February 2027 · Book tie-in: Full manuscript · Isaiah 40:31
Here’s how you become a better, stronger, smarter runner today — by understanding that every finish line was once just a decision to go again.
Every book starts somewhere. Not with a publisher. Not with a writing plan. It starts with a moment when you realise the story you’ve been carrying has to go somewhere other than inside you.
This month, Try Again is out. This is not a sales post. It’s the honest story of why the book exists, what it cost to write, and what I hope it does for you.
The moment it became inevitable
It started in a chair.
On a morning run in Jeddah I was chasing a personal best on my usual ten-kilometre rectangle. With 2.5 kilometres to go I tried to beat a car across a busy road, looked over my shoulder instead of at the ground, and my foot hit a rock. I heard the bone before I felt it.
A few weeks later I was home in Germany, leg in a cast, sitting in a chair. Eighteen years of constant travel were over. My dog lay next to me, delighted. And for the first time in my working life, I had time.
For years I had been collecting notes — on running, on the mental side of endurance, on the athletes I coached on the side. Half-finished chapters. Abandoned drafts. From that chair, the first running book came. Then the second. Then more, the podcast, the coaching.
But one book kept refusing to be written. The one about what happened between the races. Between the countries. Between the attempts.
It took another fall — a much harder one — to make it inevitable. A company I founded closed. The house went to the bank with one signature. And I found myself driving a truck on a German motorway at five in the morning, fifty-three years old, with an MBA on the wall. Somewhere in that cab I knew: this story wasn’t just mine anymore. It belonged to anyone who has ever had to start again.
What Try Again is really about
It’s not a running book. It’s not a travel book. It’s not a business book — even though it covers thirty years of international sales across India, Mexico, Singapore, the UK, Iran, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the USA, and more.
It’s about one decision, made over and over: to go again.
After the failed startup in Singapore. After the courtroom. After the bank desk. After the rock in Jeddah. Every chapter is a different country and a different kind of fall. The common thread is what you do the next morning.
Why faith is the spine, not the decoration
Every chapter opens with a Bible verse. I didn’t add them to make the book look spiritual. They’re there because they were there — the verse that was with me in that season, in that hotel room, in that truck cab.
I’m not a preacher. My best friend from school and the army became one; I became a salesman. The book doesn’t lecture. But I can’t tell the story honestly and leave God out of it, because the honest version of me prayed in those pits. The prayers weren’t eloquent. They were the prayers of a man who had run out of arguments. And something happened in them that never happened in the easier years.
“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
— Isaiah 40:31
That verse sits over the final chapter. A runner can’t read it without smiling.
What it cost
Honesty costs. There are chapters I’m not proud of. A chapter about temptation on the road that I nearly cut, and kept, because there’s a man reading it right now who needs to recognise himself before he makes my mistakes. There are people in the book I let down, and people who carried me when I didn’t deserve it.
Writing it meant going back into rooms I had left. That was the cost. The return is that I understand my own story better — and I hope you’ll understand yours better too.
Who it’s for
- The runner who knows what the road does for the mind and wants to see it at work in real life.
- The person who has fallen — in business, in a marriage, in faith, in health — and wonders if there’s a way back.
- The one looking for permission to try once more.
If you’re any of these, I wrote it for you.
Where to find it
Try Again is on Amazon — paperback and Kindle. You’ll find it on my author page alongside my other books, including Make 365 Days Count and my new swimming book for runners, From Runner to Efficient Swimmer.
[AMAZON LINK]
If you read it, I’d love to hear which chapter found you. That’s the only review that really matters to me.
Your action step
Go for a walk or an easy run this week — no watch. Think back over your own last ten years and answer, out loud:
Where did I fall — and what did I do the next morning?
That answer is your own “try again”. Write it down. It might be the start of your story.
Take it easy, and God bless.
— Heiko