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

by Christopher McDougall

There’s something so universal about that sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulses: fear and pleasure. We run when we’re scared, we run when we’re ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.

How come some of us can be out there running all lionlike and Bannisterish every morning when the sun comes up, while the rest of us need a fistful of ibuprofen before we can put our feet on the floor?

just because you’re a Tarahumara runner doesn’t mean you’re a great Tarahumara runner.

Relax enough, and your body becomes so familiar with the cradle-rocking rhythm that you almost forget you’re moving.

And once you break through to that soft, half-levitating flow, that’s when the moonlight and champagne show up: “You have to be in tune with your body, and know when you can push it and when to back off,”

ask yourself, honestly and often, exactly how you feel.

What could be more sensual than paying exquisite attention to your own body?

Victoriano had shown shrewd restraint by steadily climbing along from last to first, gradually getting faster as he got closer to the finish line. That’s how you run one hundred miles.

Russian sprinters were leaping off ladders (besides strengthening lateral muscles, the trauma teaches nerves to fire more rapidly, which decreases the odds of training injuries).

Back when you were a kid and you had to be yelled at to slow down? Every game you played, you played at top speed, sprinting like crazy as you kicked cans, freed all, and attacked jungle outposts in your neighbors’ backyards. Half the fun of doing anything was doing it at record pace, making it probably the last time in your life you’d ever be hassled for going too fast.

That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they’d never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind’s first fine art, our original act of inspired creation.

Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn’t live to love anything else. And like everything else we

love—everything we sentimentally call our “passions” and “desires”—it’s really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We’re all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.

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 mea...

it if you weren’t getting enough quo ...

American distance running went into a death spiral precisely when cash entered the equation.

To build explosiveness, he and his wife, Dana, used to play catch with a javelin, hurling it back and forth to each other across a soccer field like a long, lethal Frisbee.

We wouldn’t be alive without love; we wouldn’t have survived

without running; maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other.

Running a hundred miles wasn’t painless for the Tarahumara, either; they had to face their doubts, and silence the little devil on their shoulder who kept whispering excellent reasons in their ear for quitting.

“Sometimes,” she said, “it takes a woman to bring out the best in a man.”

“Lesson two,” Caballo called. “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.”

Coach Vigil believed you had to become a strong person before you could become a strong runner.

instead of cringing from fatigue, you embrace it.

exhaustion as if it’s a playful pet.

the only way

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

The heroes of the past are untouchable, protected forever by the fortress door of time—unless

Billy shrugged. After a year of romance with Jenn, he’d learned she was capable of absolutely anything except moderation.

Even when she wanted to rein herself in, whatever was building inside her—passion, inspiration, aggravation, hilarity—inevitably came fire-hosing out.

my brain isn’t going blehblehbleh all the time. Everything quiets down, and the only thing going on is pure flow. It’s just me and the movement and the motion. That’s what I love—just being a barbarian, running through the woods.”

Shoes block pain, not impact! Pain teaches us to run comfortably!