In a doctor’s office, waiting to receive a cortisone injection into his foot, Christopher McDougall wonders why every other animal can rely on its legs while he can’t run three times a week. Part polemic, part adventure story, Born to Run is Christopher McDougall’s account of his search for the reason why his foot hurt.
It’s a compelling book, filled with characters, that it’s hard not to get carried away with. More than anything, the enthusiasm of the book makes you want to go for a run. It might make you want to go for a run with no shoes on.
His search for a way to run pain free leads him to Mexico’s Tarahumara indians, for whom long distance running is part of ordinary life. The story then switches between the build up to a race between America’s top ultra runners and the Tarahumara runners and McDougall’s own efforts to find out more about how and why we run.
Delving into evolutionary biology, McDougall summarises the characteristics that indicate we evolved above all as long distance runners, able to catch and kill any animal if the chase was long enough: “If you don’t think you are born to run, you’re not only denying history, you’re denying who you are”.
The book then argues that modern running shoes hinder rather than help us. Despite being a best seller, it has apparently not been reviewed by a single running magazine, presumably because that message isnt appreciated by their advertisers.
McDougall’s enthusiasm is both the strength and the weakness of the book. The essence of his argument, that running isn’t inherently bad for us and doesn’t need to be medicalised, is convincing. But at times the style of the book becomes wearing. Meals aren’t eaten, they are wolfed. There are wide eyed accounts of drinking binges. His travels in Mexico could be lifted from the Boys’ Own Paper. Something in the tone of the writing sometimes makes you doubt things even when you know them to be true.
The presentation of the information is one sided, which fits the polemical style but can be exasperating. McDougall takes aim at Nike for inventing the modern running shoe and describes Nike’s first model, the Cortez, as “the most cushioned running shoe ever created…it allowed people to run in a way no human safely could before: by landing on their bony heels”.
Later, it turns out that Mcdougall’s reinvention as a runner isn’t taking place barefooted after all, but in a pair of “old stock Nike Pegasus from 2000, something of a throwback to the flat footed feel of the old Cortez”. So was the Cortez so dangerous?
If you read the book knowing nothing about running, Macdougall’s sensationalism might make you think that American ultra-marathoners are the best runners the “known” world has to offer. I’m sure they are great athletes, but is it not worth acknowledging that the real cream of the world’s running talent isn’t competing in 100 mile trail races?
In another selective presentation of the facts, McDougall describes one of the barefoot running success stories achieving the qualification time for the the Boston Marathon. This is a feat MacDougall claims “99.9% of runners will never achieve”. Actually, the “elite” qualification time for Boston is 3:10 for men under 35. I guess it depends how you define the running population but nearly 2000 people achieved that time in the London Marathon this year, more than 5% of the finishers.
If you want entertainment and inspiration, Born to Run is definitely worth a read. It’s an incredible story, but at times too incredibly told.
Update on November 23 by
Mike
The issue of shoes and barefoot running was recently discussed in this post and its comments. In the meantime, I realised I’d bought a pair of Nike Free shoes while in China - not for running, but for just wearing on warm dry days.
They are very light, extremely flexible, and Nike say:
The Nike Free 5.0 V4 Men’s Running Shoe emphasizes natural foot movement while delivering an extraordinary feel, combined with the cushioning, traction and underfoot protection of a shoe. Updates to this version of the Free 5.0 make it even better for runners who want to reap the benefits of barefoot training.
Maybe I should actually go for a run in them …
Physiology and