the author of "Long Distance" shows this. Life itself can be an endurance event, and we should try to do it the best we can. McKibben characterizes his father as hard working, an achiever, and egoless. These are the traits you need if you hope to do endurance events. There are some minor gripes with the book. When McKibben glosses over his training, it's hard to tell if he's running or skiing; I wish he had been clearer in these descriptions. He claims to be doing the same amount of training as Olympians, but it doesn't always show. And there were probably more typos in this book than any other I've come across - maybe the publisher's fault, but it does distract from the narrative, which is plenty moving once McKibben's father figures in. I do think it's a niche book, much like its topic of skiing, but for the right reader, an essential one.

[Barb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whenever I watch world-class athletes, I wonder "what does it feel like to be in their body?" It seems that McKibben had a similar question and set about trying to build a body (mind, and spirit) for himself that might answer that question.

It was illuminating to see what it took to do so (and really, not world class, but rather high up the rolls for non-elite athletes) and the various stages and reflections of his accomplishments and challenges.

Pair that with the impact of his dad's loss of bodily strength during a rapid decline from brain cancer, and McKibben has some important lessons to share (these are selected quotes):
- Glory of all sorts wears off quickly. So you've either got to arrange for regular triumphs or learn to enjoy instead the long slog that keeps you in the game.
- that it's what you do every day, day in day out, that forms who you are. Not what you do on special occasions. (This is true for your body where) 'it's the long accretion of elevated heartbeats, of muscle-fiber twitches, of deep breaths that over time remake your plumbing, resize your lungs.) And I knew from even long experience that the same held true for intellectual life. ... those sudden flashes only came to people who worked with consistent dedication to learn the new, to master the old.
- the same holds true for the spiritual life. People's deaths often really do magnify who they are, intensify their essence instead of disguising it.
- That patient, unflashy drip drip drip of love changed him as fundamentally as my patient daily drip of long slow runs. His serenity and grace and egolessness were not sudden saintly touches applied with strenuous effort at the very end; they were the grooves into which his life had fallen by long practice of kindness and selflessness.
- Occasional real tests arise, times when you need to consciously and maybe painfully lay aside something you want to do - call those uphill intervals, wind springs. And then there are the longer tests, more like marathons: sadness, angst, ennui, all the sad temptations of hyper materialism and hyperindividualism. They are like races, calling for all the strength that daily habit has engraved in your heart.
-Life is an endurance race, though tough, also enormous fun. Even though it didn't supply any of the things - comfort, convenience, security -- that our society trains us to want, it provided much deeper joy. As does, I suspect, a committed life of the mind or of the heart.

[Court · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two confessions: I forgot to post a review of this one but read it earlier this month; and I had no idea this book was 11 years old when I picked it up.

I’ll start by saying I’m a huge Bill McKibben fan. Up until I stumbled across this one, I genuinely believed I both owned and have read all of his books still in print. But no, apparently I had not.

This is a departures from Bill’s writings about climate change and environmentalism, and is instead a memoir about his road to being an athlete. But it’s more than that. Yes, we follow him on his journey of fitness and wellness, but in the middle of all of this, his father falls ill and Bill has a sort of existential awakening. Wellness takes on new meaning.

I truly loved this book- it’s written in Bill’s familiar, conversational style. He’s so smart, and yet so approachable. I love his environmental activism, and this was a nice departure.

I had the good fortune to meet him when he spoke on my campus a few years ago (and I got to spend time with him, which was a tremendous gift), and I can assure you he is just as approachable in person.

Loved this one. Pick it up if you have the chance.

[Carson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most compelling part of this book is when McKibben begins to compare his own athletic training and new physical abilities with his father’s declining physical health. Unfortunately, that comparison doesn’t begin until more than half way through the book. I wish his editor had suggested McKibben bring up his relationship with his father earlier in the book - his father’s love for the outdoors and hiking, climbing, exploring - so when he introduces his father’s decline later it is a more meaningful comparison. As it is, it seems like a 90 degree turn. I wish the most meaningful part of the book didn’t seem like an afterthought.

[Lee Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the first endurance book I've read primarily focused on cross country skiing! The author is not remarkable by any means - either in his writing or in his athletic prowess (as he freely admits) but the book is an honest look at life and death in the middle of the pack.

[Amy Mittag · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author pushes himself physically and mentally over rhe course of a year pursuing the sport of Nordic skiing. Training wirh the intensity of an elite athelete while dealing wirh his father's terminal illness, he finds inner strength and resilience.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this thinking it would be a good book for my son, who never reads, but does ski. Perhaps, although he might have a hard time with all the references to outdated equipment!

[Brillare · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humorous, touching inspiration for endurance athletes and life in general

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was surprisingly funny and touching for what I expected to be a how to sporting book.

[John Brugge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story of what elite training looks like for a normal person.

[Travis]

Some quality insights about training both the body and mind. Some of the references and training methods seemed a little dated. But the book did come out over 20 years ago.

[Brittany Durgin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book to inspire thoughts on endurance, getting through hardships that are self-induced or not.

[Rick Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look into what it really means to go after a dream later in life...coming to appreciate that more than when I read the book.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had read a couple of books by Bill McKibben but just recently discovered that he wrote one about a year of training for cross country ski racing. I haven't come across many (any!) on that topic, and it was particularly fun to be coming from a non-elite skier who I could identify with. He does a great job of describing how it can be so exciting and rewarding to train and race even when you have no chance of winning and you will almost assuredly finish somewhere in the middle of the pack. I really enjoyed his descriptions of the many races within a race that occur as you try to pass some random person ahead of you, or prevent the random person behind you from passing you. He also ties this to some larger themes in life as he tells the story of his father's illness during this time. This added a heaviness that was riveting and moving, but also took some of the fun out of the ski-focused storyline. I guess it was effective in conveying the complications of true life. I think this book helped me understand why I enjoy certain things like sports competitions and what to seek out in other avenues of life. I don't think it spoils the story to say that is has a lot to do with creating circumstances where the continuous stream of junk running through your head is cleared out and you are really immersed in the present.

It was also fun to read about his interactions with the top level skiers and their training, as well as his descriptions of the big cross country ski races worldwide - including the Birkie!

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

McKibben is a talented writer, so it's a pleasure to read anything he writes. The prose here is great.

My complaint about the memoir is perhaps that it wasn't the book I imagined it would be, which could be more about me than him. But I"m the reviewer, so I"ll stick with my two stars.

McKibben tells the story of the year he spends training intensely as a nordic ski racer. As someone who's (way less intensely) cultivating my own nordic ski ambitions--including working toward what I imagine will be the most intense ski outing of my winter career, a 16 km back country outing on a well-known trail near here--I was interested in the story of someone devoting time to ski training and writing about it. McKibben trained way more intensely than I ever will. Fine so far: I don't mind reading memoirs about people who are more intense than I. But either b/c he's a writer, or b/c....I don't know....he ends up with access to all kinds of things (like the US ski team training center) that regular folks just wouldn't. So it turns out to be a book way more about elite skiing than about amateur skiing, and so it was less inspirational for me than I had hoped it would be.

The book also turns out to be a story of the year his father dies of a brain tumor. That part is beautifully written, but was more emotionally wrenching than I'd anticipated.

[Emily Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll admit that just from a writing perspective I would have given this book 4 stars but the topic is cross country skiing and anything having to do with cross country skiing touches my heart...so that's my bias.

Several specific parts of the book I thought were especially wonderful:
1. His inner monologue when he goes to a ski gear expo and knows that he doesn't need any of the fancy gear and in fact all this goes against his "credo" of buy less, etc... but, "Man, those carbon poles are light!"
2. The description on how things unfolded when his dad was dying. As a nurse I knew exactly what was happening but it was really good to have an insight into how a family member views things, especially the "medical system" and it is a SYSTEM that has to be navigated.
3. The climax of of the book when he "gives it his all". I literally had to put the book down at this point because it hit really close to the home for me personally. There is such a risk - going all out - and the constant internal, moment by moment, struggle during the race to define and re-define your expectations and goals. A great description of living on the edge of beauty, truth, pain, and failure.

I am very curious about his other books and hope to read them in the future.

[Cheryl Schibley · Rating 4 out of 5]

What does it take to become a good cross country skier in middle age? A lot of determination. Fun read.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend and fellow runner loaned me this book to read, and it's an interesting premise. The author, a 'weekend warrior' athlete, took a year of his life to dedicate himself to training full time for an endurance sporting event. In the author's case, this was cross country ski racing, but there are certainly parallels to the training involved in long distance running. It was interesting enough to see what a 'middle of the packer' is capable of with the right training. My issue with the book, though, is that about halfway through the author's father became terminally ill. Understandably, the book took a turn at that point and focused on the father/son relationship, specifically the change in roles with the son becoming the caregiver. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this part of the book, but it took away from what the book was supposed to be about, and wasn't really the book I wanted to read. Having said that, I couldn't bring myself to give it two stars so I stuck with my standard 'OK' rating of three stars.