The Final Post and Signoff

As much I as I have enjoyed writing this blog; this will be the final post for me on Born* To Run. Through this amazing book I have learned many things. I have redefined fitness in my words. Fitness to me means: a way of living in which you try your hardest to accomplish physical or mental goals that seem impossible to you now, but with a little work will become attainable. I have also learned that while we have devolved into a lazy, lethargic culture in the USA, it is possible for even the laziest person I know, myself, can change to a healthier life style with a little effort. Over the course of reading this book I have cut out almost all sugars ad carbohydrates from my diet and because of this I feel more awake during the day and less moody than I ever have before.

Through his book McDougal has shown me that no matter how you look at it fitness comes down to one quality, persistence. If you persevere you will win. What I mean by this is that as long as you keep trying eventually you will succeed. I am currently persevering through the annoying temptations of having no sugars or carbs. But I know that I only need to continue on the path I am on and I will lose weight and become healthier.

Tarahumara Origins: Caballo Blanco

In this part of the blog I will explain who Caballo was before he became “Caballo”.Caballo was born Michael Randall Hickman. He was son of a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant. He was also a skinny loner who constantly had to defend himself in new schools, this is how he got into boxing. To pay tuition for Humboldt State, he began fighting in backroom smokers, billing himself as the Gypsy Cowboy. After a few years of scrapping in the fight game’s underworld, the Cowboy took his winnings and flew to Maui. Where he was looking for a purpose for his life. Then, Smitty, a hermit who lived in a hidden cave began guiding him to Maui’s hidden sacred sites. “Smitty is the guy who first got me into running,” Caballo says on page 202. Don Tobin said on page 203 “He was doing unbelievable training on his own. For his thirtieth birthday, he went out and ran thirty miles.”

Finally every summer he would leave his hut and rides buses back to Boulder, Co where his ancient pickup truck awaited him behind the house of a friendly farmer. For two or three months, he resumed the identity of Micah True and scrounged up freelance furniture-moving jobs. As soon as he has enough cash to last another year, he’s gone, vanishing down to the bottom of the canyons and stepping back into the sandals of El Caballo Blanco.

Let’s talk about identity. Identity in my opinion is how you perceive yourself or how others perceive you. If you don’t want to be perceived as weak and helpless you have to either train yourself to be stronger or put on a persona that makes people believe that makes people believe you are stronger than you are. I don’t believe that this should be the norm. I believe that a person should not have to conform to someone else’s standards. I think that people should be accepted for who they are and not what others think they are. A person’s identity is the how others see them, and they should not have to change it because they are afraid of discrimination. Caballo became a boxer because he didn’t want to be perceived as weak. By this same thinking process I distance myself from others because I don’t believe I should change just to be liked them.

The Long Chase and Evolution

In this piece of the blog I will take the long lengthy explanation of how a human can run down an antelope and condense it into a more manageable and easily understood form. According to Dr. Dan Lieberman, all you have to do is scare an antelope into a gallop on a hot day. “If you keep just close enough for it to see you, it will keep sprinting away. After about ten or fifteen kilometers’ worth of running, it will go into hyperthermia and collapse.” The only reason for this is that humans can dump heat on the run, but animals can’t pant while they gallop. So if the animal never stops to cool down it will over heat and die.

I would like to talk about evolution and how it has affected us as a species. In the beginning of our time on Earth, we as a species were very weak and only had one quality that made us a threat to Neanderthals, endurance. This quality of endurance allowed us to outrun many of the animals of that era and let us out run some of our predators. In the the mid to current period of our time on Earth, I believe that we as a species have gotten extremely lazy because of easy access to food and shelter. I think that even if we stay with the lifestyle we as a species have chose, we should supplement our laziness with a significant amount of exercise.

A Healthier Diet

In this post I will discuss why and how McDougal changed his diet. McDougal changed his diet because he wanted to become healthier and wanted to get rid of his extra weight and become leaner. He changed his diet by eating more like the Tarahumara. He did this by eating mostly pinto beans, squash, chili peppers, wild greens, Pinole, and chia. He also began eating salads for breakfast. These changes helped him lose a significant amount of weight and gain muscle.

Now I want to talk about being healthy. From the time since I started reading this book I have learned a lot about being healthy. I have discovered through personal experience just how much a simple diet change can affect you mental and physical well being. I believe that everyone should eat healthier and help themselves, while being a role model for others.

The Painful Truth About Running Shoes

In this post I will explain what McDougal meant when he laid out the “painful truths”. The first painful truth is that the best shoes are the worst for your feet. According to a study led by Bernard Marti, M.D. Runners wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123% more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes. This truth is expanded upon by the second truth, human feet like a good beating. When you run your legs and feet instinctively come down hard when they sense something squishy underfoot. When you run in cushioned shoes, your feet are pushing through the soles in search of a hard, stable platform. Therefore the more cushion a shoe has the less protection it provides. The third and final truth states, “human beings are designed to run without shoes.” This final truth is addressing the problem that pronation has become a bad word in the shoe industry. Pronation is simply a mild, shock-absorbing twist that allows your arch to compress, thereby absorbing more of the force you put into your stride.

Let’s talk about honesty. While reading this book I have seen many false claims of honesty. Such as Rick Fisher in claiming that the Tarahumara don’t lose to women. The biggest false truth I have seen in this is the fact that for a long time Nike refused to believe that shoes didn’t need excessive amounts of padding until this fact was point out by a renowned running coach. I believe that in order to maintain the trust of their consumers companies should always tell the truth even if it would be bad for them.

The Race Plan Evolves

In this section of the blog I will explain Caballo’s plan for a race between Americans and the Tarahuma. I will also explain why he wanted to include Scott Jurek. Caballo’s plan for the race was to gather everyone for “a week of sparring, trading secrets, studying each other’s style and techniques. On the last day, all the runners would face off in a 50- mile clash of champions” (McDougal 78).  He wanted to include Scott Jurek because he was the top ultra-runner in the country and he had the right spirit and was a real champion.

Lets talk about drive. When I say drive I mean the goal or ambition that keeps us going and reaching for whatever it is that we wanted. I have noticed throughout this book that McDougal has told of the drive of himself and Ann Trason. I have noticed a common theme between them. They run to improve themselves. They run because they both want to achieve some goal of self-improvement.

Zatopek’s Love of Running

In this post I am going to examine why Emil Zatopek was such an amazing runner. Zatopek wasn’t actually an amazing runner; he just loved running too much to give up. McDougal even says, “Emil Zatopek loved running so much that even when he was still a grunt in army boot camp, he used to grab a flashlight and go off on twenty- mile runs through the woods at night” on page 65.  Even if it was to snowy and cold to go outside he didn’t stop running because he would, “jog in the tub on top of his dirty laundry, getting a resistance workout along with clean tighty whities” As McDougal states on page 66.

Zatopek was also extremely kind and didn’t think twice about helping others.  Zatopek was so friendly that once before an international race he became friends with an Australian runner who was hoping to break the Australian 5,000- meter record. Zatopek was only entered in the 10,000- meter race, but he came up with a plan; he told the Aussie to drop out of his race and line up next to Zatopek instead. Zatopek spent the first half of the 10,000- meter race pacing his new buddy to the record, then sped off to attend to his own business and win.

Now I want to talk about passion. Zatopek had a passion for running, even though he had horrible form. He ran because he found it liberating and fun. He loved it so much that even ran after days of hard work in the army.  He would run indoors when it was to cold to be outside.  This just goes to show that if you are passionate about something, you should pursue it even if you aren’t great at it, because you only get better with practice.

Rick Fisher, Pescador (the Fisherman)

In this chapter of the blog I will explain who Rick Fisher or as the Tarahumara call him, Pescador (the Fisherman), is. Rick Fisher is a wilderness photographer from Arizona. He first went looking for the Tarahumara in the mid-1980s by rafting into the Copper Canyons. The only reason he went looking for the Tarahumara was to extort their uniqueness for a profit. He learned about the Leadville Trial 100 through his future father in law, who ran in and complete the race 12 times. Fisher planned and has taken a team of Tarahumara runners to the Iron Race multiple times. He will more than likely continue to do this until he is stopped.

Let’s talk about morality. Rick Fisher may be one of the few people who have contact with the Tarahumara people, and he plans to extort them for quick cash! Not only is this morally wrong, it’s just sickening! The fact that he would make money off of a tribe of people who only help him because it is their nature is just immoral. From what I have read about him so far Rick Fisher is the kind of person I believe should be thrown in jail for extortion.

The Iron Race

In this post I will explain the history behind the creation of the Leadville Trail 100. The Leadville Trail 100 or the Iron Race is the brainchild of Ken Chlouber. He had the idea for the race after the Climax molybdenum mine closed down in Leadville, taking with it nearly every paycheck in Leadville. After the mine closed Ken heard about a race in California for horses that was a 100-mile race. He heard that a man had run the race on foot and that inspired Ken to create the Leadville Trial 100 ultra marathon to revitalize Leadville with tourism.

Since I have started reading Born to Run my thoughts on fitness and running have change dramatically. I know now that you don’t have to train to run, you just have to try. I learned this from Ann Trason’s story (so far). You don’t have to buy special shoes or clothes. You just have to want to run for the sake of running. So far I have learned more from this book about fitness and running than I have from any other source. The Tarahumara seem like a race of truly amazing people.

McDougal, The Tarahuma, and Caballo Blanco

In this installment of the blog I will be looking at and answering these questions:

• Who are the Tarahuma?
• Why did the author go looking for the Tarahuma?
• Who is the White Horse? How is he important to the story? How did he end up in the canyon with the Tarahuma?

The Tarahuma are according to the author “a near-mythical tribe of Stone Age super athletes” (McDougal 2). He also calls them the most serene and healthiest people on Earth. This is shown when the author states that the Tarahuma are “the greatest runners of all time” (McDougal 2), because if they were unhealthy how could they be the greatest runners on earth? Or so it is thought until page 11 when the author says, “In terms of diet, lifestyle, and belly fire, they’re a track coach’s nightmare. They drink like New Year’s Eve is a weekly event, tossing back enough corn beer in a year to spend every third day of their adult lives either buzzed or recovering” (McDougal 11). So from what I have read so far the Tarahuma are a race of people with incredible athletic ability, even though they don’t train in the slightest.

 

 

Christopher McDougall did not originally know  that the Tarahuma even existed. Until he was running one day and his foot felt like he had been stabbed with an icepick. The simple question, “How come my foot hurts?” (McDougall 4) led him down a path to three different doctors all telling him the same thing, running is horrible for your body type. When he was on assignment in Mexico he began flipping through a Spanish- language travel magazine, when a picture of a man in a robe running down a rock slide caught his eye. When he had successfully translated the caption he started to read and discover the seemingly superhuman race of people called the Tarahuma. This led McDougal on a journey to discover their secrets. His journey really began when he finally tracked down a man called “Caballo Blanco” or the White Horse. The past of this man is a mystery. Some say that he is a fugitive or that he is a boxer who exiled himself to punish himself after beating a man to death in the ring. Only a few details remained the same throughout the tales McDougal heard. The White Horse came to Mexico years ago and trekked in to the Copper Canyons, where the Tarahuma live ,to live among them. He was apparently quickly adopted as one of them. The White horse is extremely important to McDougal’s quest because he is the only link between the Tarahuma and the outside world.

If his quest is successful McDougal could discover secrets that every runner wishes to uncover. From what I have read I can only assume that McDougal is embarking on a quest that will change his entire outlook on life.