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

by Christopher McDougall

become a prisoner of your own pace.

To defeat the Tarahumara, Ann knew she needed more than willpower: she needed fear. Once she was out front, every cracking twig would spur her toward the finish.

Ultrarunners had no reason to cheat, because they had nothing to gain: no fame, no wealth, no medals.

running was mankind’s first fine art,

But the American approach—ugh. Rotten at its core. It was too artificial and grabby, Vigil believed, too much about getting stuff and getting it now: medals, Nike deals, a cute butt. It wasn’t art; it was business, a hard-nosed quid pro quo. No wonder so many people hated running; if you thought it was only a means to an end—an investment in becoming faster, skinnier, richer—then why stick with it if you weren’t getting enough quo for your quid?

And the fact is, American distance running went into a death spiral precisely when cash entered the equation.

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

Natural Born Runner—someone who ran for sheer joy, like an artist in the grip of inspiration—

You can’t pay someone to run with such infectious joy. You

Caballo had to be high out of his skull if he thought Scott Jurek was coming down here to race a bunch of nobodies in the middle of nowhere.

“he repeats a saying of the Tarahumara Indians: ‘When you run on the earth and run with the earth, you can run forever.’ ”

“Fuck surfing,” Billy blurted. Living on the edge wasn’t about danger, he realized. It was about curiosity; audacious curiosity, like the kind Lance had when he was chalked off for good and still decided to see if he could build a wasted body into a world-beater. The way Kerouac did, when he set off on the road and then wrote about it in a mad, carefree burst he never thought would see the light of print. Looking at it that way, Jenn and Billy could trace a direct line of descent from a Beatnik writer to a champion cyclist to a pair of Pabst Blue Ribbon-chugging Virginia Beach lifeguards. They were expected to accomplish nothing, so they could try anything. Audacity beckoned.

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they were poor and ignored and free from all expectations and inhibitions.

“Humans didn’t invent rough surfaces, Oso,” Ted said. “We invented the smooth ones. Your foot is perfectly happy molding itself around rocks. All you’ve got to do is relax and let your foot flex.

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.

there was never anything wrong with Jenni that couldn’t be fixed by what’s right with Jenni.

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