Running For My Life, the book, Available For Pre-Order In Kindle Store

As of today, my 10th book, “Running For My Life” is available for pre-ordering on Kindle store. For the impatient, here’s the link:

Running For My Life

During pre-order window, the price is just $2.99. Starting from the launch day, December 21st, the price goes up to $8.99. So there’s a relevant benefit for those who are jumping on right now. December 21st is also the launch day for the printed version, which will sell for the same price (plus shipping and handling).

If you read my blog on a daily basis then you are familiar both with the topics and the style. Many parts of the book will seem familiar, because they stem from the same place you are right now, from my blog. But there are many other parts that simply didn’t fit here. They were more book-like than blog-like. There are more than 170 pages of updated material in the book right now.

For those who don’t read my blog constantly, this book covers my journey from being overweight, depressed and delusional to being fit, balanced and accountable. I started to run late, when I was 42. At that time, I found the number coincidence quite funny: 42 kilometers (my first marathon) for my 42nd birthday.

But that marathon was only the beginning. Little did I know at that time what follows ahead. I soon went over the limits of 60 kilometers, 100 kilometers, 200 kilometers (yeah, you read that right) and then the limits of running continuously for 24 and 48 hours. It was an amazing journey, with ups and downs, with trip beyond my own limits and back, with new friends and new places. It wasn’t, by any means, a linear journey, on the contrary. But each race got me closer to the next one. And to the next one.

I’m still running and I find it as healing and as supporting as I found it when I wake up, 4 years ago, the morning after my first marathon, crawled to the bathroom, looked in the mirror and, suddenly, the person looking at me from the other side didn’t look that sad and depressed anymore. As a matter of fact, I could barely recognize that person. I was able to look that man in the eyes and he wouldn’t look down.

I’m going to close this announcement with a short excerpt from the foreword:

The spooky thing about depression is that it sneaks in. There aren’t really trumpets and loud voices announcing: “Hail, hail, this is depression entering the room, all rise!” Nope. It’s slow, silent, creepy. It doesn’t even look like depression. It starts with small isolation thoughts like: “Maybe I shouldn’t get out today, I just don’t feel like going out”. And then it does the same next day. And then the day after that and so on. And then it starts to whisper louder and louder in your ears: “Why would you go outside, you loser? Didn’t have enough yet? Want more people to make fun of how much of a big, fat loser you are?”

And then you start to breath in guilt and shame, instead of air. Every breathe you take is putting more dark thoughts into your body.

Until you get stuck. You can’t move anymore. At all.

One of the most common sensations I had during those times was me curling down in a corner, crushed by the immense weight of a huge, invisible fist pushing me down. I was feeling like this when I was lying down in the bed, when I was walking around in the backyard, when I was talking to people on the phone. Crushed by an immense, invisible fist, unable to move, in any direction, just waiting to be completely destroyed.

Sometimes I was actually hoping that the destruction will come from that fist, somehow, because it would have spare me the effort of doing it myself. Yes, there were times when I felt the only viable way out from that nothingness was my physical extinction. I think the word many of you use for that is “suicidal”.

The book you are about to read is the chronicle of my way out of that space.

Some parts of it are recorded just as I lived them in the moment, journaling style. Some chapters are literally pages from my journal / blog. But some are written once the healing effect of running started to kick in.

It’s not so much about being able to run hundreds of kilometers – although a lot of it will be just stories about my races – as it is about how to regain balance and overcome anxiety and loss.

Pre-order “Running For My Life” on Kindle




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