The first copies of Adventures in Mind, by accomplished endurance athlete Heather Dawe, have arrived at Vertebrate and are now available to order!

A climber since her youth, an obsession with wild places and the mountains was engrained in Heather's DNA. Moving to Leeds to study, she began to compete in fell races and mountain marathons, joking in the pub one night that she could race at the highest level. Heather went on to win at Elite level in many mountain marathons, such as the LAMM and the OMM. She holds the female record for the Old County Tops fell race in the Lake District, won the Helvellyn triathlon in 2007, and has run the Bob Graham Round in under 22 hours. She has also finished first female in the Fred Whitton Challenge twice, and in 2008 won the renowned Three Peaks Cyclo-cross. But as she says;

‘The challenge and anticipation that pushes me to try harder. The obsessive urge to achieve. It’s not all about winning. Why do I do it?’

Heather will be reading from the book at this weekend's Keswick Mountain Festival. After racing again in the Old County Tops race on Saturday, Heather will be regaining her energy to speak in the Adventure Theatre at 11am on Sunday. The event is free, and the Vertebrate team will be on hand with signed copies of the book.

On June the 8th Heather will launch Adventures in Mind alongside an exhibition of her distinctive artwork at the Old Grammer School Gallery in Otley. This will be a special opportunity to discover both forms of expression that Heather uses to engage with her adventures in the mountains.

In Adventures in Mind Heather interrogates her motivation and inspiration for endurance racing. She charts a deeply intelligent understanding of what it takes to train, compete and win at an elite level while maintaining a relationship, a job, and not least, one's sanity.