A loop eternal: Big Dog Backyard Ultra An Article www.theguardian.com Run a single loop measuring 4.16667 miles within a single hour. Now do it again. And again. Now keep doing it – starting a new loop on the hour, regardless of how fast you finish the previous one – until there’s only one runner willing or capable of doing so. Welcome to the simple – some might say sadistic – concept of the Big Dog Backyard Ultra in Bedford County, Tennessee. sportsrepetitionendurance
A World Where Things Only Almost Meet Recall that great line from Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths. Only, here, it’s some lonely postal worker—or a geography Ph.D. driven mad by student debt—out mapping the frayed edges of the world, wearily noting every new dead-end and cul-de-sac in a gridded notebook, diagramming loops, sketching labyrinths and mazes, driving empty streets all day on a quest for something undefinable, some answer to why the world’s patterns have gone so wrong. A self-diverging world, where things only almost meet. Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG www.bldgblog.com How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths urbanismgeometrydystopia