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Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human
Running is not just a sport. It reconnects us to our bodies and the places in which we live, breaking down our increasingly structured and demanding lives. It allows us to feel the world beneath our feet, lifts the spirit, allows our minds out to play and helps us to slip away from the demands of the modern world. When Vybarr Cregan-Reid set out to discover why running meant so much to so many, he began a journey which would take him out to tread London’s cobbled streets, climbing to sites that have seen a millennium of hangings, and down the crumbling alleyways of Ruskin's Venice. Footnotes transports you to the cliff tops of Hardy's Dorset, the deserted shorelines of Seattle, the giant redwood forests of California, and to the world’s most advanced running laboratories and research centres, using debates in literature, philosophy and biology to explore that simple human desire to run. Liberating and inspiring, this book reminds us why feeling the earth beneath our feet is a necessary and healing part of our lives.
354 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 9, 2016
93 people are currently reading
1203 people want to read
About the author
Vybarr Cregan-Reid
12 books32 followersVybarr Cregan-Reid, Ph.D., is an author and academic. He is Reader in English and Environmental Humanities in the School of English at the University of Kent.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
January 5, 2019
Well balanced between a painstakingly thought out account of personal experiences, generalistic musings about the world in its glorious variety, factual research and a stream of conciousness. All without bordering on gibberish.
Q:
Whoever heard of anyone getting lost in the mountains, in bad weather, and without a map? (c)
So, running is not just about running but also about intelligence, instints, perception, biology and nature.
Yep, and our feet are not 100% symmetrical.
Glimpses into the author's background.
Q:
It was sometime during the seemingly endless days of writing my PhD thesis that I took up running... (c)
Q:
But if you keep on being a runner, get better, develop a taste for distance, you will have changed more than your muscles and the soles of your feet. What if you were to repeat the experiment, but were to think of something, say, 11 miles away? Would you be able to do that? You need the right body to have those thoughts, being one that can cover that kind of distance so that it is possible for you to be able to recall the climbs and falls, the variety of camber, and the changes of surface you’d need to cover. Can you honestly do that? ...
It’s not just this spatial relationship that has changed for me since I became a runner. I can’t look at pictures of a landscape, of almost any kind, without thinking about running through them, over them, to the side of them, beyond them. ...
So the landscape is not just a backdrop to my run, but as long I have the skills necessary to negotiate the landscape, it actually beckons to us. It creates the desire, and makes the movement within it possible, too. (c)
Q:
Senses are lenses: change them and they change the world they perceive. (c)
Q:
As with any other motor skill, the better one becomes at running, the easier it is to perceive the possibility of covering certain distances on certain terrains. (c)
Q:
But maps’ greatest design flaw is that they are too concerned with destinations, not journeys. They are full of roads without any information about what it is like to be on them. They attend to interconnection while ignoring experience. They tell us what is there, but not if we can see, smell, taste, hear or feel it. A landscape is all of these things, and it is more. It is about the time of day, the changing humidity, the rising tides, the direction of the wind, the scent of what is in season, or about how the light hits the water. Maps do not look like they were designed by humans, more like by computers performing a kind of spreadsheet geography.
Q:
I know that running is all too often seen as an introspective activity, but running breaks down the barriers between what we think is inside us and what we see as being outside. Running unites us with places and creates emotional connections with them in ways that are not easily accounted for.
It seems obvious to say, but becoming a runner (rather than just a walker of the land) has an impact on the kinds of choices that you make. Your body’s changes will permit access to experiences that would otherwise prove impossible. Just as we learn to read words, our senses learn to read places, and the more we do it, the more attuned they and we become to collecting and collating how places look and feel, and how they live with you, within you and without. With its sensitive potential, your body can be your means to freedom, if you will only allow it to become itself and escape the received wisdom that separates it from the mind.
Runners know in their hearts that when thoughts move, we think them differently. (c)
Q:
But it’s not the rain; it’s something else. The word for this smell is petrichor, from the Greek petra, ‘stone’; and ichor, the golden fluid that runs in the veins of the gods and the immortals. (c)
Q:
Our ability to concentrate wears out in ways that I’ll come back to, and those abilities need to be recharged.
The best way to do this is through soft fascination, which is a sort of meandering, free-form mode of thought inculcated most successfully by natural environments. Instead of the mental work associated with reading, writing emails or even watching TV, ‘soft fascination’ is exemplified by something like leaves rustling in the wind. Time spent offline is essential for effective mental functioning. Letting your thoughts run as freely as you are is good for a healthy, working brain. (c)
Fact-pondering mission:
Q:
Navigating our way through a landscape changes the means by which we may experience it. If our heart-rate is raised, if endorphins are flooding our system, if our veins and capillaries have dilated to increase the flow of oxygen to the muscles and the brain, if we can feel the microtexture of the earth changing beneath our feet, the world becomes a different place. The world stops being a picture for us to gawp and yawn at, and the relationship between our insides and its outsides becomes a dynamic one in which the rules can change, data may be gained or lost, connections can be made, shapes and symmetries noticed. Running reminds us that our bodies and the world are made of the same stuff. A runner’s sense of place, of reachable space, their vision of themselves in the landscape – all of these things are altered by a kind of movement that brings about real changes in the physiology of the runner. (c)
Q:
There are some pretty basic things about running that may have fallen from your habits of daily movement somewhere along the way between childhood and adulthood. It’s not just that these are things that you will have forgotten; you may even have forgotten how to know them. So there are obvious things like: When you run are your gluteal muscles firing? Are your soleus muscles so atrophied that they can no longer function effectively during plantarflexed landing (with the foot tilted slightly downwards)? Because you have been mostly sat down since the age of five, there’s a good chance that you also have an anterior pelvic tilt. You can look in a mirror and see some of these things – like poor posture, or that convex arch in your lower back, or the hunch in your shoulders. You can feel your soleus muscles – for some people they will be so insubstantial that they don’t even know they are there. You can even feel your gluteals as you run, and see if they are firing, or just bobbing around like everything else seems to. Many of us have to train our bodies back, and it’s hard and it takes time. And I don’t mean a fortnight of heel-raises done while attacking the washing up, I mean time.
There is good news; you are already able to do most of what is required for you to run. The bad news is that everything else you will have to learn and remember. So, these first chapters are about our bodies, everything from mechanical muscle function to what D.H. Lawrence called the ‘blood consciousness’, his term for innate, embodied knowledge, a concept that has its roots as much in ancient Daoism as it does in modern philosophy. (c)
Q:
Martin Heidegger is one of those philosophers who is as famous for his impenetrability as for what he actually said. He is inclined to the sort of neologisms that enrage readers. But he’s a genius at seeing round ‘things as they are’ to the concealed machineries of modern life. (c)
Q:
The world becomes a kind of standing reserve of energy or usefulness-in-waiting. (c)
Q:
An experienced runner will tell you that the process of looking at a view is more complex than data travelling into the eye. This is because our bodies play a significant role in what we see, sense or think. (c)
Q:
The suddenness of this open space leaves me breathless.
Evolving to avoid other land predators, our eyes are particularly attuned to working laterally, paying special attention to how things appear in juxtaposition with one another. When we are presented with a stretched view such as this, our ability to make sense of the information overload is challenged beyond its capacity. (c)
Q:
Graphs that represent crime rates in urban environments show an inverse relationship with ones that indicate levels of access to green space. The greener the environment, the less crime it is likely to have.49 It might seem that an obvious explanation of this fact would be that rural areas are more affluent, and are less densely packed, but recent studies of housing projects with access to much more limited green spaces reproduce the same results.
In one breathtaking study Mike tells me about, researchers reported that one development that had substantial amounts of greenery had 52 per cent fewer total crimes than those without.50 Property crime dropped by 48 per cent, and violent crime by a staggering 56 per cent, compared with areas with low amounts of vegetation.51 Another study draws parallels between access to green space and the impact of stressful life events, with the results supporting the idea that natural environments seem to act as a buffer against the health impact of stress.52 (c)
The evocative experiences:
Q:
The rain has calmed into something between precipitation and a heavy mist. The sky is heavy, intense and low. I head out of the car park and turn south. The film of water between my feet and the concrete on the road slurps and slaps like glue. My weatherproofing rustles. (c)
Q:
When you look at a mountain, what you take from it fills you up. The ticks and sparks of daily life are crushed under the weight of the rock, and I begin to feel the experience of the place as Coleridge may have done. (c)
Q:
But I gasp in the exultant pleasure of the fear of something real. (c)
Q:
I am tired and delirious with an electrochemical joy for which there is no word. (c)
Q:
A couple of weeks pass and I’m driving someplace, and when it begins to rain, the articulate click-clack on the windscreen transports me back to mountaintops like I had been hypnotised and that sound was my prompt. I remember getting back to the pub, drunk on exhaustion with my hair matted to my head like a victorious pearl-diver come up for air. And, I realised that my body had taught me something: that there are ways out of modern life. ... (c)
Q:
Whoever heard of anyone getting lost in the mountains, in bad weather, and without a map? (c)
So, running is not just about running but also about intelligence, instints, perception, biology and nature.
Yep, and our feet are not 100% symmetrical.
Glimpses into the author's background.
Q:
It was sometime during the seemingly endless days of writing my PhD thesis that I took up running... (c)
Q:
But if you keep on being a runner, get better, develop a taste for distance, you will have changed more than your muscles and the soles of your feet. What if you were to repeat the experiment, but were to think of something, say, 11 miles away? Would you be able to do that? You need the right body to have those thoughts, being one that can cover that kind of distance so that it is possible for you to be able to recall the climbs and falls, the variety of camber, and the changes of surface you’d need to cover. Can you honestly do that? ...
It’s not just this spatial relationship that has changed for me since I became a runner. I can’t look at pictures of a landscape, of almost any kind, without thinking about running through them, over them, to the side of them, beyond them. ...
So the landscape is not just a backdrop to my run, but as long I have the skills necessary to negotiate the landscape, it actually beckons to us. It creates the desire, and makes the movement within it possible, too. (c)
Q:
Senses are lenses: change them and they change the world they perceive. (c)
Q:
As with any other motor skill, the better one becomes at running, the easier it is to perceive the possibility of covering certain distances on certain terrains. (c)
Q:
But maps’ greatest design flaw is that they are too concerned with destinations, not journeys. They are full of roads without any information about what it is like to be on them. They attend to interconnection while ignoring experience. They tell us what is there, but not if we can see, smell, taste, hear or feel it. A landscape is all of these things, and it is more. It is about the time of day, the changing humidity, the rising tides, the direction of the wind, the scent of what is in season, or about how the light hits the water. Maps do not look like they were designed by humans, more like by computers performing a kind of spreadsheet geography.
Q:
I know that running is all too often seen as an introspective activity, but running breaks down the barriers between what we think is inside us and what we see as being outside. Running unites us with places and creates emotional connections with them in ways that are not easily accounted for.
It seems obvious to say, but becoming a runner (rather than just a walker of the land) has an impact on the kinds of choices that you make. Your body’s changes will permit access to experiences that would otherwise prove impossible. Just as we learn to read words, our senses learn to read places, and the more we do it, the more attuned they and we become to collecting and collating how places look and feel, and how they live with you, within you and without. With its sensitive potential, your body can be your means to freedom, if you will only allow it to become itself and escape the received wisdom that separates it from the mind.
Runners know in their hearts that when thoughts move, we think them differently. (c)
Q:
But it’s not the rain; it’s something else. The word for this smell is petrichor, from the Greek petra, ‘stone’; and ichor, the golden fluid that runs in the veins of the gods and the immortals. (c)
Q:
Our ability to concentrate wears out in ways that I’ll come back to, and those abilities need to be recharged.
The best way to do this is through soft fascination, which is a sort of meandering, free-form mode of thought inculcated most successfully by natural environments. Instead of the mental work associated with reading, writing emails or even watching TV, ‘soft fascination’ is exemplified by something like leaves rustling in the wind. Time spent offline is essential for effective mental functioning. Letting your thoughts run as freely as you are is good for a healthy, working brain. (c)
Fact-pondering mission:
Q:
Navigating our way through a landscape changes the means by which we may experience it. If our heart-rate is raised, if endorphins are flooding our system, if our veins and capillaries have dilated to increase the flow of oxygen to the muscles and the brain, if we can feel the microtexture of the earth changing beneath our feet, the world becomes a different place. The world stops being a picture for us to gawp and yawn at, and the relationship between our insides and its outsides becomes a dynamic one in which the rules can change, data may be gained or lost, connections can be made, shapes and symmetries noticed. Running reminds us that our bodies and the world are made of the same stuff. A runner’s sense of place, of reachable space, their vision of themselves in the landscape – all of these things are altered by a kind of movement that brings about real changes in the physiology of the runner. (c)
Q:
There are some pretty basic things about running that may have fallen from your habits of daily movement somewhere along the way between childhood and adulthood. It’s not just that these are things that you will have forgotten; you may even have forgotten how to know them. So there are obvious things like: When you run are your gluteal muscles firing? Are your soleus muscles so atrophied that they can no longer function effectively during plantarflexed landing (with the foot tilted slightly downwards)? Because you have been mostly sat down since the age of five, there’s a good chance that you also have an anterior pelvic tilt. You can look in a mirror and see some of these things – like poor posture, or that convex arch in your lower back, or the hunch in your shoulders. You can feel your soleus muscles – for some people they will be so insubstantial that they don’t even know they are there. You can even feel your gluteals as you run, and see if they are firing, or just bobbing around like everything else seems to. Many of us have to train our bodies back, and it’s hard and it takes time. And I don’t mean a fortnight of heel-raises done while attacking the washing up, I mean time.
There is good news; you are already able to do most of what is required for you to run. The bad news is that everything else you will have to learn and remember. So, these first chapters are about our bodies, everything from mechanical muscle function to what D.H. Lawrence called the ‘blood consciousness’, his term for innate, embodied knowledge, a concept that has its roots as much in ancient Daoism as it does in modern philosophy. (c)
Q:
Martin Heidegger is one of those philosophers who is as famous for his impenetrability as for what he actually said. He is inclined to the sort of neologisms that enrage readers. But he’s a genius at seeing round ‘things as they are’ to the concealed machineries of modern life. (c)
Q:
The world becomes a kind of standing reserve of energy or usefulness-in-waiting. (c)
Q:
An experienced runner will tell you that the process of looking at a view is more complex than data travelling into the eye. This is because our bodies play a significant role in what we see, sense or think. (c)
Q:
The suddenness of this open space leaves me breathless.
Evolving to avoid other land predators, our eyes are particularly attuned to working laterally, paying special attention to how things appear in juxtaposition with one another. When we are presented with a stretched view such as this, our ability to make sense of the information overload is challenged beyond its capacity. (c)
Q:
Graphs that represent crime rates in urban environments show an inverse relationship with ones that indicate levels of access to green space. The greener the environment, the less crime it is likely to have.49 It might seem that an obvious explanation of this fact would be that rural areas are more affluent, and are less densely packed, but recent studies of housing projects with access to much more limited green spaces reproduce the same results.
In one breathtaking study Mike tells me about, researchers reported that one development that had substantial amounts of greenery had 52 per cent fewer total crimes than those without.50 Property crime dropped by 48 per cent, and violent crime by a staggering 56 per cent, compared with areas with low amounts of vegetation.51 Another study draws parallels between access to green space and the impact of stressful life events, with the results supporting the idea that natural environments seem to act as a buffer against the health impact of stress.52 (c)
The evocative experiences:
Q:
The rain has calmed into something between precipitation and a heavy mist. The sky is heavy, intense and low. I head out of the car park and turn south. The film of water between my feet and the concrete on the road slurps and slaps like glue. My weatherproofing rustles. (c)
Q:
When you look at a mountain, what you take from it fills you up. The ticks and sparks of daily life are crushed under the weight of the rock, and I begin to feel the experience of the place as Coleridge may have done. (c)
Q:
But I gasp in the exultant pleasure of the fear of something real. (c)
Q:
I am tired and delirious with an electrochemical joy for which there is no word. (c)
Q:
A couple of weeks pass and I’m driving someplace, and when it begins to rain, the articulate click-clack on the windscreen transports me back to mountaintops like I had been hypnotised and that sound was my prompt. I remember getting back to the pub, drunk on exhaustion with my hair matted to my head like a victorious pearl-diver come up for air. And, I realised that my body had taught me something: that there are ways out of modern life. ... (c)
February 11, 2019
Bought this book because I wanted to learn more about running experience from other runners. Very disappointed, all I got is the author's showing off in knowledge of literature like quotes of Tolstoy that have nothing to do with running. Author mostly describes his own running experience and insists on the idea that the only right way to run is... barefoot. Also that running it the only right way to exercise and that gyms are the 'fast-food' of exercising.
My bad that I just expected the book to be less philosophical and more practical.
My bad that I just expected the book to be less philosophical and more practical.
June 10, 2019
This book was beautiful and interesting and put into words lots of things I wouldn't have been able to without it. Really great. My experience of it was a little interrupted because I had to put it down for three weeks while I was injured and couldn't run, because I became too jealous reading about running when I couldn't do it myself.
What's that? Jealous about running? Mental.
Yep, I'm as surprised as anyone. Please forgive me while I go into a little autobiographical diversion here.
I tried running before, back in 2011 or 2012 I started Couch to 5k, and I got pretty far into the 10 week program. It was difficult and I basically hated every second of it, but I did observe that I never once went for a run and then regretted it when I came home, no matter how much I didn't want to go out at the beginning. Still, every moment of running was pain and I figured there had to be a better way, so I stopped and wrote it off.
Then last year I read something that sparked an interest in me again. I think it was something about running offering the single best protection against dementia and Alzheimer's in later life. I've seen the effects of those diseases and I don't mind saying they scare the shit out of me. I thought of myself as someone who'd tried running and didn't like it (to say the least), but the thought stayed with me. I figured 'screw it', I'll do it once and then remember why I hate it. So I downloaded a C25K app onto my phone, put on my normal trainers and headed out.
To my intense surprise, I didn't hate it. In fact I kind of liked it. So I did it again, and followed the program. I went from running for 30 seconds with walking breaks of 90 seconds at the start, to running 30 minutes uninterrupted by the end of the 10 week program! Now that is truly mental. If you're interested I strongly recommend the C25K program as a way to start.
During the process I realised I really liked running. I liked getting out of the house, I liked exploring my neighbourhood, I liked breaking a sweat even in the cold weather (I started in October, so going into a Berlin winter). I enjoyed the clarity I got during and afterwards, I started to experience - however fleetingly - something that must be the 'runner's high' that I'd heard about. I was getting a lot out of it.
After C25K I kept going, gradually increasing my distance. I bought proper shoes to reduce my chance of doing myself a damage (I'm a big guy). I started doing distances I never thought I'd get near (nothing crazy - my longest run is still just over 10k), running uninterrupted for almost an hour. I got injured a couple of times, but researching what had happened and learning what to do to fix it just made me stronger. This was all very welcome, but puzzling to me as the same guy who was sure running wasn't for me a few years ago.
So, now I run 3 times a week or so. I'm still coming back from the injury that stopped me reading this book in one session (I tripped and as I was breaking my fall my arm crushed a couple of ribs - I don't think they were broken but the muscles were damaged, standing up and lying down were exceedingly painful for a while there), but I'm basically a running person. Still strange to get my head around.
This book is all about the author's relationship with running, so it's deeply personal and has kind of memoir-y aspects to it. It's also his exploration of how and why running means so much to him - he visits experts in research centres and universities all over the world, and the book contains lots of information about how and why running is good for you (spoiler alert: in seriously shitloads of ways, you should give it a go!), presented in a very engaging style. The author is a professor of literature so he also explores running through that, with sections on poets who ran through the Lake District and sneaking into the grounds of Thomas Hardy's house and so on. All very interesting.
The book really helped to try to understand something which I didn't understand - why do I get so much out of such a simple activity? Parts of that question remain ineffable, but this was a better effort to get into it as anyone could reasonably expect someone to write. I already want to read it again.
What's that? Jealous about running? Mental.
Yep, I'm as surprised as anyone. Please forgive me while I go into a little autobiographical diversion here.
I tried running before, back in 2011 or 2012 I started Couch to 5k, and I got pretty far into the 10 week program. It was difficult and I basically hated every second of it, but I did observe that I never once went for a run and then regretted it when I came home, no matter how much I didn't want to go out at the beginning. Still, every moment of running was pain and I figured there had to be a better way, so I stopped and wrote it off.
Then last year I read something that sparked an interest in me again. I think it was something about running offering the single best protection against dementia and Alzheimer's in later life. I've seen the effects of those diseases and I don't mind saying they scare the shit out of me. I thought of myself as someone who'd tried running and didn't like it (to say the least), but the thought stayed with me. I figured 'screw it', I'll do it once and then remember why I hate it. So I downloaded a C25K app onto my phone, put on my normal trainers and headed out.
To my intense surprise, I didn't hate it. In fact I kind of liked it. So I did it again, and followed the program. I went from running for 30 seconds with walking breaks of 90 seconds at the start, to running 30 minutes uninterrupted by the end of the 10 week program! Now that is truly mental. If you're interested I strongly recommend the C25K program as a way to start.
During the process I realised I really liked running. I liked getting out of the house, I liked exploring my neighbourhood, I liked breaking a sweat even in the cold weather (I started in October, so going into a Berlin winter). I enjoyed the clarity I got during and afterwards, I started to experience - however fleetingly - something that must be the 'runner's high' that I'd heard about. I was getting a lot out of it.
After C25K I kept going, gradually increasing my distance. I bought proper shoes to reduce my chance of doing myself a damage (I'm a big guy). I started doing distances I never thought I'd get near (nothing crazy - my longest run is still just over 10k), running uninterrupted for almost an hour. I got injured a couple of times, but researching what had happened and learning what to do to fix it just made me stronger. This was all very welcome, but puzzling to me as the same guy who was sure running wasn't for me a few years ago.
So, now I run 3 times a week or so. I'm still coming back from the injury that stopped me reading this book in one session (I tripped and as I was breaking my fall my arm crushed a couple of ribs - I don't think they were broken but the muscles were damaged, standing up and lying down were exceedingly painful for a while there), but I'm basically a running person. Still strange to get my head around.
This book is all about the author's relationship with running, so it's deeply personal and has kind of memoir-y aspects to it. It's also his exploration of how and why running means so much to him - he visits experts in research centres and universities all over the world, and the book contains lots of information about how and why running is good for you (spoiler alert: in seriously shitloads of ways, you should give it a go!), presented in a very engaging style. The author is a professor of literature so he also explores running through that, with sections on poets who ran through the Lake District and sneaking into the grounds of Thomas Hardy's house and so on. All very interesting.
The book really helped to try to understand something which I didn't understand - why do I get so much out of such a simple activity? Parts of that question remain ineffable, but this was a better effort to get into it as anyone could reasonably expect someone to write. I already want to read it again.
March 7, 2018
I enjoy a writer that digresses and spouts facts that you've never heard before. As you'd imagine, there are only so many ways you can describe running and how it affects you physically and mentally, but, if you're an English professor with a love of nature and history, the athletic soup becomes much thicker, if that makes any sense at all. This book also inspired me to bunk off work during the recent snow and take a ten mile run through a sub-zero Epping Forest, what more recommendation could you need?
January 11, 2021
(8.5) - read for uni
I promise I'm not just rating this highly because Vybarr has the link to my goodreads account.
Considering this was down as extra reading and I currently have nothing else to do with my time, hence my decision to read it, this book was highly interesting.
I did enjoy that a lot of the locations referenced are placed I've lived in or know well, although the idea of attending a Bleak House convention did provoke a slight reaction of dread.
I also feel like I should start running again. Don't you hate it when books successfully encourage you to exercise?
I promise I'm not just rating this highly because Vybarr has the link to my goodreads account.
Considering this was down as extra reading and I currently have nothing else to do with my time, hence my decision to read it, this book was highly interesting.
I did enjoy that a lot of the locations referenced are placed I've lived in or know well, although the idea of attending a Bleak House convention did provoke a slight reaction of dread.
I also feel like I should start running again. Don't you hate it when books successfully encourage you to exercise?
January 26, 2019
Massively enjoyed this beautifully written account of a blossoming love of running. Quite poetic, obviously heartfelt. It lost its way a little in parts, but was no worse for it.
May 24, 2018
Seldom have I anticipated a book so much nor been so glad when it was over.
Chapter 1, Footnotes to a Body of Knowledge, was exactly what I was hoping for:
an overview of the many adaptations in our species that fit us for running. If you've read Born to Run, most of it won't be new, but still very interesting to re-visit. To sum up,
...as a Homo sapiens, you have evolved to be one of the best running animals that the planet has ever witnessed. Running is not what we might do; it is who we are as a species.
I thought the book was going to go on in that pattern, maybe talking about the pre-historical evidence for running, running games in native societies, the 'persistence hunt' legends, competitive running in the Greeks and Romans and maybe even the Oriental societies.... Be forewarned: it doesn't.
The rest of the book relates all of the cool deep thoughts he has during his own running and how they connect to the poetry and prose of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. If you're a Brit-ophile, or an English major, or really into Thomas Hardy and Leslie Stephens and William Hazlett; and if you even know who those people are, you'll eat this up. But I failed to see what any of them had to say about running. In fact, I frequently failed to see what they had to say, period.
If the soil weren't so wet it would look seared...
It folds and rolls away toward a leaden sky...
The cut wheat like greying stubble
slowly dying on the sagging jaw of a corpse.
And--even more embarrassing--I didn't even get his modern allusions--
...feeling like Daniel Craig sprinting up crane arms pursuing the bombmaker, Mollaka, in Casino Royale.
Sorry; meant nothing to me. A few near-misses are to be expected; too many, and a book means less than empty words.
The running descriptions are great. The historical bits, like his description of the trials and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde or of the origin of the workhouse treadmill, are fun (and sad). I didn't see any significance in knowing that treadmill went from a punishment for criminals into a necessity for fitness addicts, but it's interesting to know that it did.
One of his themes is that running outdoors, away from advertisements and TV screens and recorded music, frees the mind from stress:
Not-thinking, huddling down into the body's experience, is a kind of mental repose, a Pilates for the brain.
He may be right--but only for 21st century humans who are uneducated about the green world. For people whose only thoughts are, "Ah, green leaves!" or "Distant clouds; so pretty." or "Silent airplane tracks on the sky!"
I'm not one of those people--my outdoor brain is constantly interrupted by nitpicky thoughts--is that a hawk's screech or a bluejay? What is this grass--wheat or something native? Should I grab a specimen? Oh, no, is that a skunk and is it turning its back to me?!! Primitive man, whose very life depended on constant observation, would have had it worse. I wish Mr. Cregan-Reid had asked a hunter-gatherer what he thinks about when running a trail.
I also think the editor needed to do a math check. While discussing treadmill running, he writes,
As a species we have been running indoors for only 30 of the many millions of years of our history (that's about 0.000015 per cent of our time on earth).
Huh? Last I heard the Homo sapiens species had been around for about 300,000 years. 30 years is .000015% of 300,000,000, which is indeed 'many millions' -- but humans haven't been here that long. Maybe he's thinking mammals, like mice. Mice run indoors--at least in my brother's house.
I'm sorry to be so down on the book. It's a beautiful book and he's a lovely author and he describes many fascinating runs. Read it. It's a book of poetry, deep thought, insight, and great heart. I think you could have replaced the word 'running' with 'walking' on 75% of the pages without any loss of meaning, but I could be wrong. Start with an open mind and see for yourself.
I need running because I want to stay curious. Our curiosity needs to be continually teased out of its shell and into the world. Because it feels like once that goes, everything else follows. Nothing unites us with the world so completely as our curiosity for it.
Chapter 1, Footnotes to a Body of Knowledge, was exactly what I was hoping for:
an overview of the many adaptations in our species that fit us for running. If you've read Born to Run, most of it won't be new, but still very interesting to re-visit. To sum up,
...as a Homo sapiens, you have evolved to be one of the best running animals that the planet has ever witnessed. Running is not what we might do; it is who we are as a species.
I thought the book was going to go on in that pattern, maybe talking about the pre-historical evidence for running, running games in native societies, the 'persistence hunt' legends, competitive running in the Greeks and Romans and maybe even the Oriental societies.... Be forewarned: it doesn't.
The rest of the book relates all of the cool deep thoughts he has during his own running and how they connect to the poetry and prose of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. If you're a Brit-ophile, or an English major, or really into Thomas Hardy and Leslie Stephens and William Hazlett; and if you even know who those people are, you'll eat this up. But I failed to see what any of them had to say about running. In fact, I frequently failed to see what they had to say, period.
If the soil weren't so wet it would look seared...
It folds and rolls away toward a leaden sky...
The cut wheat like greying stubble
slowly dying on the sagging jaw of a corpse.
And--even more embarrassing--I didn't even get his modern allusions--
...feeling like Daniel Craig sprinting up crane arms pursuing the bombmaker, Mollaka, in Casino Royale.
Sorry; meant nothing to me. A few near-misses are to be expected; too many, and a book means less than empty words.
The running descriptions are great. The historical bits, like his description of the trials and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde or of the origin of the workhouse treadmill, are fun (and sad). I didn't see any significance in knowing that treadmill went from a punishment for criminals into a necessity for fitness addicts, but it's interesting to know that it did.
One of his themes is that running outdoors, away from advertisements and TV screens and recorded music, frees the mind from stress:
Not-thinking, huddling down into the body's experience, is a kind of mental repose, a Pilates for the brain.
He may be right--but only for 21st century humans who are uneducated about the green world. For people whose only thoughts are, "Ah, green leaves!" or "Distant clouds; so pretty." or "Silent airplane tracks on the sky!"
I'm not one of those people--my outdoor brain is constantly interrupted by nitpicky thoughts--is that a hawk's screech or a bluejay? What is this grass--wheat or something native? Should I grab a specimen? Oh, no, is that a skunk and is it turning its back to me?!! Primitive man, whose very life depended on constant observation, would have had it worse. I wish Mr. Cregan-Reid had asked a hunter-gatherer what he thinks about when running a trail.
I also think the editor needed to do a math check. While discussing treadmill running, he writes,
As a species we have been running indoors for only 30 of the many millions of years of our history (that's about 0.000015 per cent of our time on earth).
Huh? Last I heard the Homo sapiens species had been around for about 300,000 years. 30 years is .000015% of 300,000,000, which is indeed 'many millions' -- but humans haven't been here that long. Maybe he's thinking mammals, like mice. Mice run indoors--at least in my brother's house.
I'm sorry to be so down on the book. It's a beautiful book and he's a lovely author and he describes many fascinating runs. Read it. It's a book of poetry, deep thought, insight, and great heart. I think you could have replaced the word 'running' with 'walking' on 75% of the pages without any loss of meaning, but I could be wrong. Start with an open mind and see for yourself.
I need running because I want to stay curious. Our curiosity needs to be continually teased out of its shell and into the world. Because it feels like once that goes, everything else follows. Nothing unites us with the world so completely as our curiosity for it.
March 20, 2019
I liked this a lot.
I knew I would from the early passages triggered by the author being asked, in different forms, "what are you running from?". Perhaps it's because I was airborne at the time and suffering from a Wittertainment-textbook case of AALS, but it really made me take a moment to think about my own relationship with running and recovery since I made important changes to my life five years ago, and almost everything the author touched upon thereafter gave me similar cause to consider matters in terms of my own "journey" (as much as I hesitate to use that word).
There is, as some reviewers have commented, a *lot* of content within those pages. Cregan-Reid clearly found a huge amount to get enthused about during his research, and while some of the more literary aspects in particular are probably something of a matter of taste for yer average runner (whatever that even is - that itself being one of the themes of the book), as someone who isn't especially well-read in terms of British classics I enjoyed being given food for thought and things to investigate in my own time. Especially where some of my favourite places are touched upon (I'm thinking more the Lakes than Lewisham here). Similarly, while the paeans to barefoot running may not be directly relevant to me (yet?), I see them as a necessary and consistent part of the author's running worldview ("Laufanschauung"?) and that's what's being presented here.
It's hard to know exactly to whom I should recommend this - it's probably not for everyone, not even for every runner, but it's evocative and fascinating in equal measure and I'm very glad to have encountered it.
I knew I would from the early passages triggered by the author being asked, in different forms, "what are you running from?". Perhaps it's because I was airborne at the time and suffering from a Wittertainment-textbook case of AALS, but it really made me take a moment to think about my own relationship with running and recovery since I made important changes to my life five years ago, and almost everything the author touched upon thereafter gave me similar cause to consider matters in terms of my own "journey" (as much as I hesitate to use that word).
There is, as some reviewers have commented, a *lot* of content within those pages. Cregan-Reid clearly found a huge amount to get enthused about during his research, and while some of the more literary aspects in particular are probably something of a matter of taste for yer average runner (whatever that even is - that itself being one of the themes of the book), as someone who isn't especially well-read in terms of British classics I enjoyed being given food for thought and things to investigate in my own time. Especially where some of my favourite places are touched upon (I'm thinking more the Lakes than Lewisham here). Similarly, while the paeans to barefoot running may not be directly relevant to me (yet?), I see them as a necessary and consistent part of the author's running worldview ("Laufanschauung"?) and that's what's being presented here.
It's hard to know exactly to whom I should recommend this - it's probably not for everyone, not even for every runner, but it's evocative and fascinating in equal measure and I'm very glad to have encountered it.
July 20, 2016
Equal parts running manual, travel diary and love letter to the joy of being in nature, 'Footnotes' calls on literature, philosophy and psychology to build a compelling argument for why we're called to run across the planet we find ourselves on. It's an engrossing read for runners and non-runners alike, and makes me want to tear off my shoes and hit the trails. Thanks, Vybarr!
"If we see with our bodies, and we change our bodies when we learn how to run, that means that we see things, or understand them, or feel them, or experience them and come to know them, in ways that were hidden from us before."
"If we see with our bodies, and we change our bodies when we learn how to run, that means that we see things, or understand them, or feel them, or experience them and come to know them, in ways that were hidden from us before."
August 26, 2017
I really enjoyed this book - and it did actually inspire me to get out and run. I liked all the literary references, and I found the author's style relatable and non-preachy. I suppose it makes sense that it would take an asthmatic professor of literature to convince me that running can be pleasant.
June 1, 2017
Part running book, part literature review with a bit of science and history. An enjoyable read. Where are my trainers?
September 14, 2018
Excellent book on running and the human spirit.
July 11, 2022
Let’s call this 3.7 rounded up. There’s a lot to like with this. Written by an English professor that’s a casual runner, the book weaves in an out of science, memoir, philosophical essaying, and general musings on being a runner. Unsurprisingly, considering the while English professor bit, there’s a lot of breathtakingly beautiful prose here, ornately described takes on running and runners. The lower score comes from the author’s clear bias toward barefoot running that shows up all too frequently, wherein he both 1) finds subtle ways to insult those of us who choose to run in shoes all the time, and 2) aggressively defends his barefoot preference over and over. We get it, you like to run barefoot. We get it, you think you’re better because you can truly “feel” the ground through your exposed feet. He also spends a chapter insulting people who run on treadmills too. I agree with him that outdoor running is more fun, but dude, the running community is a positive one, let people live their lives and chill out.
August 30, 2023
So many aspects of this author's views on running are aligned with my own, and this book gave me words, history, and science to better conceptalize and articulate my relationship with running.
For me, the painstakingly personal accounts of the author's runs were a little unnecessary, and intially I was confused by the structure of this book. It felt unfocused. Was this a diary? A history on running? Philosophy? A love letter to nature? Honestly, I skimmed over most of the author's personal accounts and winding anecdotes, but I LOVED the literary aspects of this book. It's such a gift to get a meaty passage on the natural world to chew on.
Still, I will likely buy a copy of this book and go back to it. It's so well written, and just validated my relationship with runnig - it is spiritual, it feels essential to my humanity, and it makes me smarter.
Also loved skeptism towards gyms, "running tech," and overall consumerism around running. I will not be barefoot running though that's phsyco.
For me, the painstakingly personal accounts of the author's runs were a little unnecessary, and intially I was confused by the structure of this book. It felt unfocused. Was this a diary? A history on running? Philosophy? A love letter to nature? Honestly, I skimmed over most of the author's personal accounts and winding anecdotes, but I LOVED the literary aspects of this book. It's such a gift to get a meaty passage on the natural world to chew on.
Still, I will likely buy a copy of this book and go back to it. It's so well written, and just validated my relationship with runnig - it is spiritual, it feels essential to my humanity, and it makes me smarter.
Also loved skeptism towards gyms, "running tech," and overall consumerism around running. I will not be barefoot running though that's phsyco.
January 19, 2025
I really enjoyed this. It’s a mix between the science and history of running combined with an almost meditative quality. He seems to be able to articulate the loose wandering of the mind that most of us who run have experienced at some point. It has many literature references too - for me, a perfect mix of topics and a fabulous read
November 1, 2024
One of the best books I’ve read about running and why 10% of us do it much to the incredulity and bafflement of the 90% who don’t see the point.
The author is a professor of English Literature and has the ability to invoke classical authors’ (particularly Hardy much to my delight) and philosophers’ descriptions of the freedom that running in the countryside brings. Vybarr eschews the beloved gimmicks of modern runners; watches, GPS, shoes… Yes he’s a barefoot maniac and there’s probably something in his idea that running in a state of nature brings him infinitely more pleasure than I get from lacing up a pair of Vaporflies. Who’s he kidding? This book was written when carbon plates and Zoom X were but a distant and unreachable Nirvana (2016 - no wonder! - he’s positively Neolithic!).
So highly erudite, wonderfully readable and full of his deep insight and the opinions of the experts he’s met and talked to about the science of running. Even treadmills get their own chapter. Bit of a nutter then, but all the better for it.
The author is a professor of English Literature and has the ability to invoke classical authors’ (particularly Hardy much to my delight) and philosophers’ descriptions of the freedom that running in the countryside brings. Vybarr eschews the beloved gimmicks of modern runners; watches, GPS, shoes… Yes he’s a barefoot maniac and there’s probably something in his idea that running in a state of nature brings him infinitely more pleasure than I get from lacing up a pair of Vaporflies. Who’s he kidding? This book was written when carbon plates and Zoom X were but a distant and unreachable Nirvana (2016 - no wonder! - he’s positively Neolithic!).
So highly erudite, wonderfully readable and full of his deep insight and the opinions of the experts he’s met and talked to about the science of running. Even treadmills get their own chapter. Bit of a nutter then, but all the better for it.
August 20, 2017
Not quite as I expected, more rambling, less biomechanics and exercise psychology and a heck of a lot more Thomas Hardy. As with all the books on running I have read so far, ultimately it has to be declared a personal view, one I largely share. I gather that it was written in a particular way and I think that shows, not necessarily to the benefit of the work. However any book about the experience of running has the advantage that anyone with any personal experience of running well understands how to go with the emotional ups and downs. I love the breadth of disciplines. Lots of insights into the academic life... although I'd really like to understand better how he arrived at where he is. The wise (to my mind) points come thick and fast and there are twists and turns and surprises to equal a thriller.
September 3, 2017
I was surprised by this read, in a mostly good way. I liked that the author tied literature (and a number of other things) to running. But I think this also meant that parts were a bit rambly. I also think it's not so realistic--I don't know anyone who can just pick up and go running in San Francisco, Venice, Paris, etc. Sure, I'd love to go running in those locales, but I'm pretty much restricted to a treadmill to beat the heat in the stifling Texas summer.
August 27, 2017
The writing itself is good. However, the author goes on and on about each point with out really saying anything new. I think there is probably good information in there but it is buried in so much fluff and just pointless writing I really can not say it is worth reading.
October 5, 2018
I gave it a chance, but I have to admit I definitely didn’t finish. This guy strikes me as VERY pretentious and is trying to intersperse running with a philosophy that just doesn’t jive. Skip this one, running friends.
October 19, 2016
A nice read as it is, but a must for runners with some intrest in philosophy and literature. "The best runs dissolve one's attachment to the world, and allow you to become the run, not the runner."
August 4, 2017
A beautiful meandering through history, literature, psychology, held together by a love for running.
October 19, 2017
This is a bloody brilliant book.
Fantastically well written, thoughtful and clever.
And a good read for runners, walkers and anyone who loves the great outdoors.
Fascinating.
Fantastically well written, thoughtful and clever.
And a good read for runners, walkers and anyone who loves the great outdoors.
Fascinating.
October 16, 2017
a couple too many literary tangents for my taste [then again, he teaches English and Environmental Humanities at University of Kent, so understandable], but mostly a lively read about his experiences as a runner. He has strong preferences [barefoot or in minimalist shoes good, treadmills or anything that keeps you from experiencing nature bad] but a good sense of humor in delivering them.
It's partly a travelogue as he visits prominent sports scientists, runs the London Marathon, etc. Definitely a non-competitive type, so not a lot of emphasis on race times or workouts -- more so his enjoyment of the process and his thoughts on how our bodies reflect our evolution as persistence hunters who needed to run distance. representative passage:
"In modernity, running is all to often seen as a behavior we might choose....whereas the truth is that, as a homo sapiens, you have evolved to be one of the best running animals that the planet has ever witnessed. Running is not what we might do; it is who we are as a species" (p. 47).
he rants about sedentary desk jobs and excess screen time but at least has a sense of perspective about it, noting that all technologies are initially distrusted by the old especially ("Around 2,500 years ago, Socrates railed against the 'forgetfulness' inculcated by the technology of writing" p. 95).
I trust his scholarship in the areas I don't know because he's right on the money in the one I do know reasonably well [environmental psych stuff organized around attention restoration theory by Kaplan's]. Could have used one more round of editing [he summarizes Orwell's disdain for "pleasure spots" in basically the same terms twice approx. 50 pages apart, e.g.], but overall a fun and enlightening read. Seems like he'd be a great guy with whom to talk on an easy run.
It's partly a travelogue as he visits prominent sports scientists, runs the London Marathon, etc. Definitely a non-competitive type, so not a lot of emphasis on race times or workouts -- more so his enjoyment of the process and his thoughts on how our bodies reflect our evolution as persistence hunters who needed to run distance. representative passage:
"In modernity, running is all to often seen as a behavior we might choose....whereas the truth is that, as a homo sapiens, you have evolved to be one of the best running animals that the planet has ever witnessed. Running is not what we might do; it is who we are as a species" (p. 47).
he rants about sedentary desk jobs and excess screen time but at least has a sense of perspective about it, noting that all technologies are initially distrusted by the old especially ("Around 2,500 years ago, Socrates railed against the 'forgetfulness' inculcated by the technology of writing" p. 95).
I trust his scholarship in the areas I don't know because he's right on the money in the one I do know reasonably well [environmental psych stuff organized around attention restoration theory by Kaplan's]. Could have used one more round of editing [he summarizes Orwell's disdain for "pleasure spots" in basically the same terms twice approx. 50 pages apart, e.g.], but overall a fun and enlightening read. Seems like he'd be a great guy with whom to talk on an easy run.
December 24, 2017
I signed myself and my daughter up for four runs next year - two 5Ks and two 4-milers. We ran a 4-miler together a couple of years ago, and I was embarrassed to bomb out a mere 2 miles in. My daughter stopped running soon after that run (she beat me by more than a full minute, I'm proud to say). I got back into running last year for a time, but stuck to treadmill runs only. Then those ended, too, as my periods of active running always do.
I usually need a good running book to inspire me to get back into the sport, and "Footnotes" is one of the better efforts on that score. Cregan-Reid knows how to write a narrative - this isn't just a training book or an atta' boy! pick-you-up. There's some science here, but moreso anecdotal evidence of the power of running, and specifically of running outdoors.
I'm not sure I'll be doing a lot of outdoor running in the early months of 2018. It's cold, often bitterly so, where I live, and slippery throughout much of winter. But I love the encouragement here not only to get running, but to consider how much more memorable outdoor runs can be than treadmill runs, and how the more unencumbered we are during our runs (by technology, gear, etc.), the more free we are to enjoy the essence of the sport. There's surely something to those ideas, although for now I'm happy to time myself, ponder the best sort of running shoe and think about what things (yes, even an iPod) might improve my experience, if only by keeping boredom at bay.
I usually need a good running book to inspire me to get back into the sport, and "Footnotes" is one of the better efforts on that score. Cregan-Reid knows how to write a narrative - this isn't just a training book or an atta' boy! pick-you-up. There's some science here, but moreso anecdotal evidence of the power of running, and specifically of running outdoors.
I'm not sure I'll be doing a lot of outdoor running in the early months of 2018. It's cold, often bitterly so, where I live, and slippery throughout much of winter. But I love the encouragement here not only to get running, but to consider how much more memorable outdoor runs can be than treadmill runs, and how the more unencumbered we are during our runs (by technology, gear, etc.), the more free we are to enjoy the essence of the sport. There's surely something to those ideas, although for now I'm happy to time myself, ponder the best sort of running shoe and think about what things (yes, even an iPod) might improve my experience, if only by keeping boredom at bay.
July 20, 2018
I almost didn't carry on with the book after the first couple of chapters - there were too many literary references, and the author seemed more interested in showing his knowledge of the literary world than in saying what he wants to say about running. It took a while to warm up, but I'm glad that I stuck with it, because once you get used to his writing style, you realise he's not such a show-off, and his love for literature is the reason he writes so much about it.
In the end, I really enjoyed the book, and to be honest every time I picked it up and read a couple of pages it made me want to just don my shoes and go out for a run (the author, of course, would probably have just skipped his shoes altogether, given his penchant for barefoot running).
All in all, if you're a runner, and want to read a book that may just give you a new perspective on running, and/or just want something to give you a bit of inspiration to get out there, this is a great book for you.
In the end, I really enjoyed the book, and to be honest every time I picked it up and read a couple of pages it made me want to just don my shoes and go out for a run (the author, of course, would probably have just skipped his shoes altogether, given his penchant for barefoot running).
All in all, if you're a runner, and want to read a book that may just give you a new perspective on running, and/or just want something to give you a bit of inspiration to get out there, this is a great book for you.
July 30, 2017
In “Footnotes: How Running Makes Us Human” which I won through Goodreads Giveaways, Vybarr Cregan-Reid shares his love of running which makes him feel calm, invincible and super-sensitive in the hectic pace of this modern world. Running for health, escaping from society’s multiple anxieties it’s the therapy offered rather than looking at it just as a sport he proposes that helps people decompress, free their senses and enjoy the natural environment around them.
Easy-to-read, in a flowing written style, he combines his experiences, insights and travel adventures with philosophy, literature and biology to substantiate his arguments about the benefits of running. The book is engaging, and informative with a dash of humor, and for a non-runner it offers a distinct appeal which I for one am anxious to indulge.
Easy-to-read, in a flowing written style, he combines his experiences, insights and travel adventures with philosophy, literature and biology to substantiate his arguments about the benefits of running. The book is engaging, and informative with a dash of humor, and for a non-runner it offers a distinct appeal which I for one am anxious to indulge.
June 3, 2020
Oh dear me, I was hoping for a nice quick enjoyable running book, full of the joys of the trail, but I ended up struggling to finish this. What this is is essentially an academic dissection of running by a left lib English professor. I could barely turn a page without a quote from Thomas hardy or William Wordsworth, or some snipe at austerity, nuclear energy or inequality. Spare me please I only wanted to read about running!
I'm sure the writer had good intentions but I found it overwritten and heavy to read. He doesn't like competitive running, you'll find no exciting races here. He's a barefoot running advocate, fair enough, but he offers no practical advice to achieve that goal.
He may have hoped to write the next born to run, but there's no story to hold it all together, this is an academic dissertation.
I'm sure the writer had good intentions but I found it overwritten and heavy to read. He doesn't like competitive running, you'll find no exciting races here. He's a barefoot running advocate, fair enough, but he offers no practical advice to achieve that goal.
He may have hoped to write the next born to run, but there's no story to hold it all together, this is an academic dissertation.
September 30, 2017
Finally a wholistic, impeccably researched, accessible--and meanderingly amusing and enlightening--book that explains so many of the reasons why i love running . . . that need to simply move my body through natural space for a few hours a week. BONUS: What are William Blake, Daniel Defoe, Charlotte Smith, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Leo Tolstoy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry David Thoreau, and many other literary titans doing in a creative nonfiction book about running . . ? Don’t be intimidated as Vybarr Cregan-Reid does all the footwork for you; trust this heir to the prying sprite of Peckam Rye. Take the time to engage this text; you won’t regret it.
October 11, 2018
This was my latest book about running, and this was certainly the most unique. It's not a how-to, informational book; it's not a memoir. It's hard to define, actually. I am a total literature junkie, so I loved the connection of great writers and poets and running. I loved the emphasis on the beauty of nature, as part of the running adventure. He's right - running on a treadmill can never compare to the healthy freedom of being unfettered in the land around us.
It's dense to read, because of the literature and description. He's very funny, though, so it's worth the slogging through, preferably barefoot ;)
It's dense to read, because of the literature and description. He's very funny, though, so it's worth the slogging through, preferably barefoot ;)
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