Running 300 miles while 22 weeks pregnant
And winning the race... That's Allie Gibbons at The Speed Project Atacama.
My book, This is Running, was released over the past week. It’s been really fun seeing early thoughts, and the parts that people pick up on. The eighth chapter is one that keeps on being brought up. Its title? ‘The Female Experience.’
It’s the chapter that I’ve asked Katie Douglas to discuss with me tomorrow, at the San Francisco launch party that’s she’s throwing for me at her wonderful store, Running Wylder. I think her shop is the blueprint for the modern running store. Come join us at 6pm Friday 4/10.
Interestingly, my publisher didn’t initially want to include that eighth chapter, but I insisted. I personally couldn’t write a book about running culture and not include half the running world, plus I knew that I’d been doing the work on understanding the experience of others since day one of Running Sucks.
The next installment of that work is today in this profile of Allie Gibbons, an American ultrarunner who completed 300 miles across the treacherous Atacama Desert in Chile as part of the harshest iteration of The Speed Project last November. She ran it solo. While 22 weeks pregnant.
We talk about that huge undertaking, and the dramatic final 40 miles, as well as the response from both others and from Allie’s body. For me, it’s a pertinent story in terms of the hot topic right now around how brands monetize pregnant women.
