I suspect most everyone will be happy to know that I’m onto another book. The one I just read, Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, was so fabulous that rarely did a conversation go by without me referring to it on some level.
Born to Run is pretty much about what the subtitle on the cover states: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. And as if that weren’t enough, it’s also about so much more. Here are the things that impacted me:
–I was invited to join a book club early this year and this month was my first time hosting. Two months earlier, I started to feel the pressure of picking a book. I wanted the other book club members to like what I chose, but I didn’t yet have a clue what it was gonna be. I spent a certain amount of hours scouring the internet for good possibilities and scanning bookstore shelves for decent recommendations. Time was rolling by and I was nowhere near the perfect choice. Then, just a couple days before I was to announce what we were going to read next, I ran across this book again (I had flipped through it earlier in a bookstore) and started to read online reviews, none of which were negative. It peaked my interest and right then and there I decided to pick the next book based on what I liked, not on what I thought my fellow clubbers would like. As suspected, when I announced Born to Run, everybody was filled with dread and nobody expected it to be good. But in the end, everyone loved it. I beamed with pride and was happy that I chose what interested me rather than what I thought would interest everyone else.
–I had already been pondering the human psychology of breaking through obstacles months before reading the book. In fact, I hope to create an interview series about people who have gotten through bad things and how they look at it now. So when McDougall started to get into the psychology of super athletes and ultra runners as he tried to answer the question of why this “hidden tribe” of runners are so much better at it than we are, I became doubly interested. A specific ultra runner in the book was running the insane race across Death Valley and by mile 60, he was laying on the hot pavement telling himself to give up. And everything pointed to him giving up. Until he got up, finished the race and shattered previous records. What causes people to overcome that kind of mental breakdown is fascinating to me, not just in athletics but also in life. As McDougall describes it, “…the most advanced weapon in the ultrarunner’s arsenal: instead of cringing from fatigue, you embrace it. You refuse to let it go. You get to know it so well, you’re not afraid of it anymore.” Apparently, whatever it takes to ‘break on through to the other side’ is what should be done. But most of us give up. I tell you, this book gave me a different perspective on ultra runners and those crazy super athletes who run 100-mile races in extreme conditions.
–Also revealed in the process is the fact that we’ve forgotten what it felt like to love to run. I think we can probably agree that it’s not just the joy of running we forget. As we get older, we tend to lose the joy we once had for most things we found enjoyable. They become jobs or we start doing them for specific not-so-fun reasons. Most people run so they can burn off the big meal they ate. When they were kids, they ran for the sheer joy of it.
–As the title indicates, humans have evolved to run. McDougall addresses the criticisms of that theory and it’s equally as fascinating. Especially the part about how early humans used to get food by running an animal to death.
–The shoes. Ah, the shoes. It’s nice to know that the more expensive the shoe, the worse they are for us. And I was once again reminded that corporations are in the business to make money by selling us things that may or may not be good for us: “…problems arise when protection turns into correction, and marketing takes over for education. Once gimmicks take over and technique is scuttled, you can expect up to 90% of all marathon runners to become injured.”
–Chia seeds are amazing.
The most fascinating part of my experience with this book is how people are inspired by it in different ways. I wasn’t a runner before the book, and I’m not one now, but there are so many things in there that made me cheer. And I’m fairly certain I’ll be referring to them for months and maybe years to come.
