Brendan Leonard

I Hate Running and You Can Too is a humorous, punchy, motivating guide to running longer distances than some might think sensible - whether that's a 5K or a marathon. Outside magazine columnist, chart-ist, and longtime runner, Brendan Leonard gets real on the love/hate relationship all runners have with the sport. He breaks down running in terms that speak to everyone who has ever struggled to get out the door and go for a run: getting comfortable being uncomfortable, how to start small and stick with it, that walking is a completely legitimate running strategy, and devising your own definition of success. Filled with 75 charts and graphs that give readers a sensible way to think about running, I Hate Running and You Can Too breaks down the reality of the training miles versus race miles, how to stay motivated, and what to do when faced with setbacks. I Hate Running and You Can Too shows readers that you won't always like running (sometimes you'll even hate it), but if you just keep going, you might learn to love it too.

How to Get Started, Keep Going, and Make Sense of an Irrational Passion

I Hate Running and You Can Too

When your life plan explodes, you ask yourself the big questions: What do I really need in life? How can I make my life a work of art? Should I buy a house? Have kids? What is a life? Following in Kerouac and Steinbeck's tire tracks, a 32-year-old, post-breakup Brendan Leonard hits the road in search of healing and a new, post-economic-downturn American Dream. Sleeping in the back of a beat-up station wagon, he seeks answers-and hopefully, the occasional shower-in the postcard-worthy places of the American West. Part ballad to the romance of the road and part heart-searching treatise on the American Dream, The New American Road Trip Mixtape is Leonard's raw, often hilarious, barstool storytelling at its best.

The New American Road Trip Mixtape

AUTOBIOGRAPHY: GENERAL. When Brendan Leonard moved to the West at age 23, he was a mess. He had a tenuous grip on sobriety, only six months after his last drink had landed him in yet another jail cell. It was the final mistake in a long list that included multiple arrests, wrecked cars, broken bones, fistfights, and ruined relationships. In Montana, he took his first steps into the Rocky Mountains, unwittingly beginning a decade-long obsession with climbing and a journey that would take him all over the West and Europe. Written with unflinching honesty and vulnerability, Sixty Meters to Anywhere is the memoir of a barstool storyteller who left the bar and found adventure, redemption, and a life that almost never happened.

Sixty Meters to Anywhere

A concise kick in the ass to start doing the creative thing you dream about but don't feel like you have the time/skills/know-how to pull off. Nobody gets tapped with a magic wand and suddenly has the ability to produce art, music, photos, films, or writing-they just do it. And you probably should too. Make It Till You Make It breaks down 40 myths and truths about the pursuit of creative expression, whether you want to make $0 a year doing your thing or $100,000 a year.

40 Myths and Truths about Creating

Make It Till You Make It

Forest Woodward

Packed with expert information and inspiring photography, The Camping Life is the perfect invitation to leave the noise and screens behind—if only for a single night—and reconnect with nature. From backpacking to bikepacking, camping while white-water rafting to big wall climbing, outdoor adventurers Brendan Leonard and Forest Woodward cover it all: how to pack a backpack, how to set up a tent in the snow, how to camp with your dog, how to build a campfire, how to judge a river’s difficulty. And, critically, how to leave no trace, while returning refreshed, recharged, and alive with new experience.

Inspiration and Ideas for Endless Adventures

The Camping Life

Anna Brones

An Outdoor Cookbook with a Distinctly Refined Palette "Roughing it" doesn't have to include the food you eat when you're in the backcountry. Even when you're miles from a full spice rack and only have a single-burner backpacking stove to work with, you can--and should--eat well. Best Served Wild offers up good backcountry food meant to be shared with friends around an open campfire. In Best Served Wild, adventure writer Brendan Leonard and food writer Anna Brones team up to bring you recipes for taking your backcountry food game beyond freeze-dried backpacking meals and brick-like energy bars. They share recipes for everything from single day adventures to overnight trips to multi-day outings--real food for real adventures.

Real Food for Real Adventures

Best Served Wild

“Leonard’s durable tome (seriously, the cover is rubber) is stuffed with so many tips about surviving in the wild, you’ll be able to leave your smartphone behind.” —Entertainment Weekly, Best New Books This easy introduction to outdoor life will ensure that even a novice won’t get lost in the woods while finding an activity he loves to do in the great outdoors--whether it’s hiking a 14er or camping on ice. With 400 strategies for engaging in the outdoors, and expert tips and tricks, The Great Outdoors: A User’s Guide makes Mother Nature easier to understand than ever before. Brendan Leonard, writer, filmmaker, and outdoor adventurer, shows the reader how rewarding it can be to live life away from the computer and get outside. From mountain climbing, to skiing, sledding, and sailing, Leonard shows that you don’t need to be a risk taker to enjoy the outdoors. And if the reader does find himself at the point of man vs. nature, Leonard shares survival skills from how to bandage a wound and read a topographical map, to how to drive on sand and remove a tick from your skin—all organized thematically and written in short takeaway entries with helpful line drawings. Bound in a uniquely rugged (and waterproof!) PVC cover material, The Great Outdoors: A User’s Guide is a friendly way into the outdoor lifestyle, whether you're looking to dabble or go all in.

Everything You Need to Know Before Heading into the Wild (and How to Get Back in One Piece)

The Great Outdoors: A User's Guide

If you've ever considered the absurdity of sleeping on the ground in a place where bears live, pooping in a bag on a glacier, or trying to teach someone you love a sport that scares them to the point of loudly threatening to kill you in front of strangers, Bears Don't Care About Your Problems will make you laugh. Author and creator of Semi-Rad, Brendan Leonard is part Dave Barry, part Gary Larson, and 100 percent twisted in his own fresh way. The Semi-Rad perspective has become the funny, introspective voice of outdoor Everyman and Everywoman adventurers.

More Funny Shit in the Woods from Semi-Rad

Bears Don't Care about Your Problems

The Art of Getting Lost will illuminate the details of dream trips, and inspiring readers to understand that adventure is not out of reach. Most of us face a couple of obstacles when it comes to living our Walter Mitty-esque adventure dreams: ideas of what to do, and concrete knowledge of how long those ideas will take. It’s a long way from talking to some guy at the bar about his Grand Canyon Raft trip to going home and Googling a synopsis of how to make it happen, and then clicking around a guide company’s website to find out if it takes three days or 30. But it won’t be hard to flip through this book and get inspired.

365 Days of Adventure, Big and Small

The Art of Getting Lost

“Leonard’s durable tome (seriously, the cover is rubber) is stuffed with so many tips about surviving in the wild, you’ll be able to leave your smartphone behind.” —Entertainment Weekly, Best New Books This easy introduction to outdoor life will ensure that even a novice won’t get lost in the woods while finding an activity he loves to do in the great outdoors--whether it’s hiking a 14er or camping on ice. With 400 strategies for engaging in the outdoors, and expert tips and tricks, Surviving the Great Outdoors makes Mother Nature easier to understand than ever before. Brendan Leonard, writer, filmmaker, and outdoor adventurer, shows the reader how rewarding it can be to live life away from the computer and get outside. From mountain climbing, to skiing, sledding, and sailing, Leonard shows that you don’t need to be a risk taker to enjoy the outdoors. And if the reader does find himself at the point of man vs. nature, Leonard shares survival skills from how to bandage a wound and read a topographical map, to how to drive on sand and remove a tick from your skin—all organized thematically and written in short takeaway entries with helpful line drawings. Bound in a uniquely rugged (and waterproof!) PVC cover material, Surviving the Great Outdoors is a friendly way into the outdoor lifestyle, whether you're looking to dabble or go all in.

Brendan Leonard

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