Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The term purple prose is usually reserved for works of fiction but I find it apropos here. This disjointed work is more a collection of anecdotes gussied up by hyperbole than an actual story. Here is how the author describes the Barrancas (Copper Canyons) of Mexico:
“The deeper you penetrate into the Barrancas the more it feels like a crypt closing around you.”
“…it looked like a world-ending explosion frozen in stone.”
And he described a runner known as the White Horse this way:
“a dusty cadaver”
“his legs shifted and reformed like molten metal”
“he’s so long-limbed and lean-muscled he looks like an endoskeleton of a bulkier beast”
Leadville, Colorado is “the wildest city in the Wild West,” “an absolute death trap.”
I realize ultrarunning, running distances of 50 miles or more, is a sport of excesses and extremes, but I got sick of finding the absolute ultimate this and that on every page. I made it about halfway through before giving up. If you’re obsessed with running you might make it through happily enough, but I guess I’m more of a half-marathon kind of reader.
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