My Red Bull X-Alps book is PUBLISHED!

Every since the 2015 Red Bull X-Alps, where I had a great experience being one of the few women to every participate in such a crazy adventure, I've wanted to publish a book about it.   Perhaps I just wanted to write a book, period.  I am a paraglider pilot and an ultra runner, but writing a book was a different adventure altogether!  Read more below, to go behind the scenes with me in the process of writing a book.   Otherwise, I really hope you enjoy reading Racing To The Sky.

My book is available on Amazon:  

Racing To The Sky

It's in Paperback for $15.99

and Kindle for $9.99.  

Racing To The Sky (Special Full Color Version)

If you have money to burn, 

you can get an extra special color copy for $55.99.  

I know, that's a lot.  

You'd have to be an extra special fan to get that version...don't worry, the black and white paperback version looks great too!
   Plus the Kindle version is in color anyway.

People have asked me how I remembered all the details of the race.    Since I knew I wanted to at least blog about my experiences, I took notes on my phone during the race while I was walking along.  After all, I was racing for 11 days and things tend to get a little blurry after a few days with fatigue and sleep deprivation!   When I got back home to Utah after finishing the race, I decompressed a little by writing down the day to day stories I remembered while they were still fresh.   So within a couple of weeks I had written the majority of the book.

Then it took me another year or more to finish it off.  I wanted to write about each one of the athletes in the race from their perspective.    To get an idea of what each athlete went through, I reconstructed their race individually through live tracking, their photos, their blog entries, and other race reports.   While this took a lot of time, it was actually really fun!   During my own race I only had a limited idea of the adventures all the other competitors were having, and at times I felt really alone along the race course.  Reliving the race through their eyes and comparing their locations to my own on each day let me imagine what they were going though, too.   Plus the race for the finish was exciting and I really enjoyed finding out how everyone reached the end in their own way.

Once the material for the book was in place, I had to learn how to publish.   Going through a big publishing company seemed out of the question, so I leaned toward self-publishing.    This meant I needed to design my own cover, pick a name for the book. figure out what to put on each page, and how to make it look good too!   Using Outsource.com, I was able to find a cover designer and an editor for a reasonable price.   That helped, but the process of learning what information was needed took a lot of time.  The book I thought would be published soon after the race took 15 months!  But I am proud of the end result, and I hope you enjoy reading it too.   If you do, please leave a review on Amazon, I'd really appreciate that!