He was onto something. Something huge. It wasn’t just how to run; it was how to live, the essence of who we are as a species and what we’re meant to be.
We are the biggest sissies in the jungle. Every other animal is stronger than we are – they have fangs, they have claws, they have nimbleness, they have speed. We think Usain Bolt is fast – Usain Bolt can get his ass kicked by a squirrel.
Running should be free, man.
That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they’d never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind’s first fine art, our original act of inspired creation.
But you can’t muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it.
Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain.
Perhaps all our troubles – all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we can’t overcome – began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way.
Everyone is built for running.
The ‘Tarahumara’ use their legs ‘as designed.’ By running at a young age with minimal footwear, they naturally develop the best biomechanical use of their legs. Cushioned shoes restrict foot movements and allow for over-striding. Short strides are natural.
Endurance, after all, is the only reason we even exist. We think of ourselves as nature’s deadliest animals, but the truth is, a naked human is the biggest wimp in the wild. We have no fangs, no claws, no strength, and no speed.
We’re constantly told that running will ruin our knees and outrage our hearts, but for nearly all of human existence, it was associated with freedom, vitality, and eternal youth.
Only recently have we come up with the technology to turn lazing around into a way of life. We’ve taken our sinewy, durable, hunter-gatherer bodies and plunked them into an artificial world of leisure.
Blaming the running injury epidemic on big, bad Nike seems too easy – but that’s okay, because it’s largely their fault.
We were born to run; we were born because we run.
The only way to truly conquer something, as every great philosopher and geneticist will tell you, is to love it.
Were designed for persistence hunting, which is a mix of running and walking. Whats built into that kind of running is a sense of pleasure. You are designed and built and perfect for this activity, and it should be enjoyable and fun.
There is a growing subculture of barefoot runners, people who got rid of their shoes. And what they have found uniformly is you get rid of the shoes, you get rid of the stress, you get rid of the injuries and the ailments.
One of the most dangerous and best-kept secrets of the medical profession is the epidemic of anesthesiologists who are addicted to their own drugs.
We’ve created an unnatural form of running. It’s not just the shoes, but we run on artificial surfaces – straight ahead, hard and steady – instead of speeding up and slowing down, reacting to the terrain with changes of pace and rhythm.
Extreme heroism springs from something that no scientific theory can fully explain; it’s an illogical impulse that flies in the face of biology, psychology, actuarial statistics, and basic common sense.