What Running Can Teach Us About Sustainability

By: Britta Clark, member of the Craftsbury GRP Run Team 

Britta, center, with GRP teammates

Part of what drew me to GRP Run was the team’s focus on sustainability. But what does sustainability mean, exactly? Sustainability is a contested term, and I’ve spent a great deal of the last 9 years of my life thinking about various dimensions of it. Some think that sustainability involves keeping particular (usually natural or untouched) places exactly as they are now, or even returning them to some past state. Others think of sustainability in terms of the sustainability of human wellbeing: we should not act in ways such that humans in the future are unhappy due to environmental degradation. Still others think about sustainability in terms of satisfying our needs now in a way that doesn’t undermine the prospect of satisfying those same needs in the future. 

It matters what conception of sustainability we adopt, for different conceptions will require different things from us. For instance, a vision of sustainability that merely requires sustainability of human wellbeing might allow us to replace present old growth forests with malls and casinos so long as people in the future enjoy those just as much. On the other hand, a vision of sustainability that requires us to preserve certain places exactly as they are now will likely condemn such development. This latter vision might go wrong in other ways, though--why, for instance, should we privilege the way things are now when we think about sustainability? 

I won’t fully settle the issue of the right account of sustainability here. But I do think that reflecting on running can give us a jumping off point for beginning to formulate a plausible view. In turn, I think we’ll also find that thinking about sustainability can help illuminate aspects of our running. 

Let’s start by asking: what does it mean to run sustainably? The first thing to notice, I think, is that running sustainably is distinct from running consistently. It seems to me that one can run sustainably without running consistently, such as when one prioritizes other important things in life and runs sporadically and when time allows. And one can run consistently without running sustainably, such as when one continues to run through injury or illness, burnout or overtraining. Running sustainably seems to encompass a lot more than running consistently: I am running sustainably when I am spending time with my friends, eating well and enough and not running if I am injured. 

The definition of sustainability at work here seems to be something like this: doing something sustainability means that you could continue doing some version of that thing over long term time scales, without significant cost to more important interests. For instance, it might be physically possible to run 100 miles per week, but this does not, on the definition of sustainability I’m offering, mean that that practice is always sustainable. For me, running 100 miles per week comes at a significant cost to things I care about more than running—time with friends and family, my schoolwork, and so on. 

This last point is important when it comes to the environment, I think, for it illustrates that sometimes it’s not merely physical impossibility that makes something unsustainable. Sometimes we think of sustainability in terms of something that one could not, due to some physical constraints, continue to do forever. Present deforestation is unsustainable, for at some point, there will be no trees left. But unsustainable practices include far more than those practices that cannot physically continue over long term time scales. A practice is unsustainable if its continuance will threaten interests that are more important than those the practice protects. Continuing to emit greenhouse gasses is something that we could do for a very long time—virtually unlimited coal, oil, and natural gas reserves exist. But the practice of burning greenhouse gas producting fuels to power many of our activities is unsustainable because doing so will cause harm to interests that are far more important than the interests that burning fossil fuels advances. The practice of emitting greenhouse gasses for luxury travel, clothing, beef productions and so on is unsustainable because this practice threatens people’s (more important) interest in avoiding extreme heat waves, storms, and wildfires. 

You’ll notice that I’ve been speaking in terms of the sustainability of practices. I think this is the right way to think about it. Indeed, when it comes to the environment, the thing that is sustainable is our collective practices. Most individual actions, even added up over a lifetime, are sustainable on their own; the problem is when all of us, or many of us, do the same thing. On this view, it doesn’t make sense to ask whether my action of buying a metal straw or a vegan burger or biking to work is sustainable. Sustainability concerns what we do together. 

Does this idea apply to running, an individual sport? In a way, I think it does. For me, running sustainably requires people in my life - family, friends, GRP teammates - to support me and encourage me in the strange undertaking of moving my legs for many hours a week, week after week. The support of these people is part of what makes running enjoyable; for me it is the understanding and excitement of the people around me that keeps the sport from feeling individualistic and self-indulgent. Running, then, is in a sense at least to me a collective practice. The sustainability of my own running practice depends in important ways on what other people in my life will do. 

Where are we left with respect to the contested definitions of sustainability that I started with? The conception of sustainability I’ve offered is distinct from many common ideas that are associated with the term: sustainability is not about just making sure that people in the future can be just as happy as we are, nor is it primarily about keeping specific natural places just as they are. Rather, sustainability concerns whether certain collective practices can be continued over long term time scales without significant cost to more important interests. Our team at GRP Run has been reflecting on these questions, thinking about what sustainability means both when it comes to running and when it comes to the environment. We are excited to share some initiatives and projects with you soon that bring these ideas to life.