How a run with Isaac blossomed into One World Running
Earth Day was still in its infancy when I first arrived in Boulder way back when, as was the Running Boom.
Looking back, it seems as natural as spring snowmelt tumbling down a mountain steam that combining these two nascent social movements led me and some other local runners to start the first running shoe recycling and repurposing program, called Shoes for Africa.
During a marathon in Yaounde, Cameroon, I was befriended by a local runner named Isaac — you know how deep friendships can form over two hours between two strangers running side by side for 20 miles. It was surprising to see him keeping up while wearing those blue plastic sandals ubiquitous in developing nations. By 20 miles, I had hit the wall, and Isaac ran ahead, leaving behind a thin trail of blood from a broken sandal strap cutting into his foot.
After a rough couple of miles, the Gates of Paradise appeared, and there was Isaac, waiting for me at the finish line. We embraced in a warm, sweaty hug. Seeing that we wore the same size shoe, I gave him my new pair of Nikes, one of the early models of the Pegasus (more on that shoe in a future column), and distributed to the runners 500 Bolder Boulder t-shirts donated by the race. Returning to Boulder, some of the local sponsored elites began giving me their shoes, often lightly used, and with the help of a federal agency, we would send them off to runners throughout Africa.
Gradually, the program expanded and was renamed One World Running after we began working in countries such as Haiti, Honduras and Guatemala, with new volunteers doing the heavy lifting every year, picking up shoes at the local running stores, sorting, washing and boxing them and going on distribution service trips. (oneworldrunning.com)
Somehow, running and recycling go together. Perhaps it is that connection to the Earth we sometimes get while on a run, feeling our movement on a trail, in the snow, sun or wind, sometimes with others, often alone. It gives an understanding of being connected to all and everything or, as the philosopher Alan Watts put it, the insight that we are not “born into the world;” rather, we are “born out of the Earth.”
Said Watts, “Just as an apple tree ‘apples,’ so does the Earth ‘people.’” We are the fruit of the Earth, 4.5 billion years in the making. All of nature is our base, heritage and lineage.
Running shoes take a long time to break down — roughly 40 years, according to Newton Running, the local shoe firm that in 2021 launched its “biodegradable shoes.” Several other shoe companies also offer sustainable shoes. One of the most recent is Asics, with a shoe that is completely recyclable according to Outside Run. (run.outsideonline.com) The Mirai model uses a glue that “melts away” during recycling of the polyester upper.
While sustainable running shoes are a positive step, what is necessary is a change in attitude. Perhaps we are not meant to “subdue” or dominate the Earth but, rather, to flow with our beautiful blue-green planet as it, we, the solar system and the Milky Way speed through space into the infinite void at 1.3 million mph (on our way, NASA.GOV tells us, to a “titanic collision” with the Andromeda galaxy).
The recent Great North American Eclipse gave many a sense of awe and wonder at the mystery of the moon totally blocking the sun and the stars and planets appearing in midday. What if we could keep and cultivate that sense of awe at the mystery of the universe in our everyday life, and realize, as the Upanasids put it roughly 3,000 years ago, that “Tat Tvam Asi,” or “You art That”?