The Unforgiving Hours: Grit, Resilience, and Perseverance at the Heart of Endurance Sports

For readers of Born to Run and Endure, athlete and journalist Shannon Hogan brings to life the inspiring stories of athletes who have pushed themselves through the ＂unforgiving hours＂ to achieve endurance sports greatness and redefine modern outdoor adventuring.

How far can you go? What is your limit? Are competing in an ultramarathon at age 70, sailing from Washington State to Alaska without a motor, swimming the English Channel at age 15, and running the Boston Marathon in reverse and then turning around to race it conventionally really terrible ideas? In The Unforgiving Hours, Shannon Hogan dives into the world of endurance sports by taking us on the journeys of unheralded athletes tackling extraordinary quests in creative ways, proving what is possible and attesting to the patient drive, mettle, adaptability, passion, humor, and grit that exists in all of us.

Through the stories of improbable athletic challenges--some well-known and some only passed around watering holes and campfires--Hogan brings to life tales of indomitable outdoorspeople who quietly ＂go long,＂ and allows us to experience amazing feats of human endurance. Some of the adventurers you’ll meet in the pages of The Unforgiving Hours include:

• Lynne Cox breaking the record for swimming across the English Channel at age 15
• Jeanne Goussev, along with teammate Kelly Danielson, leading the first all-woman sailing team to win the Race to Alaska
• Yuichiro Hidaka dreaming of eating potato chips while running the Boston Double for the fourth time
• John Stamstad voyaging to Alaska for an all-night February bike race in the bush of the Last Frontier
• Gunhild Swanson running the Western States 100 Endurance Run five days shy of her seventy-first birthday
• Gordon Wadsworth racing the hardest mountain bike race in the world while opting for only one bike gear
• Melissa Kegler training for two years to break the American Ice Mile Distance record in 39.2 F water
• Chris Jones embarking on The Last Great Race--six 100-mile ultramarathons to be completed over the course of one summer
• And Seana Hogan, the current cycling transcontinental female record holder (set at age 35) fighting the race clock and father time to finish Race Across America at age 60

Full of clever problem solving in epic odysseys in the great outdoors, The Unforgiving Hours proves that with stout planning and a challenge-seeking fighting spirit, remarkable things can happen.

Shannon Hogan is a former pro mountain biker, ultrarunner, and open water swimmer based in the Cascade Mountains, Washington. She is the first female finisher of La Ruta de Los Conquistadores in Costa Rica (the world’s toughest mountain bike race), holds the women’s course record for the Pigtails 100K ultramarathon, and has successfully navigated multiple ridiculous-distance ultraruns including a buckle-finish at Leadville 100 and a sub-24-hour finish at the Javelina 100-mile run in the Sonoran Desert. Hogan has crewed every kind of endurance race on land and sea, including over eight hours of kayak support for an English Channel-qualifying swim. She has completed the Escape from Alcatraz swim, is a five-time finisher of the Ironman 140.6 triathlon and a seven-time finisher of Leadville Trail 100 bike race, and swims year-round in Puget Sound without a wetsuit as a member of the Notorious Alki Swimmers. She is old enough to know better, but young enough to do these things anyway. Hogan has written about cycling for The Colorado Sun, running for Ultrarunning magazine, and open water swimming for The Seattle Times.