Review: Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I want to live..like animals, careless and free..
I want to live..I want to run through the jungle..
the wind in my hair and the sand at feet!
- Savage Garden

I recently started loving running and so when a friend rated this book on Goodreads, I was drawn immediately to its name. I am not a runner at all. A couple of years ago I couldn't run five minutes without a stitch in my side and my lungs ready to explode. Then thanks to a corporate 5K race in 2010, that I signed up for, I ran the entire distance in 43 minutes (and was the last one from my company to cross the finish line!). However, I was left with a sharp pain in my right knee which recurs frequently to this day (especially if I run after I have been lazy for a few days). As I kept slowly pushing myself, I was able to run a distance of 5Km in 21 odd minutes by last October! No pain, no stitch, just plenty of endorphins.
'Born to Run' by Christopher McDougall begins with him facing a very similar problem and his quest to find out why he was not suited to run despite being in good health. During this time, he learned about the Tarahumara tribe, Mexico's Copper Canyon dwellers, who are known to run for days with no adverse effects on their knees or feet. Although, how the author intended to solve his problem by learning more about the ways of this tribe is beyond me.
Instead, McDougall ended up compiling an enormous amount of information about superathletes (I honestly do not remember any of their names, except for one) who look like and live among us, but can run hundreds of miles at a stretch. I loved the story of Ann Trason, who started jogging 9 miles to and from work each way (18 miles a day, people!), between twenty-five to thirty miles on weekends to unwind, and eventually competing in and setting the women's record for the Leadville ultramarathon. Her time? 100 miles in a little more than 18 hours! Yay woman-power!
Apart from Ann, McDougall intersperses the story of several ultra-runners who run with as much ease as the Tarahumara tribe, against the backdrop of an ultra-marathon, the Leadville 100.He also describes how companies that make running shoes are actually fooling people with their claims of making shoes that 'cushion' your feet as you run. Human feet which evolved from the fins of some primordial aquatic being, says McDougall, are the only part of a human body which did not evolve as well as the human brain or fingers. So we are stuck with feet that cannot adapt well to the ground if cushioned in shoes (It would be akin to blinding someone and making them paint intricate art. And we all know it takes some very, very strong will-power and perseverance to achieve that, and that it is not something just about anyone is capable of.) The solution? Bare-feet running! However, I don't think the book convinced me to try it after all. No matter what the benefits are, I cannot subject my poor feet to the filth outside.
Some of the first few anecdotes were interesting to me, but I quickly started losing interest with the numerous names thrown into the book and to me most people started to seem the same. They were normal, until they started running marathons, and then ultra-marathons.
The book is definitely an extensive account of people who simply love running. So if you really enjoy the book, you've got to be (or might turn into) one of the people who run just for the sake of it-not for weight loss, not just for good heart health-but just to be in one of the most primal states of mind.


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