The Ghost Runner, by Bill Jones

There are runners, and there are people obsessed with running, and then there are the runners who go way beyond what any other runner can and will do.  I am not sure I have ever read of anyone as committed to running as John Tarrant, and who gave up so much for the sport.  In The Ghost Runner: The Epic Journey of the Man They Couldn't Stop, Bill Jones tells Tarrant's story, a tragic tale of a guy whose way to short life had way too much frustration and loss for one runner to bear.

Well, maybe that's overstating the case.  But read The Ghost Runner and you'll see what I'm talking about.  After being sent away to a grim boarding school during WW2, and losing his mother shortly after the war, the teenage Tarrant took up, among other things, boxing.  He had decent athleticism and enjoyed modest success.  In less than two year, "he'd fought just eight times, pocketing a grand total of seventeen pounds."  His "informal recompense fell way short of the costs Tarrant was incurring" traveling by bus to a nearby town to train.  "It was pocket money and nothing more. . . . John's boxing had already cost him far more than he'd ever earned from it."

Later, as John began running, he revealed that "professional" boxing career when asked whether he had ever competed professionally in athletics.  Honest to a fault, Tarrant dutifully revealed his compensation.  Thus began a decades-long battle against amateur athletic officials.  A world-class runner, Tarrant dreamed of the Olympics.  He ran in races around England, but, prohibited from entering due to his "professional" status, he arrived in disguise, throwing off his coat and hat and jumping into the fray just as the race began.  Race officials tried to chase him down, but Tarrant was too fast (and in at least one case, Tarrant's brother Victor aggressively drove officials away, nearly running them down with his motorcycle).

No number for the ghost runner, and no official recognition, even when he won.

Determined to win, thinking that, even when race officials and results refuse to acknowledge his presence, they can't ignore him if he crosses the line first, Tarrant trained constantly.  He ran to work, ran at lunch, ran after work, ran monster runs on the weekends.  He eventually began to enter longer races, setting world records in the 40 mile and 100 mile distances.  The Comrades ultramarathon in South Africa became his obsession, leading to him living there for months at a time in order to train and enter the race.

British authorities eventually gave him status to race officially in the U.K., but international racing was out.  He ghost ran Comrades, a race in New York, and countless races in England and South Africa.  His faithful wife was a running widow, allowing him room to train continually, use their limited money and time to travel to races, and even to live abroad to pursue his dream of winning Comrades.  (I feel bad leaving for the day to run a race; I can't imagine leaving for a year.)

His life was marked by frustration.  His battle with the amateur athletics authorities went on and on.  Some of his fellow runners and friends said he talked of nothing else, and talked about it a lot.  He would have loved nothing more than to run for his country in international races, but he never could, officially.  He battled stomach problems that crippled him, knocking him out of several races (yet he would win races and set course records sometimes, in spite of his having to take breaks to drop his pants in the bushes beside the course!).  And after four attempts, he never did win Comrades.

Yet the man did love to run.  His drive and commitment simply to run are inspiring.  I would love to run like Tarrant: In the hilly countryside around his home, "there were days when he never even felt tired, when he felt he could run forever, never happier than when climbing steeply, . . . his thoughts a whir of self-imposed times and challenges, the landscape a succession of gateposts, junctions, and landmarks which he reached faster, and with less effort, every time he wrenched on his pumps and braved the hilly air."

Jones captures Tarrant's joy and frustration in The Ghost Runner.  He doesn't dwell on conclusions about Tarrant's treatment by athletic officials; the reader can clearly see that Tarrant's cause was just, his treatment was deplorable, and times quickly changed.  Tarrant died in 1975 at the tragically young age of 42.  With a few short years, the farce of amateurism had ended.  What a shame that Tarrant did not live to see it.  On many levels, Jones inspires awe and admiration for a great runner and a great man.

(A personal note on my reading: This book took me a very long time to read.  I don't think the prose was that stilted, although at times I thought Jones could have shortened the story.  I think the main problem was that, for some reason, the version on my Kindle was in pdf form, so the print was tiny.  A full page of text would be centered on the screen in a space smaller than a business card.  I hope that issue is fixed in the full version of the book; my version was an electronic advance copy.)

Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!