My real reason for this post is to talk about the book I just finished “Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen” by Christopher McDougall. When I put it down last night after reading the final page I felt depressed that it was all over. I had become so engrossed in the real life characters that McDougall so expressively described that I felt a sense of loss that my friends were now gone. As I was drawn into the book and new characters were introduced I had to remind myself that these were not simply “characters” in a fictional book but rather characters in a non-fiction book; these are real people!
In the beginning of the book McDougall puts forth many questions about the evolution of man as runners. His theories, at the time, seemed logical but I could easily see how they could be disproved by men of science. However, the second half of the book McDougall brings back around his theories (not in an obvious way) and goes on to use modern science to prove his earlier points. His writing style is so smooth and the transition back to his original questions and ideas was so subtle that it wasn’t until the next day that I realized he had answered his own questions/theories, which makes his book even better since he wrote with a purpose and shared the answers with us all (thankfully).
I lack the words and skill to adequately summarize this book so I will borrow a summary from a fellow Goodreads reviewer, Lena, that I felt was right on:
Born to Run begins as an adventure story. While trying to figure out how to get his own foot to stop hurting, he saw an article about a tribe of Mexican Indians called the Tarahumara. These people were said to be able to run for days at a time through unforgiving terrain wearing nothing more on their feet than sandals made from thin strips of tire rubber. So McDougall set out to find these mysterious people, but doing so was not easy. The Copper Canyons where they live are extremely difficult to get to, and the trip is made even more hazardous by having to pass through drug farming country on the way.
In addition to being a sometimes nail-biting tale about the author's quest to find the Tarahumara, Born to Run also weaves in the fascinating history of the sport of ultra-running. Ultra-marathons are races consisting of any distance longer than a marathon. McDougall discusses how this crazy sport first came into being, highlighting along the way the stories of the participants who have slowly begun to make it famous.
McDougall narrates this history in real time, resulting in descriptions of several races that were so gripping I couldn't put the book down. One of these races was the Leadville Trail 100, a 100-mile race at 11,000 feet in which the Tarahumara faced off against an ultra-running prodigy named Ann Trason.
As McDougall weaves together the story of ultra-running's past with his own quest to find the Tarahumara and become a better runner, he also relays a fascinating tale about scientific discoveries into our evolutionary past suggesting that it was our ability to run long distances without getting winded, and thus get all that extra protein from the bounding antelope we were able to outlast, that gave us the evolutionary edge needed to grow our huge brains. These sections also point out that we did not evolve to run on cushions with arch support, and that expensive running shoes actually make runners more prone to injury than running in the bare feet nature so elegantly designed for us.
The book concludes with the tale of a joint venture between McDougall and a character named Caballo Blanco, a gringo who had befriended the Tarahumara and made the Copper Canyons his home. Though the Tarahumara had wowed people at Leadville, Caballo longed to see them race against America's ultra-running best on their own turf. So McDougall helped him get together a half-dozen racers and they made the dangerous trek down into the canyons. The resulting race and the sportsmanship described therein is very moving, and I finished this odd combination of memoir, sports history, adventure tale and evolutionary science with damp eyes.
I have two weeks left until I am able to start exercising again. I haven’t been able to run in nearly 5 years but now that the issues that prevented me from running are fixed I am eager to get back on the trail and build up my endurance. I did try running a couple of years ago and was training to do a local 5K when I got a foot injury (I was also trying to ignore the other issue that I've just had fixed) that sidelined me for weeks and I didn't go back. Never have my feet been so injured and now I think I can guess why. In preparation for release I purchased a new set of running shoes from REI:
This should be fun! I’ll keep you posted as to my progress and if these really work - the expectation being that my foot will not sideline me this time around.
