Dean Karnazes is a certifiable bad-ass, and his tale of tracking down and tackling the world’s toughest running challenges is the stuff that gets me fired up to go globe trotting. His narrative chronicling his long hours on the road comes right to the edge of the feeling that I love about travelling. It’s that sense of being in a new place, not necessarily physically, but mentally and emotionally that I chase when I travel.

Of course ultra-endurance running is a world different from globe trotting, one is a grueling sport and the other could be classified as a leisure activity (if you’re doing it wrong). But I think that there is a similarity in the sort of high that we seek. It’s the feeling you get when you are out of control of control and have the choice to either stop and fail, or push harder and come out the other side a winner. The feeling at the end of the trip isn’t necessarily even as great as that feeling in a moment when a slightly more sane person would turn back, but you forge on. Dean captures that feeling, which is damned hard thing to do.

I’ve got a copy of the book, and in line with good book sharing practices, I want to pass it along to another person. If you haven’t read the book, leave a comment on this post and let me know if you want it. I’ll get back to you by email and send it to you, anywhere in the world, doesn’t matter.

Other than being awesome adventurers, one of the biggest things my parents did to feed my wanderlust as a kid was to keep around a giant National Geographic Atlas. I would spend hours just flipping through that thing realizing just how much world there is to explore.

National Geographic is still putting out their atlas, but in the days of Google Earth, I’m sure it doesn’t sell as well as it once did. So now they’ve put it online as well. It will remind you of Google Maps, but it loads very quickly and marks neighborhoods and landmarks without lots of other clutter. Well worth checking out.

Though really, I prefer the old book to this system. If I ever have kids, you can bet your boots that they’ll have a National Geographic Atlas.

h/t Adventure Blog via Intelligent Travel

LP is having a 3 for the price of 2 sale right now. If you foresee needing any guide books in the near future, you should probably hit this up.

On a side note, I feel like I’m hawking Lonely Planet books these days, apologies for that.

Update: I just took my own advice and picked up an Iceland guide, Best in Travel 2009, and Travel Writing. So many things I’ve been telling myself to do, all rolled into one purchase.