Iron Skin: A memoir

On the darkest day, I didn't recognise myself. So I closed my eyes, and I saw the devil. I asked him - "What should I do, when I'm going through hell?" He said, "Keep going."

It is 2019 and life is good for Brendan Lee - he spends ten months a year globetrotting as a travel writer, his afternoons are spent writing stories in coffee shops, his evenings are spent wandering new cities, eating street food and mingling in bars until the morning hours. But overnight, everything changes. With the sudden onset of TSW - a debilitating skin condition - he is on a last-minute flight home. Days are now spent lifeless in his old childhood bedroom - the pain is constant, the nights are sleepless, his face is unrecognisable. Even getting up and down the stairs is a struggle. But the doctor's orders are clear: If you want to heal, no matter how much it hurts, you need to move.

Despite hating running with a passion, despite not having worn a pair of running shoes in twenty years, he goes for his first run. He barely survives it. He goes for another. Within weeks he's running every day and soon he realises, his old life - the backpacking, the wandering in exotic cities - it's not coming back. Running is all he has now. And even though he hates it - hates it more every time he laces up his shoes - running is what will eventually help him achieve the impossible, and ultimately save his life.