Writer Chris McDougall and Springsteen Have Something in Common??

Well, it may only be the fact that they have made quite a name for themselves by using the phrase Born to Run, but it certainly made for an interesting title….

Bruce Springsteen’s hit-single “Born to Run” and the New York Times Bestseller book, Born to Run, written by Christopher McDougall, may only have the actual title in common, yet the messages they produced have spoken volumes in very different ways. But I’m going to focus on the message from McDougall’s point of view…

I read a lot of books. Every chance I get there is a book in my hand. Lately, I’ve migrated towards reading more “travel-oriented” and “outdoors-centric” books, ones like Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods or Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild. But of all the recent books I’ve read, none seemed to resonate with me nearly as much as Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run did.

Over the last year or so, I’ve gotten into the running game. I ran my first Peachtree Road Race here in Atlanta last year, followed by one of the hardest 10k races in the state on Labor Day and finished up the year by completing my first half-marathon. Running felt great and I was getting better at it, until early March came and I found myself wincing in pain over a knee injury that seemed to come out of nowhere. Of course, I was training for my first 10k of the year at the end of the month, and rehabilitating my knee was imminent instead of training hard up until the week of the race. Granted, by the time I finished I had a “personal best” but my knee was locked up beyond belief.

Needless to say, this agony I felt in my knee had to go and I didn’t want to deal with it again. That was when I received an email from REI (one of the best outdoor retailers on the planet) stating that Merrell, an extremely popular shoe company, had introduced their version of the “minimalist running shoe.” By the time I finished my research on the Merrell Trail Glove, I had more than enough evidence at my fingertips that convinced me that I was actually running incorrectly and that basically the vast majority of the running world was in fact running incorrectly.

The minimalist approach to running re-teaches runners to land on the forefoot or mid-foot as they run, instead of landing on their heel, which makes your knees and your lower back absorb the shock of you pounding along on that asphalt. My personal discovery of this running technique was mind-blowing and revolutionary and ever since I purchased my pair of Merrells I haven’t looked back and I haven’t felt any pain, minus the obvious soreness of certain muscles that you’ve never used before when running this new found way.

What accompanied this new appreciation for running was hearing about a book that was published back in 2009 which essentially altered the way the running world looks at long-distance running; a true story about a race of people that live in the Copper Canyons of Mexico known as the Tarahamura that could run miles upon miles without breaking down and without getting injured. The book was called Born to Run, written by Christopher McDougall.

The story takes us through Chris’ interactions with the Tarahamura tribe and assisting a long-distance runner/drifter known as “Caballo Blanco” with putting together one of the “greatest races the world would never see,” which pitted a group of runners from the tribe against a rag-tag team of American runners that were as unique as the sport is itself. What culminated through the words on the pages was an understanding that humans were built and designed to run a certain way, which has basically led to the human race being at the top of the food chain and the “superior being” on this earth.

The Tarahamura tribe has essentially revolutionalized the way we look at running.

Sure, I was transformed in how I perceived running once I slipped on my first pair of Merrell Trail Gloves, but after reading Born to Run, it only solidified my belief that there was no turning back and that I was potentially only going to get better as I continued to run this way.

If you haven’t read McDougall’s account of the Taharamura tribe and delving into a community of runners that runs thick as thieves, be sure to if you’re one of those folks that has for quite a while yet continues to get injured and continues to ask yourself, “why does this keep happening to me?”

If you’ve read Born to Run, be sure to let me know your thoughts in the comment section below!

~ by parkerherrin on June 24, 2011.