At his brother's wedding in 2002, 30-year-old Josh Kench sat with a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other, and announced that he was going to do the Coast to Coast. His pronouncement was met with derision, but he's proved his doubters wrong.Josh won the 2010 Lake Taupo Extreme Enduro, covering a mind-numbing eight laps of the 160-kilometre course in 55 hours. And that's only the start of it. In June 2011, this 39-year-old plumber lined up at the start of the Race Across Ame...

While flicking through some photographs of a holiday in the Caribbean in 2009 Craig Jordan was appalled by what he saw, an overweight out of shape middle aged man on a very slippery slope. Craig decided there and then on a campaign to get Fit for Fifty and this became his mantra but the question was which sport? Over the next few months he was a regular visitor in the gym and went out and bought a mountain bike but nothing seemed to inspire and getting the journey to get fit seemed destine...

Jill Homer, a newspaper editor in the isolated, soggy hamlet of Juneau, Alaska, has an outlandish ambition: Racing a mountain bike 2,740 miles from Canada to Mexico along the Continental Divide. Her preparation plans are equally ambitious: A 350-mile winter bicycle race on Alaska's frozen Iditarod Trail, followed by two months of focused training during a summer sojourn with her boyfriend in the Utah desert.But in the tradition of best-laid plans, Jill's dream begins to unravel the ...

Most people who survived an almost unsurviveable plane crash would be tempted to sit back, take a good hard look at life and take things a little bit easier. Mike Allsop is not most people. Almost losing his life in a Twin Otter crash off the coast of Hawai'i awakened Mike's zest for life and his thirst for adventure.Mountaineering became Mike's passion and climbing led to him almost getting shot in Russia, narrowly missing a fatal avalanche in Peru, returning a replica of a stolen...

In "Chasing the Runner's High", Ray Charbonneau tells the story how he pushed his addiction to running up to, and then past, his limits. There are plenty of hard miles, but there's lots of fun along the way too as Ray shares what he learned, what he should have learned, and what he still has to learn from running.Marshall Ulrich, 4-time winner of the Badwater Ultramarathon and author of "Running on Empty", calls Chasing the Runner's High "a look at one man's life and obsession with...

Kindle bestseller in US TravelThe Great Divide is America's premier long distance mountain bike route. It is the longest unbroken mountain bike route in the world and was included in National Geographic's list of the 50 most amazing places on earth. The route makes its way 2500 miles from Canada to Mexico as it crisscrosses the Continental Divide.Metcalfe and his riding buddy JK are mountain bikers, and Dividing the Great is the hilarious account of their journey as they at...

This true and very funny story involving six colleagues, some retired, proves the saying that we never really grow up - we just learn how to behave in public.On a sudden whim six men, mostly writers, decided to embark on a 1 000 kilometre cycle ride down the River Danube believing it would be downhill all the way. This was the first of many assumptions that proved to be not terribly correct.None had cycled since childhood nor even owned a bike.That first hilarious journey o...

The Marathon des Sables is billed as the toughest footrace on Earth. It consists of around 150 miles of running across scorching desert plains and peaks, in temperatures soaring above 40 degrees C. As if the distance, the heat and the terrain were not enough, the whole race must be completed carrying all the food and kit required for the seven days of the event. The Marathon des Sables is an incredible event. The single biggest piece of advice that I received during my preparatio...

Remember when you were a kid and you got your first bicycle? After a few weeks of mastering the dynamics of balancing, steering, and pedaling, all at the same time hopefully, your father released his protective, steadying grip on the seat and you went wobbling off on your own. It was probably your very first taste of independence and freedom and you knew you liked that feeling very much. Few things in life have ever compared to that first solo ride.Almost 40 years after my first so...

On 30 January 1981 Joe Tasker and Ade Burgess stood at 24,000 feet on the west ridge of Mount Everest. Below them were their companions, some exhausted, some crippled by illness, all virtually incapacitated. Further progress seemed impossible. Everest the Cruel Way is Joe Tasker's story of an attempt to climb the highest mountain on earth - an attempt which pushed a group of Britain's finest mountaineers to their limits. The goal had been to climb Mount Everest at its hardest: via the infa...

'I'm 39 years old, happily married and my womb has never been inhabited. I want a baby but not in that crazy, desperate way where I cringe whenever I see someone else with one, or I think nasty, evil thoughts about people who are pregnant, but a child of my own would complete my life and make my husband extremely happy.'Jay-Jay Feeney has been married to Dom Harvey since 2004. She always imagined they'd get married, have children, grow old. But so far, things haven't worke...

A wry, entertaining story about falling in love with a man whose shirtless picture adorns every second lunchroom wall and then doing your best when the relationship takes an unexpected turn . . .Helen McNeil is a vet in the small rural town of Broadview. While taking evasive action from a dull girl at a party one night she falls over - and fails to recognise - national sporting hero, Mark Tipene. For some mysterious reason Helen never really grasps, Mark finds this...