Running with the Antelope: Life, Fitness, and Grit on the Northern Plains - Hardcover

Melanie Carvell is a gifted athlete who grew up in a small town in southwestern North Dakota in the 1970s. This beautiful memoir tells the story of Melanie’s remarkable journey, from the agricultural village of Mott (population 732) to world duathlon and triathlon competitions, then a splendid career as a physical therapist, director of the Sanford Women’s Health Center in Bismarck, North Dakota, and a widely sought-after motivational speaker.

Melanie learned to run on the northern Great Plains where the winters are long and harsh and the wind tests the human spirit. She attributes her national and international success to her agrarian roots and the challenge of biking, running, and swimming in one of the most formidable landscapes of America. Her motivational philosophy is, “If I can do these things, given the modesty of my upbringing and the harshness of the Dakota climate, so can you.” Running with the Antelope inspire readers to begin a program of athletic training, weight loss, or general self-improvement.

Written in a humble and accessible style, with loving anecdotes about her life as a top athlete and her work as a physical therapist, Running with the Antelope is part self-help book, part prairie memoir, and part song of love to North Dakota, which is undergoing a rapid transformation from its agrarian past to a carbon extraction industrial future.

Clay S. Jenkinson, well known for his historical portrayals of Thomas Jefferson and Meriwether Lewis, is the editor of A Vast and Open Plain: The Writings of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in North Dakota, 1804-1806 and author of Becoming Jefferson's People: Re-inventing the American Republic in the Twenty-first Century.