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Show Eight years ago I moved to Idaho to begin my first job as a professor. I commuted the distance of a marathon to work, twenty-six miles over a state line and through several small towns to the university. Seldom did I see any runners on the road, but I often thought about my drive in terms of running. I attended the margins along the highway, considered the terrain, wondered how that hill felt to summit. One day driving home I heard an interview on NPR with Dr. Dennis Furlong, the inventor of the intelligent shoe, an invention that promised to make cheating in the sport of racewalking impossible. Apparently, I learned, racewalking is plagued by those who would prefer to fly rather than walk. The rules of the sport-the ones separating racewalking from running-dictate that one foot must always remain in contact with the ground. What defines running as running is that millisecond when both feet leave the ground, the athlete hovering in the air. Racewalkers who "run" rather than walk are able to make incredible time in flight, earning something like one kilometer in every ten. In every stride, a runner flies at least a tenth of the time. To stop this practice, Dr. Furlong had invented a small device worn on a racewalker's shoe that would light up when airborne, ensuring that contestants remained on the ground. On average I run 1500 miles a year. Which means that in the past fifteen years, years in which I have more or less run consistently, I have logged 22,500 miles: the circumference of the earth. It was only when I arrived at the university, the interview long over, that I completed the calculations. On any given day, I spend more than a half a mile of my run in the air: one hundred and fifty miles a year hovering above the earth, over two thousand in my life time. My running route took me past cornfields, wheat fields, and dairy farms, past 231 |