"Born To Run"

Scott Jurek was in trouble. He was at mile 55 of the 135 mile Badwater Ultra Marathon and he had just collapsed on the road in exhaustion. He had 80 miles to go and two of his closest challengers were several miles ahead of him. This was 2005 and Scott was the premier ultra-marathoner in the US. He had won the Western States Ultramarathon 7 times in a row and had come down to the Death Valley just two weeks after his latest victory. As a trail runner, he had had almost no training on road, let alone for the extreme dry heat of the Death Valley in July. He lay on the side of the road, contemplating almost dispassionately what it would take for him to win the race - Get up and run the remaining 80 miles faster than he had ever run 80 miles. And do it in conditions he had never experienced before. He then proceeded to do just that - smashing the course record by almost 2 hours.

Scott Jurek's is one of the featured stories in Christopher McDougall's book, "Born To Run." The author is somebody who loved to run, but beset with chronic foot problems set out on a personal quest to figure out "why his feet hurt." He is aided by an assignment from Runners World to track down and write about the Tarahumara, an almost mythical and mysterious tribe that lives down in the Copper Canyons of Mexico. The Tarahumara, whose native name is the Raramuri, or the "Running People" are famous for their prodigious running abilities. They are known to run continuously for 2-3 days at a stretch, engaged in a game of their own fashioning. They don't train, have very basic nutrition, and run up and down steep, unpaved terrain with essentially home made sandals. They are also very hard to find. The search for the Tarahumara coupled with the author's own search for answers to his running injuries forms the core of the book, but the narrative carries on well beyond those pursuits.

McDougall makes contact with the Tarahumara early in the book (with several near misses with disaster thrown in) and then spends several chapters introducing several mavericks of the ultra running movement. An ultra marathon is typically 100 miles, but the length is only the half of it. Several events have some twist - like the Leadville, which is run in the town of Leadville, CO, which at 2 miles above sea level is the highest town in the US. The thin air at that altitude forms the starting point of a race that only continues further into the mountains. Another extreme version is the Badwater, that not only goes 135 miles, but also conducts the race in peak summer heat. The stories of the main characters in McDougall's story (and indeed whole tale hangs very well together) are compelling and by themselves worth the price of admission.

McDougall is not satisfied with just telling a good story - he devotes lots of pages to some of the 'alternative' science of running - I say alternative, because a good bit of it goes against the conventional grain of "running is bad for you, but if you must run, get good shoes; have a training program; eat protein to build muscle, etc, etc." The experts (running coaches, scientists) he gathers turn out to be surprisingly credible and the book almost becomes a page turner as you wait for the next myth to be exploded or for the next fallacy to be laid to rest. See here for a related post.

The most compelling discussion is the namesake of the book - the theory that homo sapiens survived as a species because our bodies are uniquely adapted for running. McDougall traces this theory back to the 1980s when a graduate student in the University of Utah stumbled upon this as the only explanation for several anatomical features in the human body. Our body has a large collection of tendons which with their elastic nature are peculiarly suited for running; one particular example is the nuchal ligament that is on the back of neck and whose only purpose is to stabilize the head while running (and is found only in other running animals likes dogs and horses). We have short toes, which further make running easy. Contrast this with the toes of a chimp or gorilla, both of whom can barely run. And on and on. But note - According to this theory (called, predictably the "Running Man" theory) we not built for speed or racing, but in fact for endurance running. In other words, it is in our DNA to run marathons.

The book is not just a collection of stories of runners and theories about running - instead, it builds up towards an amateur 50 mile race, deep in the Copper Canyon of Mexico between some ace runners from the Tarahumara and several invited racers from the US, including the author, a character named "Barefoot Ted" (whose name should say it all), and Scott Jurek. The race is the brain child of "Caballo Blanco" or the "White Horse" who is a American who was so enamored by the Tarahumara runners that he followed them into the canyons and essentially settled there. The race is recounted with some drama and its conclusion is poetically justified.

I am betting that even folks with no interest in running will find this a compelling read - you will be certainly be entertained, but more importantly, you will be informed and provoked to think.