Down 84th Avenue in Jamaica, Queens, around the four blocks that circle Thomas A. Edison Career and Technical Education High School, 14 people are running 3,100 miles in an attempt to do an even harder thing: transcend themselves.
“It’s a spiritual journey,” Jason Lester, the only American runner taking part, tells me during his 50th lap of the 33rd day of the 52-day race.
I’m wheezing, trying to keep up with him and Adrian Papuc, who came to Queens from Romania. I’m far too late in the game and far too out of shape—I ran high school cross-country, but was the slowest on the team and once lost a trail race to a girl on crutches—but I’m not past trying to achieve some measure of inner peace, especially these days. Even if it means getting up early on a Sunday to take the train, then a bus, to jog around a high school.
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