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The bestseller Born to Run launched a debate about what role shoes play in pure running form and inspired a generation to leave the pavement in favor of natural running surfaces. A new book, The Longest Race, deserves an equally large audience for the connections it makes between individual endurance and environmental sustainability. Author Ed Ayres, a veteran campaigner for global environmental issues, has been a competitive runner for 55 years, excelling in ultramarathons.

Just as distance runners must pace themselves to avoid oxygen debt and reach the finish of 50- and 100-mile races, so societies must avoid resource depletion to avert ecological and economic collapse. In metabolic terms, writes Ayres, our civilization has “gone into a dead sprint.” We must choose between a vainglorious run of a few decades and a way of life that would be sustainable across millennia. Sustainability is “endurance writ large.”

“Ultrarunning won鈥檛 save the world,” Ayres acknowledges, “but it鈥檚 a practice of the kinds of skills and outlooks that ultimately can help change the world鈥檚 course.” He encapsulates the best of these lessons in the book鈥檚 final section. Allow enough time, be cautious of “techno-assists” that compromise self-reliance, and鈥攈is basic principle of biological and ecological health鈥攙ary everything.

Ayres鈥� running of the 2001 JFK 50-miler, the nation鈥檚 oldest and largest ultramarathon, drives the narrative. At age 60, Ayres returns to JFK, a race he won in 1977. Can he break the record for men his age? Across the miles, he recalls the joys and lessons of his running life, drawing equally on the insights of deep ecologist Paul Shepard and poet Emily Dickinson (“inebriate of air am I”).

Born to Run promised that the primal act of running could make our individual lives more meaningful. The Longest Race goes further, challenging us to reflect on what shared skills, perspectives, and values best safeguard the future of the human race.

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Andy Lee Roth is the associate director of Project Censored, where he coordinates the Campus Affiliates Program. He has coedited eleven editions of the Project Censored yearbook, including State of the Free Press 2021, published by Seven Stories Press in December 2020. Roth has previously written for YES! Magazine about Eduardo Galeano's legacy and the Baltimore Algebra Project鈥檚 revolutionary model of high school education.

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