When my wife purchased and downloaded Born to Run to our Kindles earlier this year, I found myself only marginally interested. I am not really into running, and I am also not into motivational sports books. They are fine and all, but I have never read one and had it impact my life. It was only in a fit of boredom caused by another book I had downloaded that I started browsing through the library of unread books on my Kindle, and decided to read the first chapter. Once I started I could barely put it down.
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen is about many things, with running as the main thread that stitches the story together. While running is the central theme, the interesting parts are the characters, the cultures, and the science.
The book is advertised as the story of a tribe of super-runners in the Copper Canyons of Mexico known as the Tarahumara (or Raramuri, their name for themselves). This tribe of Native Mexicans are amazing distance runners. Pregnant women have been known to run double-marathon distances in a day. Their most popular sport is a game in which runners can cover hundreds of miles chasing a ball. And if this book were just about the Tarahumara, it would be fascinating enough. Instead, the author Christopher McDougall takes us on a ride through the modern distance-running world. Through this journey we meet any number of fascinating people, all on their own, unique paths. To me this was the heart and soul of the book. Several outrageous characters stand out; the prize fighter that ran away from civilization, the greatest distance runner of all time, the woman who beats all the women and all the men at any number of 100 mile races, the hippy that sold a shoe company on the idea that cushioned shoes were bad.
A surprising twist in the book was the science. One of the themes that McDougall (and the runners in the book) revisit over and over is barefoot or minimally-padded running. McDougall cites numerous, recent scientific studies on the subject, and interviews scientists that study running. While the anecdotal evidence is fun to read, the scientific weight that McDougall brings to the argument is substantial. Nike is evil, barefoot running is good, and humans may very well have evolved to be distance runners. All these points gradually work their way from being opinion to verifiable facts during the course of the book (the evolution story is a little more than I am willing to dive into here).
I found this book fascinating and enjoyable. I was disappointed when it was over. I look forward to reading more of this fine author’s work.
