A while back, my friend Blake lent me the book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, pressing it into my hands and urging me to read it right away. It was that good, he said. But…it was a book about running. Like, really, really far — not just marathons, but ultramarathons. Races that can go on for days, and last 50 to a hundred miles (or more).

This sounds like sheer lunacy to someone who considers running farther than 200 meters at a time to be a hardship. I get that a lot of people find their bliss during a daily run, but for me, running just feels crappy — and not in the hurts-so-good way that marks an effective workout.

On top of that, it seems like every runner I know suffers from chronic injuries, further confirming my hunch that my own body simply wasn’t designed for distance — thus, mega-races weren’t a topic I was super hype to read about. So, I avoided this book. (Just as, when it comes to avoiding that type of training, my endurance is excellent.)

But after finishing Malcolm Gladwell’s latest, What the Dog Saw (a fabulous compilation of previously published essays, by the way), I was again left facing Blake’s book. An impending weekend trip and one haphazard packing job later, Born to Run took to the skies with me…and never touched the ground again.

The thing is a fast and furious account of human evolution and innate function; the superior biomechanics of barefoot running; the history of the modern running shoe (and the prevalence of injuries caused by our kicks); lessons from the Tarahumara, a reclusive tribe of “Running People” in Mexico; the author’s experience with overcoming injury, an insider’s look at the sometimes-rowdy ultrarunning community (and how big a d-bag they think Dean Karnazes is); vegetarian super-fuel; and an epic, precarious 50-mile race through dangerous terrain.

Whether or not you take all of McDougall’s messages and, ya know, run with them, it is an utterly fascinating love story about running, and reading it had a curious effect on me: It actually made me want to run. Or
rather, to learn to run right, so that I might someday enjoy the act.
Don’t get me wrong: It’s not as if I’m about to enter a marathon, let
alone an
ultra. (Seriously, let’s start with a mile.) But for the first time, I
can see why someone might want
to…and how we might even be born to do so.

 Some Highlights:

• Running shoes are evil, because they 1) encourage us to land on our heels instead of the fat, fleshy padded midfoot, and 2) let the small muscles of our lower legs and feet atrophy. The word’s been out on this for a while, but he does a great job making the case against shoes, nonetheless.
• We run hurt because we run wrong (again due to this heel-striking business). With a lot of work and the right
  running coach, however, it’s possible to learn to run without pain. Check out ChiRunnning and the Pose Method.
• According to some scientists, humans have evolved to run great distances — a skill that came in handy for running after prey until it collapsed (a technique called persistence hunting). It has to do with our breathing patterns, our ability to sweat, our lack of fur, our big ole butts, our Achilles tendon and a notch in the back of our skulls that cradles a head-stabilizing ligament that many other animals are missing. (For more details, read Chapter 28.)
• Running should be joyful; an expression of life itself. Ugh, I’m not going to do his writing justice, so here’s what McDougall says: “[Throughout our history,] distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived on 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 everything else we love — 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.”
• And this, which I found incredibly powerful: “[T]here 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.”
• You can make a super-effective homemade energy drink called iskiate by dissolving chia seeds in water with a little sugar and lime juice. Recipe here, and video below: www.nomeatathlete.com/tarahumara-pinole-chia-recipes.

Further Reading:
-Washington Post book review: “Running, the Natural Way“
-Seed Magazine: “The Running Man, Revisited“
-Wired: “Born to Run But Crippled By Shoes“
-Christopher McDougall’s blog: http://chrismcdougall.com/blog
-Barefoot Ted’s blog: http://barefootted.com
-Born to Run fan site: http://borntorun.org

How to Make Iskiate (the Chia Energy Drink):