Born to Run

[Dainin]

No, not the Springsteen album, but a recent book by Christopher McDougall: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen. This was one of the most interesting books I've read in a while. It is partly about the Raramuri (aka Tarahumara) people of Mexico. These folks have a traditional game where they kick and run after a wooden ball through rugged canyons, sometimes covering up to 200 miles in a game. In the mid 90s a promoter brought a few of them to Colorado to run in the Leadville 100, a mountain ultramarathon. They swept the top places in the race...while wearing sandals made of old tires. The next year, two of them came back and finished first and second. The guy that won was 55 years old! The promoter was a jerk, so they haven't come back since. The story picked up more recently, when a group of Americans journeyed to Mexico to race with them there.

 

Other threads in the book deal with the importance of running in the evolutionary biology of humans, Bushmen hunting by running down animals, and the importance of going barefoot. This last point was very interesting. Apparently there are studies that show that expensive running shoes with more padding, motion control, etc., cause more injuries than inexpensive ones. I had also recently read a post on Tim Ferriss's blog about the Vibram Five Finger shoes which went into this point as well.

 

For the past year or two, whenever I tried to walk fast for exercise, my feet and ankles would hurt like hell... I was a decent runner 15 years ago, but am now old and fat. After reading this material, I decided to buy a pair of the Nike Free running shoes, which are supposed to be like going barefoot. I've been walking in them for a few weeks and have had no pain. Also, my posture feels straighter, and the kwa area feels open, instead of collapsed. So far, so good! Anyhow, none of this really has anything much to do with Taoism, I just wanted to recommend the book to anyone who might be interested.

[Aetherous]

Apparently there are studies that show that expensive running shoes with more padding, motion control, etc., cause more injuries than inexpensive ones.

 

Sounds like a cool book...however I think this point is bogus. People are shaped in many different ways, and Americans are very sedentary (which makes them much more prone to leg injuries). Some people's feet pronate or supinate for many different reasons, and spending more time in pronation or supination won't fix it. The fact that some people are able to run barefoot doesn't mean that we can, as well...doing so can be very harmful.

 

There are running shoe stores which videotape your feet while you're running on a treadmill, and show you on a screen what is happening with different shoe models. If anyone is interested, go there with the free shoes, and then try on a few of the pairs they recommend. The difference in what's good for you should be obvious. It was for me.