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The
Clock Keeps Ticking
by Sharon Gayter
Publisher: Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 978-1-907652-43-1
RRP: £14.99
272 pages with 28 images
Outlets
Available
most places if ordered, this list will be extended
but so far:
- Guisborough;
The Guisborough Book Shop
- Stokesley:
The Yorkshire Stores
- Whitby: The
Whitby Book Shop
- Middlesbrough
(Waterstones and WH Smith)
- Darlington
(Up and Running)
- Edinburgh,
Run and Become
- London,
Run and Become
- Cardiff,
Run and Become
- Northallerton
WH Smith
Buy
online
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Amazon.co.uk
Front cover
is a long lonely trek on the last 50 miles of my LEJOG trek (©
Alan Young) and inset is shortly after finishing at John O’Groats
(Newsquest (Yorkshire and North East) Ltd ©).
Picture on back (shown left) is the last hour of the Commonwealth
Championships 24 hours, my gold medal winning performance.
Reviews
“If I
could run as well as you can write, then I'd be breaking records
too”
Sharon Griffiths, The Northern Echo
“Sharon
is a good friend and an amazing athlete, with an incredible dedication
and strength of spirit. Her story is a truly inspiring read”
Baroness Grey-Thompson DBE, Paralympian
Please send
me your comments on what you thought of my book at: sharon@sharongayter.com
Sample the book: Download
Chapter 1 (RTF file, 17KB)
Synopsis
Sharon Gayter
is one of the world’s top ultra distance runners. On 15th
September 2006, Sharon Gayter’s long standing dream to break
the Guinness World Record by running from Land’s End to John
O’Groats came true; 837 miles in a blistering 12 days, 16
hours and 22 minutes and 3 seconds. In 2009, Sharon ran 140 miles
(226km) to win the Commonwealth Championships gold medal. Only three
women in the world ran better that year.
This is the
story of an extremely shy, skinny, withdrawn child, with a difficult
childhood, who needed to find her way forward. After watching the
clock tick the days needed turning into life and so her story begins,
embarking on life’s long journey. When a friend gave her a
first pair of running shoes, she could barely stagger half a mile
without collapsing exhausted. But Sharon Gayter was driven to run,
running gave her freedom, to discover who she was and to make her
own life on her own terms with spectacular success. She describes
living life to the full, by setting and achieving goals, from a
bus driver to a university lecturer, from barely running a mile
without collapsing exhausted to running the length of the country,
from remoteness in Libya to the heat across Death Valley, from the
mountains of the Alps to the flatness of the track.
The journey started by simply wanting to run the London Marathon.
Having had that experience of running beyond what she thought she
was capable in that marathon she tried running further. Her love
was always the hills, backpacking and living at one with nature.
The big move from Cambridge to the North East found the longer events
she was to excel at, 50 miles, then 100 miles and then the chance
of competing for her country.
After leaving Cambridge at a bus driver, she continued this job
in Middlesbrough, where she met and married her true love, Bill,
who was the final healing part of her life. It was the trauma of
being beaten up by three thugs to steal the bus takings that made
her move direction and she returned to education. As a mature student
on a Sport Science degree she excelled again, the knowledge she
gained was put to use to become a superior athlete, representing
her country at 100km events and 24 hours, now in excess of 25 caps
for her country. In one lesson at university she learnt about goal
setting, something she had been doing all along but not realising
it. In that lesson she wrote down what would be her ultimate goal,
a dream to achieve. That is when she put in writing her ambition
was to break the world record running the longest thing you could
in this country – end to end. So the seed was planted to run
from Land’s End to John O’Groats. It took 12 years to
return to this goal and it was finally achieved.
After setting up her own business she returned to university, studying
for her MSc and then as a lecturer. The running became more extreme:
along the way she took part in The Flora 1000 Mile Challenge, certainly
the most time consuming at 1 mile every hour, 1000 hours is almost
6 weeks; the Moravian Ultra Marathon (7 marathons in 7 days); Gortex
Transalpine run, 7 days on high alpine routes from Germany to Austria,
Switzerland and Italy; the Verdon Canyon, 4 days of scaling the
face of the Europe’s highest canyon with incredible heat;
more remote, running across the Libyan desert with only a GPS for
navigation; the classic Marathon des Sables, certainly not the toughest
by Sharon’s standards, she classes this as the dirtiest (but
also great camaraderie); then hotter in the Badwater Ultramarathon,
135 miles across Death Valley, and so what next?
This is an incredibly inspiring journey. You will feel you have
run every step and have blisters on your toes, whether you are a
runner or not! Having represented her country for 17 years at what
has to be the toughest sport in UK Athletics’, she will take
you on an amazing journey like no other while the clock continues
to tick, tick, tick.....
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