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

by Christopher McDougall

“We say the rarájipari is the game of life,” Ángel said. “You never know how hard it will be. You never know when it will end. You can’t control it. You can only adjust.”

Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone.

Maybe the ancient Hindus were better crystal-ball-gazers than Hollywood when they predicted the world would end not with a bang but with a big old yawn. Shiva the Destroyer would snuff us out by doing … nothing. Lazing out. Withdrawing his hot-blooded force from our bodies. Letting us become slugs.

“Suffering is humbling. It pays to know how to get your butt kicked,”

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

You can’t hate the Beast and expect to beat it; the only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it.

Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40.

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 reason we race isn’t so much to beat each other, he understood, but to be with each other.