A stirring tribute to amateur feats of endurance, fleeting exploits, and ordinary champions, memorialized in literature.

Essay, memoir, journal, sports history, anthropological fieldnotes ‒ this book is all that and more. Cyrille Martinez offers us a fraternal hymn dedicated to Martine, Jean-Pierre, Rachid, François, extras, champions, cheaters, victims, and heroes of those astounding epics wherein glory is born of trivial challenges: "running for no reason at all."