Ed Ayres

What a wonderful audiobook The Longest Race by Ed Ayres turned out to be! Both a memoir about running an ultramarathon (any distance longer than the 26-mile marathon) and a meditation on the future of the human race, The Longest Race is also the longest, most successfully sustained (book-length!) metaphor I’ve ever read.
“Over the years,” the author writes near the beginning of the book, “I’d noticed curious parallels between the ecology of human societies under duress and that of show more an individual human under great stress. I had begun to wonder, Are these parallels more than just coincidence?” Each leg of the JFK 50 Mile – the annual trail race through the hills, woods, and back roads of Maryland – sparks related thoughts, from science to history to memories of the author’s own past, that merge with his concerns about our future as a race if we continue down the path we seem to be on.
Ed Ayres, the founder of Running Times, has written an expansive memoir that seems to have grown organically out of his experience of competing in a specific ultramarathon at age 60 with the personal goal of winning the race in the his age group (60–69), after a lifetime of looonnnng-distance running and a decade of work as an environmental science editor.
The JFK 50 Mile is a trail race that started with John F. Kennedy’s challenge to the U.S. military troops of 1962 that they should be able to do what Theodore Roosevelt said his officers should be able to do: travel 50 miles on foot in 20 hours or less. In the spirit of competition, Army and other military personnel took up the challenge in 1963 (when JFK’s brother Bobby Kennedy also took up the challenge, in his loafers) and the annual race has happened every year since.
In The Longest Race, the author writes specifically about running the JFK 50 Mile race of November 2001, just nine weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Thoughts of 9/11, weapons of war, religious belief, international relations, scientific advances, pacificism, the environment, the human body, optimal footwear, the Olympics brand, and much more, are all interconnected in The Longest Race – a personal account of long-distance running and the author’s thoughts on the endurance of the human race. There’s plenty of insight on how best to approach the sport, and the author does include helpful tips at the end, but don't go into The Longest Race thinking it's a how-to book on ultramarathon racing!
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Pompous and arrogant. Wafts from scientific to philosophical to preacher-like. Makes claim after unsubstantiated or footnoted claim. He may be accurate in some of his assertions, but he has filled his book with so much speculation on so many subjects, with such a bombastic title like "God's last offer" (like he has a clue what offers God makes), that I could not even finish this drivel. I love books on sustainability, and I have a career in the field, but drivel like this does us all an show more injustice. show less

Excellent memoir of running a 50 mile ultra marathon in 2001, with asides touching on various subjects like human evolution and running, the environment, etc. The author was the founder of Running Times magazine.