Running with the Pack

Mark Rowlands explores the intimate relationship between running and thinking, especially thoughts about the meaning of life, in this brilliant follow-up to The Philosopher and the Wolf.

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'Most of the serious thinking I have done over the past twenty years has been done while running.' Mark Rowlands has run for most of his life. He has also been a professional philosopher. And for him the two - running and philosophising - are inextricably connected. In Running with the Pack he tells us about the most significant runs of his life - from the entire day he spent running as a boy in Wales, to the runs along French beaches and up Irish mountains with his beloved wolf Brenin, and through Florida swamps more recently with his dog Nina. Intertwined with this honest, passionate and witty memoir are the fascinating meditations that those runs triggered, including: how running makes him feel free, a la Jean-Paul Sartre; how running injuries make him think of death and Heidegger; how running for him is play, and therefore the antithesis of the American dream, with its ferocious work ethic; and how pondering why he runs puts him in mind of Aristotle's search for causes. He ends by describing running a mid-life marathon with absolutely no training. Woven throughout the book are profound meditations on mortailty, midlife and the meaning of life.
This is a highly original and moving book that will make the philosophically inclined want to run, and those who love running become intoxicated by philosophical ideas.