Beyond Escapism and the Stopwatch: Endurance as a Collective Experience

When an endurance athlete who has run a marathon in two hours and twenty minutes and represented Great Britain in road races is also an anthropologist, a book like "Up to the Limit: The Meaning of Resistance from Mexico to the Himalayas" (add editore, 2026) is born, which questions the meaning of fatigue, seeking a third way in the vision of endurance sports.

To the view that endurance races are "boundary crossings" from the pressures of modern life, opportunities to lose oneself and find oneself, and to the view that physical activity and resistance are "part of a broader drive toward productivity and the perpetual personal improvement that moves the wheels of capital," Michael Crawley adds a new perspective: endurance as a collective experience and generator of social value. To define it, he immersed himself in various cultures in search of the value given to effort, meeting, among others, Nepalese runners, the Solukhumbu Sherpas, Raramuri ultramarathoners, and simple runners slaves to the clock.

At the opening of the event, organized by the Cuneo Montagna Festival in collaboration with Scrittorincittà, the program of the fourth edition of the Cuneo Montagna Festival (14-17 May 2026) will be presented.

Free event, reservations required on Eventbrite at https://bit.ly/cnmf-crawley