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Hard Things
Hard Things is Marc Hopkins’s memoir of training for and running the Bigfoot 200, a brutal 206.5-mile endurance race through the Cascade Mountains, but the race itself is really only the outer trail. The deeper journey is inward, through old grief, heart trouble, divorce, fatherhood, family silence, anxiety, love, and the aching need to prove oneself worthy. Hopkins moves from a sweltering training run where he’s reduced to counting steps, through snow-blocked roads, river crossings, a folded shoe insert he refuses to fix, and finally into the long, delirious miles of the race, where aid stations, pacers, his son, his mother, and Jenni become part of a hard-won lesson: strength isn’t the same as pretending not to need anyone.
What I admired most is how honestly the book lets discomfort stay uncomfortable. Hopkins doesn’t polish himself into some heroic endurance-machine version of a person. He gives us the man who drives himself to the hospital with heart symptoms, jokes through a 99 percent blockage, signs up for a 200-mile race partly as a defiant gesture against death, and then slowly realizes that his compulsive toughness has a shadow side. The “rock in the shoe” moment stayed with me because it’s so simple and so revealing. He’s literally hurting because his insole is folded under his foot, yet he keeps going because that’s what he’s trained himself to do emotionally, too. That’s the book at its best: physical pain becoming a quiet little door into something larger.
The writing has a loose, conversational immediacy that fits the subject well. Hopkins is funny in a self-deprecating way, especially when he lets the absurdity of ultrarunning breathe, like searching for a hidden trail that seems to have vanished into a river, or mistaking a stump for Bigfoot when sleep deprivation starts playing tricks on him. At times, the book circles familiar emotional territory, especially around worthiness and the need to appear strong, but I found that repetition mostly honest rather than tedious. Long races don’t reveal things neatly. They return the same fears again and again, under different weather, with worse feet. The best passages have a rugged sensory clarity: the blast zones, the old-growth forest, the stale exhaustion of aid stations, the strange anticlimax after the finish.
By the end, what moved me wasn’t simply that Hopkins finishes Bigfoot 200, though that achievement is staggering. It’s that he finishes with a softer understanding of himself, and that softness feels more courageous than the miles. Hard Things is a thoughtful, bruised, humane book about endurance, not as conquest, but as a way of listening to the life you’ve been trying to outrun. I’d recommend it to runners and endurance athletes, certainly, but also to anyone who has confused self-reliance with healing, or who needs a reminder that doing hard things doesn’t require becoming unbreakable.
Pages: 210 | ASIN : B0GYQL3KG8
The Bonds That Are Forged
Kate Abbott Author Interview
Asana of Malevolence follows Phoebe and Moises as they help residents of Burke’s Garden escape their megalomaniac leader. What was the initial idea behind Burke’s Garden and how did that transform as you were writing the story?
I never plan out any of my stories. I start by writing something I know about and then let the rest evolve. So, I started writing the story of Sharon, loosely based upon a case I’d worked on when I was an attorney. But then, Amy appeared, followed by Sean and then Evan. All the characters were looking for some way to find peace in their lives. Yoga is a natural source of peace for me, yet I’ve seen both good and evil in the yoga community. I thought about the fragility of my characters and what might happen to them in a challenging setting and before I knew it, they were all going to the same yoga retreat.
Phoebe and Moises are some of the most stirring characters I’ve read. What was your inspiration for the characters and their relationship?
I’m glad you asked about Phoebe and Moises! They were main characters in my first novel, Running Through the Wormhole. I didn’t intend for them to be part of Asana but one day they just happened to be hiking along the ridge above Burke’s Garden and they walked down the mountain and smack into the story. Phoebe is me, on steroids. A lot of what has shaped her has shaped my life. She is a mother, first and foremost. A traumatic event that happened to me was the genesis of her character and the beginning of Wormhole. Moises represents what is so wonderful about the trail running community, the candor and kindness and the bonds that are forged through the shared experience of running and testing physical and emotional limits.
The characters are helped along by the kind residents of Burke’s Garden and the supernatural. I thought the split between reality and the supernatural was well balanced. Was it difficult to walk that line while writing; to keep things believable but still make magical things happen?
The supernatural stuff is one of my favorite parts of writing. I approached it as if I was trying to describe something that I would believe if it happened to me. I think that the idea that spirits linger even after our loved ones, whether creatures or people, have died is comforting and relatable. So the supernatural aspects of the story were meaningful to specific characters and part of their journeys to find serenity and peace and to be safe.
What was your favorite scene in Asana of Malevolence?
The scene with Sean and Prudence when he wakes up outside her double-wide trailer with his long-dead cat. I was laughing as I wrote it and I still laugh when I picture them. I like it because it was a spark of humor in what would go on to be tragic later.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be published?
I have two books in the works. The first is called The Whole Story and it’s about a woman with a long term stalker, spanning the decades before and after the cyber world. She struggles to repair the damage to her spirit while keeping her loved ones safe from her ghosts.The characters are all new. I hope to get it published next year. The second is a YA novel with a working title of Yard Sale Junkies. It’s a story about a twelve year old boy whose family disappeared when he was six. He has amnesia about what happened and lives with his grandfather. Bit by bit, he puts together the pieces, with a little help from the supernatural, and learns the truth.
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Burke’s Garden, a historic community in the mountains of Virginia, is an isolated place. For centuries, it’s been a haven of peace. Until evil arrives. Close friends Phoebe and Moises are hiking near the Garden when they encounter several participants of a yoga retreat, who are struggling to flee the grip of their megalomaniac leader. Phoebe and Moises plot an escape route out of their love and empathy for these strangers. Along the way, they reach for the helping hands of the Garden’s longtime residents and the subtle hand of the supernatural.
