Born to Run

by Christopher McDougall

But you can’t muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it, like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it.

Ask nothing from your running, in other words, and you’ll get more than you ever imagined.

“Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that’s all you get, that’s not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don’t give a shit how high the hill is or how far you’ve got to go. When you’ve practiced that so long that you forget you’re practicing, you work on making it smooooooth. You won’t have to worry about the last one—you get those three, and you’ll be fast.”

“Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction.”

‘When you run on the earth and run with the earth, you can run forever.’ ”

I watched him go. There was something terribly sad, yet terribly uplifting, about watching this prophet of the ancient art of distance running turning his back on everything except his dream, and heading back down to “the best place in the world to run.” Alone.

the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it.

“Just move your legs. Because if you don’t think you were born to run, you’re not only denying history. You’re denying who you are.”