Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall

     Born to Run is a really good book wrapped in a mediocre book. Maybe I am just a boring person, but when McDougall expounds on the romantic and noble qualities of the Tarahumara, the tribe of amazing runners he finds, I thought it was overdramatic. Like he's talking about people running in Mexico potentially getting hit by snipers and I just don't believe that there are snipers in Mexico waiting to pick off runners. I also didn't really care about the race that Caballo Blanco was organizing, or Caballo Blanco at all. The style of the book was also somewhat annoying in the way that everything got turned into something so dramatic and important that nothing could really stand out as important. But besides those things, this was a really great book when it talked about the science of running and the discoveries that led McDougall to believe that it was critical to strengthen feet without running shoes and that humans are born endurance runners.

    The science of running was the most interesting part, but also the most biased. McDougall acknowledges that it may be possible the greatest ultramarathon runners are self-selected freaks of nature, but I don't think he gives that explanation enough attention. He also gives lots of examples of studies that support his own views without explaining counterpoints at all.

    There is a lot of advice in here that sounds pretty good. For example, if you have a choice between one step or two between rocks, take three. And think easy, light, smooth, and fast. Once you're easy, light and smooth, you won't even need to think about fast. I was really convinced by a lot of the advocacy for barefoot running especially the part where the author talks about how the arch of your foot is already a very architecturally strong form, and it shouldn't need extra support, which can only weaken it. When your feet are protected by a shoe, you don't reduce your risk of injury, you just reduce your ability to feel the pain that is warning you about an incoming injury. 

Miscellaneous Facts:

• Humans have longer strides than horses when you correct for four legs versus two. And humans beat horses regularly in 50+ mile races.
• When quadrupeds run, their internal organs move forward and backwards, restricting them to one breath per stride, whereas humans can breathe at any rate we want while running.
• Typical persistence hunters in the stone age would chase their prey for 2-4 hours to catch it.
• In 2007, a woman named Emily Baer beer 90 other men in a 100-mile race while stopping at aid stations to breastfeed her infant son.