At forty-one I was overweight and unfit. As I turned 50 I was thirty pounds lighter, having spent my fifth decade training for, and racing multiple Ironmans, marathons, and other crazy adventures. This account of that fitness journey through my forties includes broken bones, severe chafing, regular cursing, rubber and lycra, an element of masochism ... and cake.
From New York Times-bestselling writer Tim Lebbon comes his first non-fiction book, charting his fitness journey through his forties––funny, hopefully inspiring, brutally honest, this is a book for anyone trying to get and stay fit, at whatever age!
Run Walk Crawl by Tim Lebbon was published on 3 March 2021 by Dreaming in Fire. As part of this #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour, I'm delighted to welcome Martin Cater to the blog today with his review.
Review by Martin Cater
I will preface this short review of Run Walk Crawl by saying I am closer to his age now than when he decided to change his life for the better, and my body is starting to make me well aware of this fact. Through my 30s and at least the first half of my 40s, I considered myself reasonably active – nothing impressive, but I worked out regularly and played a little squash.
The last five or so years, this has trailed off to essentially nothing. It started slowly, reducing the times I went to the gym, I started a new job, so squash wasn’t as easy to arrange and dwindled away. I will admit to living in denial, thinking I could easily regain some motivation, and full of ‘it will be easy to drop back into it’ - how wrong was I? Towards the end of 2019, I finally started going back to the gym, and was horrified at how much had been lost in 3-4 yrs. I could no longer lift weights I used to ‘warm-up’ with, a 20 min brisk walk on a treadmill left me a sweaty out of breath mess and there is nothing more depressing or counter motivational. I figured 2020 would be the year I really made some effort & then Covid arrived and I have gone back to probably even less exercise.
All this self-pitying is essentially what attracted me to pick up this book, in the hope of finding some encouraging words of motivation from someone who had found themselves in a similar situation – cue the Rocky music!
Run Walk Crawl however, is not some training manual for the ‘older’ gent, and in fairness never proports to being. It’s more an account of what the author has managed to achieve through setting his mind to improving his fitness. From a drunken challenge accepted on a cold New Year’s Eve, it goes on to chronicle a series of impressive ‘goals’ that can be attained if you are just willing and strong minded enough to push yourself. From the initial three peaks challenge, through numerous marathons, triathlons, and five Iron Mans’ to mention a few, it is undeniable what Tim has achieved over the last decade is seriously applaudable – even the amount of cake consumed! As a subject matter, it may not sound all that interesting to some, but It is written in such a way, with elements of humour throughout, that I thoroughly enjoyed the read, and it’s punchy enough to keep you turning the pages.
Inspirational definitely - Motivational maybe a little. I would have been nice to have heard a little more on the initial training from someone at a low level of fitness, and how they built this up over what seems a relatively short period of time. So do I come away from this inspired to change my life and dedicate every waking hour to exercise, competing in a whole manner of horrific sounding events – well no, but it has given me some incentive to at least do considerably more than I am presently.
Available from Amazon
Wales. I've written over 45 novels, including several in collaboration with Christopher Golden, as well as dozens of novellas and hundreds of short stories. I've written tie in novels in the Alien, Predator, Helllboy, Star Wars, and Firefly universes. Maybe a mash-up of all those properties would be fun!
My novel The Silence was made into a Netflix movie starring Kiernan Shipka and Stanley Tucci. I even got to be in the movie, starring as a bloodied corpse!
My novella Pay The Ghost was a 2015 movie starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Uli Edel.
My latest novel EDEN is an eco-horror thriller. Josh Malerman calls it 'Instantly cinematic'. Sarah Pinborough calls it 'Smart, prescient and gripping.'
I have several other projects currently in development for TV and the big screen, including original screenplays and a TV series with a US broadcaster.
I've won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award and a Scribe, as well as being shortlisted for the prestigious World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Awards. I love running, biking and swimming, and often try to put them all together in long-distance triathlons. I raced my first Ironman in 2013. At the time it was definitely, without a doubt, absolutely the only ironman I'd ever do. Ironman Canada on my 50th birthday in 2019 was my 5th...
Twitter @timlebbon
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