After years of watching Kenyan athletes win the world's biggest long-distance races, the author sets out to discover what it was that made them so fast - and to see if he could keep up. He moved to Iten, Kenya, the running capital of the world, and started investigating. Was it running barefoot to school, the food, the altitude, or something else?

The author moved to Japan to discover more about this unique running culture and what it might teach us about the sport and about Japan. In this book he reveals, what he learned - about competition, about team work, about beating your personal bests, about form and about himself.