Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

by Christopher McDougall

Caballo had warned them that if they faced one danger out there greater than being lost, it was being found.

A Tarahumara hunter would be invisible, Caballo had told them; he’d watch from a distance, and if he didn’t like what he saw, he’d disappear back into the forest.

She didn’t need a watch or a route; she judged her speed by the tickle of wind on her skin, and kept racing along the pine-needled trails until her legs and lungs begged her to head back to camp.

Maybe she’s self-medicating against deep-seated problems, but maybe (to paraphrase Bill Clinton) there was never anything wrong with Jenni that couldn’t be fixed by what’s right with Jenni.

the messages keep coming because none of them really seems to work.

a Norwegian sailor named Mensen Ernst

Jack Kirk—a.k.a. “the Dipsea Demon”—was

“You don’t stop running because you get old,” said the Demon. “You get old because you stop running.”

“You’re like everyone else,” Eric Orton told me. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

What he’s really looking for are basic engineering principles; he’s convinced that the next great advance in fitness will come not from training or technology, but technique—the athlete who avoids injury will be the one who leaves the competition behind.

“Everyone thinks they know how to run, but it’s really as nuanced as any other activity,” Eric told me. “Ask most people and they’ll say, ‘People just run the way they run.’ That’s ridiculous. Does everyone just swim the way they swim?”

“Running is the same way,” Eric explained. “Learn it wrong, and you’ll never know how good it can feel.”

“Everyone is built for running,”

“Your diet will change all by itself. Wait and see.”

keep your feet under your body, your hips driving straight ahead, and your heels out of the picture.”

I learned to examine everything and find a better way.”

“I’d find your weakness and make it my strength.”

“Kenyans have superquick foot turnover,” Ken said. “Quick, light leg contractions are more economical than big, forceful ones.”

Evolution Running.

“Chi Running,” based on the balance and minimalism of tai chi,

POSE Method.

a simple system isn’t necessarily simple to learn,

change should be awkward. You should go through a period where you’re no longer good at doing it wrong and not yet good at doing it right.

“Nearly all runners do their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow,”

the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last.” The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold—your hard-breathing point—during your endurance runs.

“The faster you can run comfortably,” he taught me, “the less energy you’ll need.

one in every seven cancer deaths is caused by excess body fat.

we need to build our diets around fruit and vegetables instead of red meat and processed carbs.

stray cells left behind after surgery seem to be stimulated by animal proteins.

“Anything the Tarahumara eat, you can get very easily,” Tony told me. “It’s mostly pinto beans, squash, chili peppers, wild greens, pinole, and lots of chia. And pinole isn’t as hard to get as you think.” Nativeseeds.org sells it online, along with heritage seeds in case you want to grow your own corn and whiz up some homemade pinole in a coffee grinder.

As for bone-strengthening calcium, that gets worked into tortillas and pinole with the limestone the Tarahumara women use to soften the corn.

Geranium niveum is the Tarahumara wonder drug; according to the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, it’s as effective as red wine at neutralizing disease-causing free radicals.

Under her Tarahumara-style eating plan, lunch and dinner were built around fruit, beans, yams, whole grains, and vegetables, and breakfast was often salad.

“You get leafy greens in your body first thing in the morning and you’ll lose a lot of weight,” she urged me. Because a monster salad is loaded with nutrient-rich carbs and low in fat, I could stuff myself and not feel hungry—or queasy—when it came time to work out. Plus, greens are packed with water, so they’re great for rehydrating after a night’s sleep.

“Your body needs to be shocked to become resilient,”

Follow the same daily routine, and your musculoskeletal system quickly figures out how to adapt and go on autopilot.

Before the Tarahumara run long, they get strong. And if I wanted to stay healthy, Eric warned me, I’d better do likewise. So instead of stretching before a run, I got right to work. Lunges, pushups, jump squats, crunches; Eric had me powering through a half hour of raw strength drills every other day, with nearly all of them on a fitness ball to sharpen my balance and fire those supportive ancillary muscles.

“Hills are speedwork in disguise,”

Because I was eating lighter and hadn’t been laid up once by injury, I was able to run more; because I was running more, I was sleeping great, feeling relaxed, and watching my resting heart rate drop. My personality had even changed: The grouchiness and temper I’d considered part of my Irish-Italian DNA had ebbed so much that my wife remarked, “Hey if this comes from ultrarunning, I’ll tie your shoes for you.” I knew aerobic exercise was a powerful antidepressant, but I hadn’t realized it could be so profoundly mood stabilizing and—I hate to use the word—meditative.

If you don’t have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain’t getting them.

Nike’s aim is to triple sales by enticing runners to buy two, three, five pairs at a time, stockpiling in case they never see their favorites again.

David Carrier

Your muscles needs oxygen to burn calories and convert them into energy, so the better you are at exchanging gases—sucking in oxygen, blowing out carbon dioxide—the longer you can sustain your top speed.

Jackrabbits can hit forty-five miles per hour, but due to the extra energy needed to operate the levers (among other things), they can only sustain it for a half mile. Cougars, coyotes, and foxes, on the other hand, can go a lot farther but top out at forty miles per. The Slinkies balance the game, giving the otherwise defenseless jackrabbits exactly forty-five seconds to either live or die. Seek shelter quickly and live long, young Thumper; or get cocky about your speed and be dead in less than a minute.

Our bodies were all about getting air!

getting air may have determined the way we got our bodies.

No one had ever figured out why early humans had separated themselves from all creation by taking their knuckles off the ground and standing up. It was to breathe! To open their throats, swell out their chests, and suck in air better than any other creature on the planet. But that was just the beginning. Because the better you are at breathing, David quickly realized, the better you are at— “Running? You’re saying humans evolved to go running?”

falling in love with your hobbies. You become your own test subject; you start seeing the world as a reflection of your own life, and your own life as a reference point for just about every phenomenon in the world.

“Species evolve according to what they’re good at, not what they’re bad at. And as runners, humans aren’t just bad—we’re awful.”

Neanderthal Riddle.