“Looking back on my life since childhood, I can’t imagine that I would have been shaped and chiselled the way I have, had it not also been for the bad things that happened along the way. In a way, the heartache became the grit in the shell, and over time, the pearl.”

“I am both incredulous, and exhausted. I have just finished reading Erica Terblanches’s book RUN: For The Love of Life (self-published by Quickfox) – and have been transported into another world, worlds actually. Other planes and places – way out of my comfort zone, deep in fact, into discomfort zones.”

We are all craving some inspiration and feel-good mind food after the global health challenges of the past two years. RUN for the Love of Life masterfully reframes challenges - both on the trail and in life - in a way that inspires the reader to embrace life, challenges and all.

This is a story about an ordinary woman who manages to achieve extraordinary success in extreme distance running across some of the world’s harshest and most majestic landscapes. Readers will be swept along on a white-knuckle journey to the edge of endurance, where they will share in the life-learnings of the author – insights that are as often surprising as they are gratifying.

Part adventure, part travel and part autobiographical novel, the author transports the reader from one exotic race location to the next. The Sahara in North Africa; the Atacama Desert in Chile; the Grand Canyon in the United States; the Great Kalahari in Southern Africa … readers will feel as if they are themselves fully immersed within the magic of these harsh environments.
RUN for the Love of Life is a thought-provoking memoir that gently guides the reader through the author’s rawest and most central moments of her life. Together, one begins to understand what she has gained, even during those most challenging of times, and by proxy how each of us can triumph over the difficulties in our lives.

The journey becomes even more rewarding when - in the echoes of Erica’s story – readers can reconnect to their own potential and long-forgotten dreams. Every individual reading this book will in some way be motivated, whether it is to join a running club, or enter an event, or dust off their running or dancing shoes or soccer boots … and to reclaim what they have neglected in their life.
At its heart RUN for the Love of Life is a book about growth, love, forgiveness, unity, and the priorities in life that ultimately makes us happy. Terblanche blends humour and raw honesty, weaving a story that will entrance and enrich you long after you have turned the final page.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Erica Terblanche is an accomplished endurance runner and adventure racer, and has won numerous iconic long-distance races all over the world, including the gruelling RacingthePlanet 7-day Sahara Desert Ultra Marathon among many others. Erica is a Life Coach and psychologist with a master’s degree in Positive Psychology. She is also the founder of Teach a Girl to Fish, Thrive Guru & Thrive Run Club. Her lifelong quest is to determine how we can over time shape and mould ourselves to become ‘the best we can possibly be’.

'RUN for the Love of Life' is published by Quickfox Publishing