Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run is captivating and interesting. In the book, he talks about a tribe in South America called the Tarahumara, and their ability to run incredibly long distances (some over 200 miles!) and enjoy the run. He talks about his adventure to find the reclusive tribe and to try to learn some of their ways to make him a better runner.

The book also introduces the concept of ultra-runners and describes a 50 mile rough terrain race in the forest of Mexico between the ultra runners and the Tarahumara. It is one of the greatest races of all time. Throughout the book, McDougall also talks about how the human body is designed to run long distances. In fact, one of the earliest forms of hunting was called Persistence Hunting. That is where the hunter keeps chasing the prey until it collapses from heat exhaustion, which could mean hours of running.

I greatly enjoyed this book.  It taught me so many new things that I didn’t know. While reading this book, I periodically wanted to go out and run because of what the book was saying. It really showed me how the human body was built and made for running, and that most of the problems and injuries from running are not because of our body, but because of our running shoes. The Tarahumara run either barefoot or have thin slippers, yet their injury rate is almost non-existent. This caused me some surprise since so many runners buy expensive top of the line shoes to help reduce risk of injury, but it doesn’t seem to help.

This book was very informative. There were facts  through-out the book that kept me really interested. McDougall clearly did a lot of research for this book, explaining why the human body is built the way it is and how it is designed for running.

I have already recommended this book to one of my friends who is a runner, and I recommend it to more people.