I used to run—2, 3, 5 miles a day. I ran often. I loved it. Reading Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superatheletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall, I remember.

I remember too when I stopped. “Don’t run!” a ballet teacher warned me. “Running will train your leg and hip muscles to move in the wrong ways.” A dancer’s goal is to rotate her legs away from one another (turn out) and lift them up (extension), not pull them parallel, close to the ground. I wanted to dance.

Still, I ran—furtively—for several years, until I couldn’t. In the course of a few months, I strained an ankle (running), pulled a hamstring (dancing), and wrenched a sacroiliac joint (hiking). Running hurt. I stopped. I expanded my dance range to modern and ethnic forms. I did yoga, swam, biked, and walked, on the lookout for rounder, pain-free ways to move. I grew stronger and more agile—I could dance—but I still couldn’t run. It hurt. Until recently.
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McDougall’s book, Born to Run, is packed with adventure. In it McDougall recounts his participation in a 50 mile ultramarathon, set amidst the most remote, rugged terrain in North America, the Sierra Madres of Mexico. The race, which he helped arrange, pitted top runners from the native Tarahumara, or Running People, against a handful of the best American ultramarathoners.

At its core, however, this book is a morality tale. As McDougall chronicles the history and circumstances of the race, the personalities involved, and the challenges faced, he unwinds a sustained meditation on the value and virtues of running long distances, with minimal footgear, as humans have evolved to do.

The Tarahumara, he avers, know something that those of us living in modern western culture have forgotten: we too are Running People. It is a truth encoded in every human’s narrow pelvis, upright stance, and abundant sweat glands; in our big toes, Achilles tendon, and muscular arches; and in the joy and love we feel when running as we were born to do. Honoring this fact, McDougal contests, would move us modern folk far along the path toward healing many of our most debilitating cultural ills and obsessions, from obesity to chronic depression. Running can make us better humans.

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