Book Review | In Search of Al Howie by Jared Beasley

By Chase Parnell — March 2, 2020

Full disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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Well, I’ve found the counter-point to that very sad pathetic voice in my head that says I’ve run far enough, that I can’t go any further, or that I hurt too bad. My new mantra is: Al Howie. Al Howie. Al Howie. This man lived a life wholly his own and with little regard for anything else but running. He was maniacally obsessed to the detriment of all those who loved him, but there is no doubt, that this myopic disposition is what made him one of the greatest mega distance runners of all time.

Beasley takes on the life of Al Howie chronologically, but with the story of Howie’s crowning achievement, the Trans-Canada speed record of 1991, interspersed as a through line. Beasley’s prose is edgy, explicit, seldom contrived or overreaching. While he can’t relate to the feats of human endurance accomplished by Howie, you get the sense that he knows of the wild ride that is intentionally living in the borderlands of societal constraints.

Pre-Running Al Howie.

Beasley writes of Howie, “He didn’t even start running until he was 30. He never experienced a “runner’s high.” He lived as an illegal immigrant until 1988, and he never became a Canadian citizen. He had been hooked on drugs and booze, smoked three packs a day, and spent over a decade on the run from Interpol. On top of all that, his name wasn’t even Al.” As the saying goes, you just can’t make this shit up. Or more politely as my mother is fond of saying, “Truth is stranger than fiction.”  

Born and raised in Scotland, Howie had a normal enough childhood. But upon reaching middle school he was already going against the grain. He survived adolescence without too much self-induced trauma and ended up working in factories in Germany during his early 20s. He shacked up with a gal, Arlene Donahue (“Donnie”), who had Howie’s son, Gabe. Donnie would battle a life-crushing drug addiction that led Howie to flee. In 1972, he left a note for her saying, “Going on holiday.” He took Gabe and never came back. 

He spent some time as a vagabond with his young son in Amsterdam, embracing the hippie culture, and fighting his own battles with drugs. Yet in a manner that seemed uniquely Howie, he latched on to a little piece of trivia he learned: that Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison all died at 27. Being 27 himself, he took that as an omen and quit drugs cold turkey. 

One of the great take-aways from Howie’s story is that, regardless of how stacked the deck is against you or how deep a hole you’ve dug for yourself, an astonishing life might just be waiting for you around the corner. Beasley writes, “At 27, he was still seven years away from his first race, nine years from his first world record, and running was the furthest thing from his mind. All he could think about was survival. One day the two would merge.” I read this just minutes after I’d read a quote from podcasting superstar Rich Roll, “I didn’t reach my athletic peak until I was 43. I didn’t write my first book until I was 44. I didn’t start my podcast until I was 45. At 30, I thought my life was over. At 52, I know it’s just the beginning. Keep running. Never give up. And watch your kite soar.” So yes, I was primed for this type of fantastical hopeful messaging to resonate, but I couldn’t help but romanticize my own potential future. What unknowns might emerge? What might still be in store for me as it was for Howie and Roll? This concept of late-onset greatness is what countless millions hold close. 

It was in Amsterdam that Al met his second wife, June Corfield. She would later be responsible for Al’s move to Canada, where he would settle for life. They’d have a daughter named Dana, but Howie’s challenging lifestyle would ultimately break up the pair and he rarely managed to see Dana throughout her life. Similarly, he became estranged from his son Gabe. Why? He was busy running. 

Running Took. 

So how do you go from a fairly sedentary life, drugs and three packs of cigarettes a day to become one of the greatest mega distance runners in the world? Well, it didn’t happen all at once. After their time in Amsterdam, Howie, June, and Gabe moved to the Southern coast of Turkey. While there, Howie began to develop a need to be alone for long stretches of time. June, for the time being at least, was content to act as caretaker for Gabe so Howie began going on long walks. Some lasting up to a week. They were his escape and a time to search for meaning.

The endurance walks led to his next outlandish effort, a 3-mile swim across the Hellespont, a waterway separating Troy and Gallipoli. Without much thought at all, he made a go of it but was pulled out of the water by the Coast Guard mid-swim. He thought he could have made it.

Ultimately, June ended up wanting more stability and convinced Howie to move near her family in Canada. Once there, Howie struggled to adjust to the normalcy of traditional living but made an effort for the sake of June and Gabe. 

Around this time, Howie made another life change that was to be his watershed moment. He quit smoking. As he did drugs, cold turkey. But without the nicotine salve, his emotions went haywire and an angry man surfaced. One day, the tensions with June were ratcheted up so high that he flew off the handle, out the door, and just started running down the street in the jeans and leather shoes he was wearing at the time. He ran and ran until the anger subsided. Somehow he managed to cover 10 miles on his first run. During that run, he discovered a tool to achieve an emotion he sorely lacked, a sense of calm.  

From that point on, with cigarettes and hard drugs behind him, Howie ran everywhere.

Running as Competition.

Howie got a job at a tourist site called Hell’s Gate as a jack of all trades. There, he had rugged training grounds and an inspiring setting to take his budding craft to the next level. “On off days, he ran all day long, 40 to 50 miles,” Beasley writes. “As tourists ventured to Hell’s Gate, they rarely left without a sighting of the half naked runner.” I got a kick out of this line. In modern times, you can’t hear the term half naked runner without thinking of Anton Krupicka. Both long haired and bearded, Howie and Anton would be perfect teammates on the all-time ultrarunning dream team. But really, Howie was a whole different level of crazy, even beyond Anton’s early years of high volume running. If Anton went big and dropped back to back 30 mile long runs, Howie would catch a wild hair and run 360 miles around Vancouver Island in five days. Anton would taper and recover before his Leadville 100 races while Howie would run 500 miles to the start of a race, run the race, and then run the 500 miles back home! There is simply no comparable character that I’m aware of in this era. 

I’ll note too that Al Howie was not just a mega distance runner. He was FAST! He had a very respectable marathon PR of 2:29 and he would often start out 24 hour timed races with a sub-3 hour marathon because, well, that was his style. He loved to go out hard and build a huge lead. He’d establish his dominance immediately and then settle into a pace he could sustain for the remainder of the race. 

Howie’s crowning achievement was undoubtably his record-setting run across Canada in 1991. Beasley describes the route wonderfully, “The Trans-Canada Highway is one of the longest roads in the world, an enormous 4,860 miles in its longest form. Between St. John’s, Newfoundland and Victoria, BC, there is a total of six Mount Everests along its path, in all over 183,700 feet of climb. There are mountains west until Montreal, then again between Ottowa and Winnipeg. After that, a 2,000 mile swathe of mind-numbing prairie gently rises to British Columbia, and there the Canadian Rockies stand guard like sirens, beckoning you in only to stamp you out, utterly.” And then, speaking of those who have tried to run it, “No one who has dared it has come away unscathed. The blood of heroes and fools alike disappears between the cracks and potholes. The sweat of those who have fallen short of its challenge cover as many miles. It has seen the best and the worst of the human animal.” Goosebumps.

The Trans-Canada run, all told, was roughly 4,500 miles and he did it in 72 days. Thats about two and a half marathons, EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. To conceptualize the distance, it was like running the entire Appalachian trail from Maine to Georgia, and then turning around and running back to the start in Maine.

Cracks of Body and Psyche.

While Howie beat nicotine and hard drugs, he held on to the drink. He often fueled himself on beer throughout the duration of his 24 hour races. He could maintain a one beer per hour protocol and seemingly run forever. Howie would also develop diabetes of all things and was forced to manage the disease throughout the end of his running career. He also withstood the unknown physical and mental toll incurred from a lifetime of incessant pavement pounding. 

It seemed that the older Howie got, the more tenuous his mental health became. There was some proclivity to insanity in his family: “Howie’s grandfather lost his mind late in his life. One day, he just abruptly stopped talking. It was as if someone had turned his lights off. The family couldn’t get him to do anything and he was put in a mental institution for 11 years. He remained catatonic and never left his bed. Then, one day, he had an “awaking.” He stood up and said he wanted to go for a walk. He walked all the way home and continued on with his life as if nothing had ever happened.” Clearly Howie came from a unique gene pool.

Al Howie died on June 21, 2016 after collapsing to the floor in a care facility while reaching for his second peanut butter sandwich of the evening. He was 70 years old, so not a short life, not a long life, but a full one. Beasley ties a bow on the book with a beautiful string of language that, for me as a reader, seemed to perfectly encapsulate the man. Paralleling Howie with Larry Murphy from the movie The Jericho Mile, Beasley writes, “He was no hero and no saint, but heroes are not always winners and winners are seldom heroes. Legends are never perfect, and seldom pleasant in microscopic detail, but they are as real in their vitality as those silent stones in Jericho.”

Visit author Jared Beasley’s website for photos and video clips of Al Howie himself. The following clip from :23 to :40, is my new favorite snippet on the internet.

Trust me when I say that this review does not even begin to do justice to Howie’s story. Thankfully, Beasley proved to be a worthy messenger of the Al Howie gospel. I’m a believer and I know I’m better for it.

In Search of Al Howie is available HERE from Rocky Mountain Books. But be prepared, read it and you might just find yourself planning a really, really, really long run. 

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