Thoughts on Born to Run

This was a fantastic book. I was lucky, I got to listen to it in the middle of some travels, so I was able to just continue without stop. Christopher McDougall was a great author.

It was a super fun read and made me love running and people more, while I also learned a bit.

Premise

The book was about an ancient group of people that live in Mexico called the Tarahumaras. Their culture is fun and crazy and nuanced, and they love to run.

Someone encountered them in the 90s and convinced them to run in an ultra marathon called the Leadville 100 (100 miles and overnight). They ended up winning two years in a row (after losing the first year). The guy took advantage of them, though, and they stopped running.

In the last race that they won in Leadville, someone fell in love with their lifestyle and began to live like them.

He eventually created this race where he wanted the top ultra runners in the world to compete in a 50 mile race with the Tarahumara in the middle of the Tarahumara turf in Mexico.

The author of this book helped make the race happen and the story was pretty incredible.

Thoughts

It gave a lot of insight into running. They talked about form, shoes, the negative impact of Nike, what it was like to love running and how money has created issues for the sport. People see running as a way to get fit or look good instead of for the beauty.

McDougall also dove into this idea that humans learned to be erect, evolutionarily, for the purpose of running to chase down our animals. He makes an interested and compelling argument that humans were born to run because our best chance was to chase down animals like deer and gazelle which required significant long-distance and persistent running while also having effective strategies.

It was also just a crazy story. Some very wild things happened, people took crazy risks, and the result was this beautiful book.

Makes me want to try to run an ultra marathon in my life, run without shoes, and fix my running form.

Thoughts on this review/the book in general? Comment or send me a note :)

Full reading list here