Running is not just a sport It reconnects us to our bodies & the places in which we live breaking down our increasingly structured & demanding lives It allows us to feel the world beneath our feet lifts the spirit allows our minds out to play & helps us to slip away from the demands of the modern world When Vybarr Cregan-Reid set out to discover why running meant so much to so many he began a journey which would take him out to tread London's cobbled streets climbing to sites that have seen a millennium of hangings & down the crumbling alleyways of Ruskin's Venice Footnotes transports you to the cliff tops of Hardy's Dorset the deserted shorelines of Seattle the giant redwood forests of California & to the world's most advanced running laboratories & research centres using debates in literature philosophy & biology to explore that simple human desire to run Liberating & inspiring this book reminds us why feeling the earth beneath our feet is a necessary & healing part of our lives