• Running Home

  • A Memoir
  • By: Katie Arnold
  • Narrated by: Katie Arnold
  • Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (232 ratings)

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Running Home  By  cover art

Running Home

By: Katie Arnold
Narrated by: Katie Arnold
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Publisher's summary

In the tradition of Wild and H Is for Hawk, an Outside magazine writer tells her story - of fathers and daughters, grief and renewal, adventure and obsession, and the power of running to change your life.

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Real Simple

I’m running to forget, and to remember.

For more than a decade, Katie Arnold chased adventure around the world, reporting on extreme athletes who performed outlandish feats - walking high lines 1,000 feet off the ground without a harness, or running 100 miles through the night. She wrote her stories by living them, until eventually life on the thin edge of risk began to seem normal. After she married, Katie and her husband vowed to raise their daughters to be adventurous, too, in the mountains and canyons of New Mexico. But when her father died of cancer, she was forced to confront her own mortality.

His death was cataclysmic, unleashing a perfect storm of grief and anxiety. She and her father, an enigmatic photographer for National Geographic, had always been kindred spirits. He introduced her to the outdoors and took her camping and on bicycle trips and down rivers, and taught her to find solace and courage in the natural world. And it was he who encouraged her to run her first race when she was seven years old.

Now, nearly paralyzed by fear and terrified she was dying, too, she turned to the thing that had always made her feel most alive: running. Over the course of three tumultuous years, she ran alone through the wilderness, logging longer and longer distances, first a 50-kilometer ultramarathon, then 50 miles, then 100 kilometers. She ran to heal her grief, to outpace her worry that she wouldn’t live to raise her own daughters. She ran to find strength in her weakness. She ran to remember and to forget. She ran to live.

Ultrarunning tests the limits of human endurance over seemingly inhuman distances, and as she clocked miles across mesas and mountains, Katie learned to tolerate pain and discomfort, and face her fears of uncertainty, vulnerability, and even death itself. As she ran, she found herself peeling back the layers of her relationship with her father, discovering that much of what she thought she knew about him, and her own past, was wrong.

Running Home is a memoir about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our world - the stories that hold us back, and the ones that set us free. Mesmerizing, transcendent, and deeply exhilarating, it is an audiobook for anyone who has been knocked over by life, or feels the pull of something bigger and wilder within themselves.

"A beautiful work of searching remembrance and searing honesty... Katie Arnold is as gifted on the page as she is on the trail. Running Home will soon join such classics as Born to Run and Ultramarathon Man as quintessential reading of the genre." (Hampton Sides, author of On Desperate Ground and Ghost Soldiers)

©2019 Katie Arnold (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"In her debut memoir, Running Home, Katie Arnold does an admirable job of trusting the everyday material of her life.... She writes a story exploring how her growing preoccupation with running has been intertwined with loving and losing her father. She takes the risk of being ordinary, and therefore human.... We want to know how other people live, and Arnold shows us." (The New York Times Book Review)

"Running Home is, as the name implies, a memoir about the sport. But it’s also an inspiring story about overcoming grief and discovering yourself." (Real Simple)

“Arnold masterfully captures the vulnerability of wading through grief with each step she takes towards self-discovery. This remarkable memoir will undoubtedly resonate with runners but equally so with children of divorce, new mothers, and those who have suffered the loss of a parent. An eloquent tribute to the complexity and vibrancy of a parent-child relationship.” (Booklist, starred review)

Featured Article: The Best Running Audiobooks You Should Be Listening to


Running can be an arduous task, especially for those who are new to the sport. It can also be a life-giving force for those who are already more involved in the running community. Either way, it’s one of the best athletic ventures to couple with a great audiobook. Listening to the inspirational stories of other runners can be just what you need to push through a difficult jog or set a new personal record. Our list of great listens about running has you covered.

What listeners say about Running Home

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Couldn't do it

I firmly believe that in most cases, authors are not good narrators. This book is no exception. The author's lisp and speech patterns made this a tough listen. I was interested in story, but I barely made it out of the prologue. Get the print version if you want to read it. I plan to.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Best running memoir since Born to Run

Earns its rightful spot among the top outdoor memoirs such as Born to Run, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Rowing to Latitude and Breaking Trail. Palpatable childhood memories layered with amplified grief told with nostalgia, pain and honesty while working it all out on the trails. For anyone that has had to balance and confront loss with life. Narration is measured but the story carries you along.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Disappointment

More of a story about her relationship with her dad than about running. Very disappointing. On top, it was just an uneventful story… written to put one to sleep. And the narrators voice was not appealing for listening to for hours.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

We all run through our demons

Very beautiful and well thought out. She had to express her coming-of-age, and I get it. Everyone deals with their trauma differently but bad parents and the passing of our parents is relatively common. It seemed like a lot of her creating her own problems in an otherwise very privileged life. Throughout the book she doesn’t seem to reach out and help or understand others- but maybe this book is her way of doing that. I can’t lie - I googled it to see if her husband stayed in the marriage- he is a very kind and understanding guy.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Hits home

Katie has a way with words that really hits home for me. I also lost my father within six months of my daughter being born. The way she describes her feelings, her anxiety, the entire chapter about his death. It’s like listening to my life experience. I found it to be one of the best books about the loss of a parent I’ve seen. Thank you for this gift Katie.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Extraordinary

This booked moved me in so many ways. I never read a book twice but I am going back after listening to this and read and underline the words I want to remember!

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Super insightful and inspiring!

I loved this book!

It is for everyone. Insightful about all sorts of life experiences. Beautifully written, so descriptive.

I also feel inspired to run and explore.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Running and Grief

The book focused more on a journey of grief than strictly running/training than I expected, but it was well written, and I enjoyed it.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Beautifully Written

Beautifully written memoir about life, running and loss. Lots to relate to and lots to take with you.

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Loved this book!

Very insightful, descriptive, heartfelt story about both running and family. Took me right up to running through the mountains while listening walking in my neighborhood. Loved it!

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