Born To Run -- Take 2

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle--when the sun comes up, you'd better be running."
  -- Roger Bannister

I have to divide Born to Run into four parts.  The first includes some background on running as a sport and ultramarathons in particular.  This is where we get our introduction to the Tarahumara people - a rare Mexican tribe famous for their running ability.  We hear loads of amazing stories of people running 100 miles in the mountains like 100 miles is a walk in the park! McDougall specifically discusses the Leadville 100, a race beginning and ending in the highest incorporated city in the US.  (Remember when I went to Leadville a couple of years ago? It's not far from Breck.)

The second portion is basically a diatribe against running shoes, which I totally could have done without.  "Running seemed to be the fitness version of drunk driving.  You could get away with it for a while, you might even have some fun.  But catastrophe was waiting right around the corner."  McDougall himself had lots of injuries and problems with his running, which is where the Tarahumara come in.  They run either barefoot or in very simple sandals to protect their soles.  They run their whole lives and for long distances, largely without serious injury.  McDougall blames Nike, probably not entirely wrongly, but he's pretty didactic about it.

Third is a biological and anthropological analysis of the reasons we, as humans, became upright distance runners.  At first glance, we don't seem well-suited for it.  Four legs and feet give more thrust than two.  We have no tail to balance us as we're trotting along.  We don't have the flexible spines and elastic lungs of cheetahs and jackrabbits (which can reach speeds of 45 miles per hour!).  We have a big, heavy, relatively unstable head up high on our frame.  Really, we should be terrible runners.  Everything is all wrong.  So why, then, did we evolve to be this way?  Why did we come down out of the trees and start walking on two feet instead of four?

Distance is the answer (or so McDougall thinks).  Along with walking on two feet, we also shed our fur.  True, we don't have elastic lungs for major capacity, but we can sweat, which allows us to cool ourselves and run for a long time.  Those jackrabbits who can go 45 mph?  They can only do it for about half a mile.  Then they start to overheat and have to stop.  We can run for miles and miles and miles because we're more efficient at cooling ourselves.  Those unsteady heads on top of our necks?  Turns out they act like roof weights on skyscrapers, which keep them from swaying too far from side to side in a strong wind. Our head, working with our swinging arms as counterbalances, is basically a tuned mass damper keeping our upright bodies stabilized while we move.

The theory as to why all this matters?  For the Tarahumara and other distance runners, animals were prey.  They were food.  The hunters couldn't out-race the four-leggeds, but they could outrun them.  Working in groups, they would follow a prey animal, just keeping it in sight until they literally ran it to death.  Let the feast begin.

For the last portion of the book, we return to the Tarahumara racers in Mexico.  An eccentric expat from Colorado name Micah True (probably better known in Mexico as Caballo Blanco) organized the Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon, a race of about 50 miles designed to support the Tarahumara and their way of life.  Caballo Blanco brought some of the best American ultramarathoners down to participate as well.  Want to knwo who won?  Read the book!