So, I have been hearing about Born to Run for about a year now. Everyone in my running group has read it, and I was beginning to feel like the odd man out. So, my friend Genie invited me to her book club that was reading it this month, and I pulled it together to get it read quickly.
Now, it helps that Born to Run is a VERY fast read. The premise of the book is a question: Why are runners always injured? In the quest to find an answer to this question, Christopher McDougall attends several ultra-marathons, where athletes run 50 or more miles in excruciating temperatures. This leads him to a follow up on a rumor of a barefoot tribe of runners in the Barrancas in Mexico, and a homeless ex-boxer from the midwest who gave up his life to go and learn the ways of this tribe and run.
The book ends up telling the story of several ultra-runners, a race with the Tarahumara tribe in Mexico, and how Nike had ruined out lives. The short story of how Nike has ruined out lives is that as a race of people, we are born to run, it is how we have survived, but we have not always had shoes. We now have shoes and multiple injuries.
The book talks up Five Finger shoes, which are just basic covers for a bare foot. The idea is that shoes throw off the natural balance that comes from out feet and break down the strength of our feet causing injury and playing into our increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Its' an interesting concept.
Chris McDougall is a fabulous storyteller and he presents a lot of scientific information in an interesting way. I encourage this book if you have been running a long time or are just getting started!!
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