Born to Run

Chris McDougall's, Born to Run, has shook my comfy little running world. Not that it's the best book of all time. Although it's an enjoyable read and has made me look at running from a completely different angle, McDougall's writing style can be a little frustrating (at least from an engineer's perspective). He exaggerates just a wee bit from time-to-time to drive his points home. Being the ever critical engineer, I did do some Internet fact checking, mostly because the beginning of the book seemed a little too good to be true. For instance, he writes about Ann Trason, her love of running, her success, and the fact that she didn't run in college because she "was sick of hamstering around the track." However, one of the Ann Trason articles I found mentioned that she didn't run in college because she blew out her knee. From what I gleaned through Internet fact checking, the book is mostly accurate though.

Before I delve deeper in to Born to Run, let me share some goings on at the home front. Nick is not quite as passionate when it comes to running, as say, me. In fact, he tells me quite bluntly every opportunity he is afforded that "running stinks." Of course, I still insist on sharing my running thoughts. This book has led to numerous discussions on proper running form. We were even looking up videos of barefoot runners in slow motion to ascertain how the foot lands. Now one might ask how someone who despises running would know what proper running form is? As it turns out, Nick took a biomechanics class in college, for a minor in Biomedical Engineering. His senior project (thesis) was done on race walking! A project so well done his paper got published in an IEEE journal! Be still my beating heart! I did point out, of course, that he should have done his project on running. (I just couldn't help myself.) In the end, it seemed we were disagreeing on semantics, and not actually disagreeing at all. Okay, okay, I'll get back to the book...

The ideas presented in the second half of Born to run were of particular interest. I had no idea that running shoes were so controversial! Here's an article by McDougall which summarizes the evilness of running shoes. The short point being all the cushiness of running shoes makes our feet weaker and being shoved into shoes means our feet lose some sensory input, which in turn leads to poor running form and of course more injuries. Although there are some barefoot fanatics out there, not everyone is convinced that we should toss our running shoes. It also seems that there isn't a lot of scientific evidence proving that running shoes help or hurt you. Of course there is a middle of the road philosophy too. The Standford track coach has his runners do some barefoot running drills on the field, but they mostly run in shoes. The key, in my opinion, is running form. If you're running correctly, you're less likely to get hurt. My real question is how far can that get me? I've already established my running form is bad. If I fix it, could I go back to running the 50-60 miles a week I ran in college? I'm intrigued.

The last third of the book blew my running mind. The discussion focuses on something called the Endurance Running (ER) hypothesis. About two decades ago, some academic types came up with a hypothesis regarding ancient human development, or at least began to question why we developed the way we did. We have some features that fit nicely into their hypothesis of human development towards great endurance running like short toes, big butts, tendons, and sweating. There's also evidence (by the way of tooth fossils) that suggests we had meat in our diets before we had any hunting tools, so the big question is how did we get our little grubby paws on meat? The ER hypothesis suggests something called persistence hunting. Basically we ran our food to death, which was only possible because we sweat. Humans can outrun any other mammal over long distances because other mammals will succumb to heat. And you thought your sweatiness was all yucky! Some runners even run races against horses to prove we're better endurance runners (horses win most of the time, but people win too).

The fact that we might have developed to run long distances just blew me away. I've been running 17 years thinking I'm doing something people weren't built to do, and attribute my long list of injuries to that fact. Now I'm forced to rethink what I've always thought was true. I can't just throw my hands up in the air and assume my injuries are due to poor mechanical design. I might (gulp) actually have to change the way I run.