Born to run…

I went from reading about how to survive any type of adversity, to reading about how to run like the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons. My current read is almost behind me now.  It’s titled, Born to Run and was written by Christopher McDougall.  I started to read this one with the object of discovering more magic about a group of high performers.  In this case, high performance runners.  What I’ve discovered so far, is far more interesting…

This baby is another page turner.  The story revolves around an ancient tribe of Tarahumara Indians and their amazing ability to run.  And I mean to really run.  They run in the Sierra Madre’s Mountain range and often go on jaunts of 50-100 miles at a crack.  They run for fun.  They run for community.  They run for water and they run to their fields.  They are very busy…

Running.

They run in sandals that resemble the kind that ancient Greece would wear into battle.  They don’t eat much in the way of meat, they don’t have much in the way of possessions, and they live for freakin’ ever compared to us.  Christopher hung out with them for a couple years and wrote a book worthy of his time and your attention.  Here’s something surprising.  Late in the book he points to another story about runners.  This time the runners are from Africa.  They’re a group of Bushmen from far out in the Kalahari that hunt antelope.  Here’s the amazing part, they hunt the antelope by…

Running.

They get together in groups of 5 or 6 and they pick their prey and begin to jog after it.  You see, the human has the ability to reduce it’s CORE temperature with thousands of sweat glands.  Antelopes are NOT so lucky.  It takes about 3 hours to “run” an antelope to death.  Interestingly, that’s about the same time it would take a “normal” human to run a marathon.

Maybe, just maybe, running is one of our competitive advantages…

Historically.

Maybe, just maybe, we were meant to be in motion for our survival.  Maybe, just maybe the runners high that so many experience while running long distance, is something that’s been wired from way back when.  When we ran for our food…

Check it out and tell me what you think.  I’m out now.

Running…