Close to Nature

Third ecosophical question:

What can be done to promote sport training and competition in closeness to nature?

The third anf final question is relatively easy to answer. Also serious contemporary endurance sport practitioners increasingly visit the gym: to run on a treadmill or to do a ‘killer workout’ spinning- bike in case of bad weather, or to strengthen muscles and improve core-stability, the latest hit in fitness-world. It is also true that triathletes often acquit their swimming sessions in indoor pools. But most of the running and cycling is still practiced in the open, thus in closeness to nature. Albeit that the ‘natural’ surroundings in which all this takes place may differ, ranging from city parks and the geometrical lanes of suburbia to the crisp countryside and desolate and tricky single tracks in a rugged mountain-landscape. As a dedicated endurance athlete you are committed to air as fresh as you can get. When it comes to promoting sport in proximity to nature, endurance sport has another special benefit to offer: the deep length of becoming submerged in an inclusive lifestyle. While ‘regular’ sports such as volleyball, soccer, gymnastics or track athletics at a quasi-serious level already require a serious training investment, endurance sports outbid these by far. Just to be able to finish in a long distance duathlon or triathlon requires an investment of at least 20 hours a week in the preceding 4 months. This implies a life-style in which sporting close to nature is not occasional, but integrated in daily life. Endurance sport is process-minded rather than result-oriented, and thus implies a maximal potency for Self-realization! The holistic conception of a life fully lived in physical practicing, demands a positive stance towards a nature-oriented ascetology. Winning a race or improving your personal best is wonderful, of course, but it is not a sufficient reason for submerging yourself in total asceticism. You do not have to be a masochist per se, but you have to like and to be able to see the deeper meaning of

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the hardship you have to undergo. Nature, then, should be considered as a warm bath for venting your asceticism, not as something oppositional, an ominous sphere that you have to conquer.

Triathlete Ken Glah, a 28 consecutive Ironman World Championships finisher in Kona, Hawaii, advises athletes to stay engaged by finding ways to enjoy training. Glah, who prefers training in his Pennsylvanian backyard, doesn’t understand people who compete at the classic triathlon distance: 3.8-kilometre swimming, 180-kilometre cycling and finishing by running a marathon, and declare that they love racing but hate training.

I have no idea why they’re in the sport. Even if you were to race 10 or 15 times a year, you’re spending 95 per cent of your time training. If you don’t enjoy the training, why would you do something you don’t enjoy 95 per cent of the time, just to enjoy it 5 per cent of the time? (McDonald 2013, p. 66-7).

To give the simplest of all possible answers to Loland’s question of how to promote sport in closeness to nature: tell people of the joy of outdoor sporting, especially of the long and lonely rides and runs. Then perhaps refer to the Dutch psychiatrist and philosopher Jan-Hendrik van den Berg’s83 _{provocative and}

poetic plea for sturdy and single-minded solipsism. He argues for an ascetic life off the beaten tracks, “that demands full attention at every single step” (1973, p. 170 ( my translation)). The metaphysical point that Van den Berg attempts to score is clear: do not yield to ‘spinalism’ or herd instinct, become your deepest self. Also sport philosopher Leslie Howe gives good ecosophical-ascetological reasons for sporting close to remote nature. She reasons that sporting in pristine surroundings has a greater capacity for deepening our self-knowledge.

All sport has the potential to develop self-understanding and personal growth by offering various kinds of tests, but sport carried out in the remote and wilder places of the earth elevates this benefit because it commonly demands a higher than usual awareness of and response to risk, as well as presenting participants with a practical revelation of their relative significance (or lack thereof ) in the natural environment. It can teach us not only about ourselves as human individuals, but also as humans placed in a wider world than the purely human. My claim is not therefore that remote sport is better than conventional sport as such, but that is does have some special benefits to offer (Howe 2008, p. 1).

While off the road events such as the XTERRA: Global Off-road Triathlon and Trail Running Series are increasingly becoming popular, many long distance endurance events take place on paved roads. However, also tarmac has special benefits to offer when it comes to ecosophical nature-experiences. Magnanimous cyclist Steen Nepper Larsen, frozen to the marrow after being caught by a sudden storm during a heavy climb on Palma de Mallorca, contends that such confrontations add up to enlarging

your often too cerebrally oriented self. “We have to listen to our vivid memory and create our own narratives. The work of the biking man’s legs and muscles are his embodied thought” (2010, p. 38). Only experiencing and enduring the unpredictable curves of nature in a high physical state makes life worthwhile.

Loland suggests that the blossoming of as many talents as possible (width!) maximizes the ecosophical impact of sport. As already touched upon, this would make ‘agililty’ sports such as skiing and all ball-games more prone to the radical green change Sloterdijk is striving for: “I am to develop into a fakir of coexistence with everyone and everything, and reduce my footprint in the environment to the trail of a feather” (2013, p. 449). This personal awaking of responsibility for the greater good will ideally lead to a collective renaissance that is characterized by a “horizon of universal co-operative asceticisms” and by revaluing “the good habits of shared survival in daily exercises”(p. 452).

The one-dimensional cultivating of endurance (depth!) in stalwart daily exercises has special benefits to offer when attempting to enter the Elysian fields where deep mindsets result in perhaps ‘shallow’ but concrete arrangements. Transposing Loland’s tentative ecosophical outline to Sloterdijk’s tangible vertically challenged ascetological imperative for real life-change results a contemporary dark-green monastic rule. Aim for metanoia, train for sustainability, reach for your personal good. Understand that it takes a hell of an effort to get around. Run and (since this is a form of asceticism that does not require a lot of congenital motor talent, thus within in reach of nearly everyone,84 _{thus is}

a perfect way of broadening ones scope in a sustainable manner for the crowd) foremost: cycle for life.