Born to Run

Eric's cousin, Anna, recommended the book Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall,



to me to read while healing from my stress fractures. I picked it up and have been reading it whenever I could sneak a chance - mostly during icing or massage sessions at physical therapy or when I'm on the treadmill at the gym. This last weekend I finished it. Oh man. It was one of those books I was very sad was over. It is definitely one of my new favorite books. Not because it's incredibly written (although it is very entertaining and a good read), but more because of the life/perspective/schema changing impact it's had on me. It's pretty darn incredible. Anna was right - it has been the perfect thing to read while healing from injury. No matter how frustratingly slow my progress, it has kept me motivated and inspired. And let me tell you I have shed tears over how frustratingly slow it has been. I just want to run! And jump! Do whatever it takes to avoid stress fractures! Whatever it takes. Don't be like me - don't run on concrete sidewalks. Oh, how I cringe when I see people out for a jog on the sidewalk! Go get a gait analysis. And cough up the money for good running shoes. A $90 pair of shoes is way cheaper than thousands of dollars of physical therapy bills. Just ask me - I know. But I'm getting off track.... Back to the book. Boy, does it make me want to run! After swearing up and down and delivering many lengthy epithets to Eric last fall about how I would NEVER want to run anything more than a 10K and how ridiculous I thought long races were, we are officially signed up for a half marathon in June (down gorgeous AF canyon - I'm pretty excited!). The book! I'm telling you people - it's an incredible book! You need to read it.

I want to share a few awesome tidbits from the book, but first let me give you the back cover synopsis, so you have some context for the quotes:

"An epic adventure that began with one simple question: Why does my foot hurt?

Isolated by Mexico's deadly Copper Canyons, the blissful Tarahumara Indians have honed the ability to run hundreds of miles without rest or injury. In a riveting narrative, award-winning journalist and often-injured runner Christopher McDougall sets out to discover their secrets... McDougall's incredible story will not only engage your mind but inspire your body when you realize that you, indeed all of us, were born to run."

Okay and now to the good quotes:

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.”

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“You don't stop running because you get old, you get old because you stop running.”

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“That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle--behold, the Running Man.

Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn't live to love anything else. And like everyhing else we ove--everything we sentimentally call our 'passions' and 'desires' it's really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We're all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.”

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“You don't have to be fast. But you'd better be fearless.”

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“The Tarahumara would party like this all night, then rouse themselves the next morning to face off in a running race that could last not two miles, not two hours, but two full days. According to the Mexican historian Francisco Almada, a Tarahumara champion once ran 435 miles, the equivalent of setting out for a jog in New York City and not stopping till you were closing in on Detroit.”

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“Suffering is humbling. It pays to know how to get your butt kicked.”

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“We've got a motto here-you're tougher than you think you are, and you can do more than you think you can.”

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“There's something so universal about that sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulses: fear and pleasure. We run when we're scared, we run when we're ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.”

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“We're all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known. But the American approach -- ugh. Rotten at its core. It was too artificial and grabby, Vigil believed, too much about getting stuff and getting it now: medals, Nike deals, a cute butt. It wasn't art; it was business, a hard-nosed quid pro quo. No wonder so many people hated running; if you thought it was only a means to an end--an investment in becoming faster, skinnier, richer--then why stick with it if you weren't getting enough quo for your quid?”

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“We say the rarajipari [Tarahumara running game] is the game of life, ' Angel said. 'You never know how hard it will be. You never know when it will end. You can't control it. You can only adjust.”

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“[He] coluldn't quite put his finger on it, but his gut kept telling him that there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love *running*. The engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you got, being patient and forgiving and undemanding.”

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“Perhaps all our troubles - all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we can't overcome - began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way.”

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“If you don't have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain't getting them.”

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“Imagine your kid is running into the street and you have to sprint after her in bare feet," Eric told me when I picked up my training with him after my time with Ken. "You'll automatically lock into perfect form--you'll be up on your forefeet, with your back erect, head steady, arms high, elbows driving, and feet touching down quickly on the forefoot and kicking back toward your butt."

You can't run uphill powerfully with poor biomechanics," Eric explained.”

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“He was onto something. Something huge. It wasn't just how to run; it was how to live, the essence of who we are as a species and what we're meant to be.”

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"The Hopis consider running a form of prayer; they offer every step as a sacrifice to a loved one, and in return ask the Great Spirit to match their strength with some of his own."

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“If you don't think you were born to run you're not only denying history. You're denying who you are.”