The Longest Race

by Ed Ayres

  On November 23, after several days of rest, I went out for my first run since the JFK. I was pleased to find that I had no soreness in my calves. After the marathons I ran in the ’60s, my calves were usually so stiff and sore that the only way I could go down steps was backward, using my quads to lower myself flatfooted. Now I was a lot older, but my legs were more resilient than they’d been when I was young, thanks to a few decades of continued learning. There’s no fountain of youth, and there’s no anti-aging pill, but there is a secret strategy that does work to a remarkable degree, and is free: continuing to learn with an open mind and unobstructed heart.

  As I prepared to close the book on my age-sixty JFK and start dreaming about trying it again one day when I was older and wiser, I pondered what President Kennedy might think if he could see our condition today. He might be shocked at the physical obesity, passivity, and poor health of our general population, but fascinated and encouraged by the growing cohort within that population that has taken to heart his claim that physical and mental fitness are interdependent. And it might come to him as a great epiphany that that kind of integrated, or meta, fitness, that he knew is so important to the survival of his country, is also interdependent with the health of the planet itself.

  But what JFK might find most intriguing and encouraging is the realization that this growing population-within-the-population is moving forward quite independently of the long-dominant power structures of national and global governance, including health governance. Worldwide, a hundred million long-distance runners, and who knows how many other allied communities of mindful people, are steadily, quietly moving toward more enduring, less consuming and corrupting, lifestyles—both as highly independent, self-directed individuals and as consciously interdependent members of their communities, ecosystems, and world.

  I could see now that, rather than letting ourselves be blitzed by the juggernaut of the sprint economy, the growing cohort of runners and others who practice individual endurance, patience, and mindful envisioning of the decades ahead might be quietly helping to transform the institutions of that economy from within, even as we are transforming ourselves. Beginning with Clarence DeMar, Ted Corbitt, George Sheehan, and a few others, long-distance runners led the way to a sea change in the medical profession’s recognition of how dramatically cardiovascular fitness can reduce the risks of hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease. As if awakening from a long institutional amnesia, a whole phalanx of health-care professions began to grasp the potential benefits—in higher levels of mental fitness, higher quality of life, and dramatically lower health-care costs—of energetically warding off disease rather than passively resigning ourselves to its attacks.

  Long-distance running also brought into American life—and increasingly, international life—a very different understanding of competition than the kind of winner-takes-all ideology that had dominated all things American for the past half-century. In the 1980s, corporate managers—inspired by members of their own ranks who were running in events like the New York Marathon—began discovering that higher levels of cardiovascular fitness in their executives could dramatically reduce costs incurred due to premature heart attacks, group-health outlays, and sick days. The stereotypical image of a gilded-age industrial mogul—fat guy with a chauffeur and cigar—was obsolete for good, and the successful business man or woman was lean, fit, and often out at 6:00 AM for a run. Deep breathing was essential to sharp thinking.

  And, finally, that more enlightened view of competitiveness, which quietly made running the most popular American participant sport in just one generation, and which the football player David Meggyesy explained as our need in any sport or endeavor to “strive together or there is no game,” clearly began to affect what we know of our relationship to the larger life of the earth.1 Sustainability is endurance writ large. There are millions of us now who can run a 10K or marathon or even fifty miles over mountain trails without getting out of breath, and then cross the finish line feeling good. I think President Kennedy would have liked our vigor.

  Postscript: 2012

  I am writing this book in the year 2012, over a decade after my 2001 JFK race and seven years after retiring from Worldwatch Institute to ponder the future of the human race. I’m pondering what may now be the ultimate question for us all: Where do we go now, when the obstacles we face are even greater than they were for early humans facing vast, unknown territories with only hand implements to hunt or defend themselves with, and only their legs to carry them? Changing climate was undoubtedly a driving force in some of their journeys as it now must be for ours, except that for us there are no remaining virgin territories on the planet to go to, and for us the climate change is happening much faster than in the past, thanks to our own blinkered behavior and denial.

  A rough logic tells me, then, that our own migration will have to be cultural, not territorial. And paradoxically (which makes it so hard to understand and embrace), it will have to happen with breathtaking speed even as we let go of our infatuation with speed and the sprint culture. Like the Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers making his game “slow down” in the 2010 Super Bowl, or good athletes in any sport perceptually slowing the action around them in order to see the game more clearly, we need to slow down to get there faster. I learned in my training for ultras, and for my age-record run at JFK, that I needed not only to pace myself for the long run in terms of external conditions, as an athlete in “the zone” must, but also to slow the turmoil within.

  The challenge, in envisioning this course, is that humanity has never faced anything so daunting. The deforestation, drought, erosion, and ecological collapses that brought earlier civilizations to ruin were all regional. Our threat is global. The Black Death, Irish potato famine, Spanish Inquisition, Flu pandemic of 1918, and even the genocides and world wars of the last century, were mostly one-generation decimations. The Inquisition lasted a little longer, and in some respects still continues. But what we face now is an avalanche of dangers that will plague us and our progeny more centuries into the future than I think we can grasp. Meanwhile, what awaits us just around the bend is what Rachel Carson, Ted Taylor, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lester Brown, Paul Ehrlich, and a hundred other pioneers have foreseen—and what millions more of us now can see clearly: We need to be nearing a tipping point.

  When President John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960, he may have known, at least intuitively, that science would eventually confirm his belief that “if we fail to encourage physical development and prowess, we will undermine our capacity for thought, for work, and for the use of those skills vital to an expanding and complex America.”1 Today, the same can be said of the whole world. JFK elaborated:

  We do not live in a regimented society where men are forced to live their lives in the interest of the state. We are, all of us, free to direct the activities of our bodies as we are to pursue the objects of our thought. But if we are to retain this freedom, for ourselves and for generations to come, then we must also be willing to work for the physical toughness on which the courage and intelligence and skill of man so largely depend.2

  That kind of toughness is not the brutishness that Thomas Hobbes mistakenly attributed to prehistoric humans, or that dominates our action movies, TV cop shows, or gladiator-style sports now. It is the ability to envision and persevere and sense our connections to the wild world in which our persistence-hunting ancestors evolved, and which some ultrarunners and other practitioners of endurance have begun to rediscover. We need to ask our schools and universities to encourage cross-disciplinary exploration that enables young people to see the critical connections between ecology and sustainable food production, between food and fitness—and, as Kennedy stressed, between our fitness and our ability to think on our feet.

  That kind of cross-disciplinary exploration offers students (and later, community leaders or policymakers) a far greater awareness of the “big picture” than they would have found in the narrower study of biology, transportation, physics,
or phys ed alone. And, significantly, that big-picture awareness makes more comprehensive use of the kind of wide-ranging perception our hunter-gatherer ancestors developed—the ability to connect the movements of clouds, wind, sun, and seasons with the signs of an animal’s movements, the terrain, and the availability of cooperative hunting companions, to assess the prospects of having something to eat that night. Every interdisciplinary field moves us a stride closer to replacing our reductionist science and myopic perception with more integrated, whole-picture views. Maybe the kind of brave, pioneering changes initiated by a few far-seeing individuals decades ago, and now gaining traction, will bring us to a tipping point.

  As for me, I’ve experienced the runner’s high so many times that I’m already beyond the tipping point—or at least beyond the tipsy point, in the sense that Emily Dickinson had in mind when she wrote:

  Inebriate of air am I

  And debauchee of dew

  Reeling, through endless summer days,

  From inns of molten blue3

  The summer days are no longer endless, as they were when I was young, but running under a sky of molten blue in sunny California, where I now live, is still exhilarating. This fall I’m going back to the JFK 50 Mile again, now in the seventy to seventy-nine division. This time, it may take a bit more than an eight-hour or even a nine-hour day, but I still look forward to a long workday when the work is good.

  Appendix:

  Notes for an Aspiring Ultrarunner

  Ultrarunning is not separate from the rest of life. It will affect your overall vitality, endurance, and patience, and may also affect your relationships and worldview. You will very likely become less complacent, more questioning, more adventurous, and more reconnected with your lost youth. Ultrarunning won’t save the world, but it’s a practice of the kinds of skills and outlooks that could ultimately help change the world’s course and will almost certainly change yours.

  1. Allow Enough Time

  In almost anything worthwhile, and especially ultrarunning, rushing to achieve success is a big mistake. Our culture has conditioned us to reflexively expect quick success. But quick success is the artificial, largely illusory, lure of an unsustainable civilization. Most people need eight to twelve months of regular running, averaging thirty to forty miles or more per week, to build the basic cardiovascular capacity and endurance needed to run an ultra. Most will already have completed a marathon, or at least have substantial long-distance running experience.

  Genetically, all humans are built for running, but culture has separated us from nature and it takes time to readapt. While 30-40 miles per week is a minimum, you’ll probably be better off gradually working up to 60-80 mpw. If you are young and have good biomechanics and big dreams, you may be headed for 100 mpw or beyond. But remember, more is not always better. And getting to your maximum mpw as quickly as possible is almost always a mistake. Take your time.

  2. Build, Sharpen, Taper

  It’s good to have a target date in mind—the day of the ultra you’d like to run. That determines when you should aim to reach your “peak”—the highest degree of readiness you can hope to reach in the coming year. Then count backward, allowing a couple of weeks before the race for a “taper” (easing off on the training), and before that two or three weeks of “sharpening” (speed work) to put a little spring in your step. The time left between now and the sharpening is what you have available for building “base”—the accumulation of lots of miles at an easy-to-medium pace. Ideally, you’ll have six to eight months or more for base building—developing cardiovascular capacity and endurance. If you don’t have at least six months for base, pick a later race. Once you reach your peak, you may be able to hold it for two or three months (and even run another ultra, if you’re young and crazy) before needing to back off and rebuild base for the following year.

  The basis of the one-year pattern may be the long evolution of our species in environments where climate played a larger role in our lives than it may seem to play now. Persistence hunting may have been more difficult or impossible in winter, necessitating periods of relative inactivity and subsistence on stored food. And the universal biological principle of cycles of rest and stress may also play a role. In any case, most ultrarunners make running a seasonal experience—we train year-round, but consciously prepare to be at our best during certain parts of the year, and to build or recover at others.

  Some runners race year-round, incorporating races into the base building while forgoing sharpening and tapering. Year-round competitors also use races as their long training runs. If you’re preparing for your first ultra, you might benefit by doing something similar—running a marathon or half-marathon as a training run (not as hard as you can), six or seven weeks before your ultra.

  In the sharpening phase, starting five or six weeks before the ultra, begin incorporating faster workouts (maybe one the first week, then two a week after that). “Faster” in this context doesn’t mean anaerobic running or sprinting, but might involve what I still prefer to call anaerobic-threshold running. Some physiologists don’t like the term “anaerobic threshold” because they feel it implies that there’s a point at which, as the effort becomes more intense, you shift suddenly from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism—which is not quite what happens. Rather, there’s a zone of overlap. These academics prefer the term “lactate threshold,” which is defined as the level of intensity or caloric consumption at which the production of metabolic waste is right in balance with the rate at which it is being cleared out. Any faster, and the waste builds up and you can’t go more than a minute or two before having to slow down and recover. Experience tells us that workouts right around the lactate threshold (often called “tempo” runs) are the best thing you can do to build endurance, and research confirms it. But threshold running only works if you’ve done enough base building to support that kind of intensity without breaking down. And it only works if it’s done infrequently enough (once or twice a week at most) to allow full recovery between one “fast” day and the next.

  To begin your sharpening phase, you might do a warm-up of several miles at an easy pace (always warm up before any fast running), then accelerate to threshold (about as fast as you can keep up for at least five or ten minutes), then ease off for a while and go home. Three or four days later, do it again, only this time, take the threshold part a little farther. Maybe in the second week, do an interval workout—alternating faster-than-threshold surges and slow recovery, say, four times. The next time you do an interval workout, go six surges, and the one after that, eight. By then, you may be ready to taper. All the in-between days should be the same kinds of easy distance running you do in base building. Use whatever mix of threshold running and interval work suits you. Just don’t overdo it, because fast running raises the risk of injury. If you feel twinges, back off.

  The taper is a period of easing down on mileage and intensity—letting the body get some regeneration before the big day. On the day of the ultra, you want to start out feeling fresh and “hungry” to run, not tired out from all the miles you’ve been doing. The taper typically takes just a week or two—so if your total mileage the third week before the race is 70 miles, the second week out might be 40 and the last week before the race just 20. These numbers are somewhat arbitrary; your individual condition and ability to listen to your body will guide you on the details.

  3. Vary Everything: Distance, Speed, Routes, Terrain, and Mental Engagement

  This is a basic principle of biological and ecological health, including the ecology of your own life. For biologists and ecologists, biodiversity—both within the genetics of a species and in the complexity of a whole ecosystem—is essential to long-run survival. And for athletes and trainers, cross-training—combining the benefits of complementary forms of exercise—is one of the secrets of durability and resistance to injury.

  Probably the most basic variable in your training is the distance you run each day. A successful pattern for many runners i
s to go short to moderate distances (5–10 miles) five days each week, then one day a week go long (15–30 miles). To illustrate the importance of that weekly long run, consider two different patterns, each totaling 60 miles for the week. The first is to run 10 miles a day for six days, then take a day off. The second is to run 8 miles a day for five days, then 20 miles on the sixth. While both yield the same total mileage, the first pattern never takes you past the point where you’re running low on muscle glycogen and need to adapt to more efficient fat-burning metabolism for endurance. The second takes you past that point four times a month, or about forty times in the year or so you’ll spend training for your ultra. While there’s no difference between these two patterns in total mileage, the second one provides a huge advantage in training effect.

  Varying speed is also important. Here, too, a tried-and-true pattern for most people would be to run at slow-to-medium speeds four to six days a week, and then faster for one or two days. To try running fast more than once or twice a week is to invite injury. “Fast” is a relative term, and in your first year of training for an ultra (review point 2 above), it would be prudent to limit your fastest running to the weeks before the taper, and use more low-key variations of speed during base building. These broad categories (“slow” days, “fast” days) can be further broken down as you gain experience. The “slow to medium” pace can vary from a very lazy lope on some days to the pace you might actually hope to run a 50-kilometer race, on another. Remember, running at ultra race pace doesn’t mean you’re doing a hard workout, if you’re only holding that pace for 8 or 10 miles rather than 50K or 50 miles. When you do intervals (again, not necessary at all during a first year of base-building), there’s no need to time them as you would if you were training for the 1,500 or 5,000 meters; what’s important is simply to run fast enough to be breathing hard and making your heart beat fast. An alternative to regular intervals might be to run a longer stretch of several miles fast (a “threshold” run as described above), then slow down just long enough to recover before doing another several miles fast.