don’t be fooled - this is not some lame motivational self-help book, this is actually the grotesque memoir of a man whose abusive early childhood and experience growing up as the only black kid in small-town indiana messed him up in such a way that he now feels compelled to continually throw himself into torturous physical challenges despite chronic health issues and frequent unpreparedness. the only advantage he has over his competitors in various ultramarathons is that he is totally insane and will just keep going even if his limbs have been shredded down to nubs.

the first portion of the book, where he overcomes an abusive childhood, obesity, and a dead-end job as a pest controller to become a navy SEAL on its own could have easily been a nice motivational parable on its own, but unfortunately the book doesn’t stop there and keeps going into the increasingly deranged and disturbing ultramarathon arc. at that point, goggins’ life seems to fall into something of a vicious masochistic cycle that goes a little something like this: first, somebody contacts him and says “hey goggins, have you heard about this crazy new event? a group of disgruntled ultramarathoners who thinks ultramarathons are getting too easy have gotten together and created a new event called a superultramarathon, five times the distance and entirely uphill.” everyone around goggins tells he shouldn’t compete, it’s a terrible idea. goggins initially agrees, after all he is still recovering from his last escapade, which wasn’t nearly as difficult. but he can’t get the superultramarathon out of his head, it haunts his dreams whispering “do me”, and eventually he decides he’s in. he trains for it by jogging to the grocery store every day, and picks up some new running shoes at costco the day before. then, the event starts, and for the first third or so everything goes great - he’s feeling fine, he’s making good time, he’s invincible. then, a minor pain starts in one of his knees, over the course of dozens of miles eventually crescendoing to excruciating jolts of unadulterated agony that could fell an elk. each step is absolute misery, but he continues anyway because mentally he’s completely gone - too gone, it turns out, because he consults his map and realizes he has accidentally run 50 miles in the wrong direction and has to backtrack. against all the odds, he makes it to the final stretch, and through sheer determination passes fearsome opponent speedy dan, who can only stand and stare slack-jawed at the ghoulish figure that just staggered past him and even seems to be speeding up going into the last miles. the finish line is coming up and there’s nobody else ahead of him, could it possibly be? has he finally won for once? he crosses the finish line and finds out despite his effort, he came in third. second place was mrs. yoshitaka, a short middle-aged japanese housewife whose hobby is competing in long-distance races. unable to walk any further, goggins collapses, and is carried to bed in his nearby rental house, which he promptly soils because he can no longer control his bowels. he falls into a coma for two weeks, and after waking up, finds that he can barely walk due to unbearable knee pain. doctors investigate, and tell him “goggins, you have the knees of a 150 year old. your cartilage, in the few places it remains, is harder than bedrock. we are going to have to amputate.” goggins begs the doctor for other options as though he’s begging for his life, and the doctor says “well, there is this one specialist working on a highly-experimental knee replacement surgery, but it has a 95% chance of killing you, and even if it does work you will still only be able to hobble around on a cane.” goggins immediately books an appointment with the specialist, goes in for the surgery, and the day after runs a half-marathon like nothing ever happened. the specialist is absolutely flabbergasted, he’s never seen anything like it, it shouldn’t even be possible to walk after going through that. then, somebody contacts goggins: “hey, have you heard about this? some superultramarathoners who think superultramarathons are too easy now have gotten together and created this new, even more extreme event called a superduperultramarathon…”