How the sheer hell of ultrarunning led me to a strange peace

He was often on the verge of giving up such gruelling challenges, but eventually Adharanand Finn found that ultrarunning led him to a meditative state

I never wanted to run an ultra marathon. I've always loved running, the freedom of it, the childish abandon, but I was a 10K and half-marathon runner, a "real" runner (in my eyes), someone who pushed the pace and gunned for fast times. Ultrarunning, with all its backpacks, poles and food, was not really running. It was running with all the joy bludgeoned out of it.

So when a magazine editor asked me to run the 165km Oman Desert Marathon to write an article about it, I said no: 100 miles across sand, in the heat of Oman. It sounded like hell.