the race against time: adventures in late-life running

’In The Race Against Time, Askwith touches upon something larger than simply running or sport - he helps us to see ourselves ... Both inspiring and moving’ - Adharanand Finn, author of Running with the Kenyans

A quest for the secrets of happy, healthy whole-life running, and how runners can keep enjoying their sport, whatever their age

What do you do when the sport that has been your lifeline to physical and mental well-being starts to slip away from you?

Richard Askwith, a life-long running enthusiast, was sunk in mid-life despair. Plagued by injuries and demoralised by failing strength and speed, he was on the point of giving up for good. Then he came across the remarkable world of late-life athletics, and resolved to find out more.

The result is a thrilling, life-affirming quest for the secrets of the happy few who keep on running all through life’s later decades, culminating in a life-changing adventure at the World Masters Athletics Championships. It’s a resounding message of hope for any runner who has felt their joy in their sport being undermined by age.

Colourful, informative and inspiring, The Race Against Time is a story of cold science and heart-warming resilience; of champions and also-rans; of sprinting centenarians and forty-something super-athletes barely touched by age. Its heroes are experts and enthusiasts - scientists, coaches, runners - from many countries, each with a different story to tell. What unites them is a single belief: that you don’t have to take growing old lying down.

This is a book for anyone who has ever felt the healing power of running. It is both a very personal account of one man’s journey from despair to hope, and an exhilarating guide, explaining how timely adjustments to lifestyle and training can slow the progress of physiological decay, while sheer human spirit can, if you are lucky, keep you running happily and healthily, all the way into extreme old age.

Richard Askwith has been a journalist for over 40 years. He has written six previous books, including his modern classic on fell running, Feet in the Clouds, which won the Best New Writer category at the British Sports Book Awards and was shortlisted for the William Hill and Boardman Tasker prizes, and he is now one of the UK’s most celebrated writers on running. Running Free was shortlisted for the Thwaites-Wainwright Prize, and his evocative biography of Emil Zátopek, Today We Die A Little, was shortlisted in the Cross Sports Book Awards. His most recent book, Unbreakable: the Countess, the Nazis and the World’s Most Dangerous Horse Race, won Biography of the Year at the Telegraph Sports Book Awards in 2020.