Time Essay: Running a Good Thing into the Ground

The face is familiar—eyes bobbing, mouth agape, puffing like a locomotive. There are so many of them in the U.S., maybe 25 million. They may seem like more, since they turn up everywhere: on walkways and city plazas, along bridges and expressways, even in the once hushed corridors of office buildings. America, in short, has become overrun with runners running every which way, including off at the mouth. Not surprisingly, running is now running into a snippy backlash.

Generally Americans have been as hospitable to running as to previous fads. Runners have been cursed...

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