Even nature’s best animal distance runners — such as horses and dogs — will run similar distances only if forced to do so
This sentence is meaningless. When does a dog do anything uncomfortable without coercion? It's not like a dog will voluntarily, say, go without food because it needs to lose weight. Similarly, humans don't spontaneously run marathons. There is a huge psychological build-up required, of which this article is a part. It's notable that most Kenyan marathon champions don't continue running once they retire. They get plenty of physical activity on the farm and don't have the Western obsession with endurance sports.
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This article does not exist in a vacuum. There is a whole barefoot running / endurance running movement that is taking over conventional sports shoes at the moment. The general premise is:
- humans evolved to run without shoes, so you should (or better, with expensive shoes with minimal heals)
- humans evolved to run long distances, so you should
I don't disagree with the statements, but I think it's oversimplified. I say this as someone who wears Vivo Barefoot shoes. In particular, persistence hunting (the form of hunting that relied on long distance running) was not widely used outside of some specific niches (really hot places, for instance) and a lot of humans have adapted away from endurance activities (which is obvious is look at a Kenyan marathon runner next to a Scandinavian strong-man competitor).