Born to run

One of the great things about audiobooks is that you can “read” them without having to sit down. You can “read” them while you’re walking round and even while you’re running (just be sure that you can hear traffic and bicycles!)

I’ve read and enjoyed a whole load of books while out running, but I have especially fond memories of Christopher McDougall’s best-seller “Born to Run“, about a misfit who persuades great ultramarathoners to race with the Tarahumara in the Copper Canyons of Mexico. It’s great yarn full of memorable characters and events, written (and told) with colour and humour, so that’s already plenty to recommend it. But even more important than the sheer entertainment of it is that it changed the way I think and feel – quite a feat for a book.

McDougall argues that running, in the form of persistence hunting, is an important part of human evolution. According to him and the evidence he cites, human beings have evolved to run – hence the title of the book.  Born to run?  That was news to me, even though I run most days these days, usually several kilometers.  Still I haven’t yet run further than 9km in one go, let alone dozens of kilometers, and I’ve never regarded myself as a natural runner. Reading the book didn’t suddenly make me feel like one, but it did make me feel that running is part of my heritage as a human being.

So these days when I go for a run, it’s not just about keeping fit or blowing away the cobwebs or racking up kilometers on Runkeeper or steps on Fitbit. It’s also about celebrating my human heritage.