Runners and couch potatoes alike will find something worth while in Christopher McDougall's latest opus on ultra-running. This book could also be titled
Zen and the Art of Running Happily and Injury Free.As I write the above, I realize that although this book for all intents and purposes, seems to be a highly interesting and inspiring expansion on the above, it actually is something more. As far as I can tell, this book is about loving life (including body, mind, soul, aches, pains, and any competitors or enemies on life's path), being true to self, and, quite simply, returning to the essence of what seems to be human origin: Living in harmony with nature and earth - which taken to the literal extreme means communing with nature via running, leaving your natural environment virtually as you found it and living in it's natural accommodations, and shying away from fame and glory (in other words, not selling out), but when you do end up doing the thing you love in a competitive arena, doing said activity for the sheer joy of it.
What a concept! What an absolutely unAmerican concept. Or so it seems.
But remember, it seems unAmerica in a full-frontal catch 22. There may be plenty of Americans who believe this and live this way, but we simply don't hear about them because they aren't promoting themselves. Part of the lifestyle/philosophy is in direct contradiction to the very thing that would expose and promote this way of life.
But Christopher McDougall has exposed and championed this simpler way of being and living in this book. Or at the very least, he's encouraging reconnecting with nature and our fundamental human selves by, simply put,
running.
The characters are inspiring. Running simply for the feeling and sheer love of outdoors; nary a tread-miller is memorialized in this book - these people are die-hard outdoorsy types that love the trail and wilderness as much as they love running. These characters also just run for the sheer love of how it feels to be in that running flow, when you feel like you're flying and communing with nature and your body in such a way that you feel...divine. And when hardship comes, as it seems to have come at some point for all the runners in this book, how you embrace and handle said hardship. Love the pain, love the exhaustion, love the resistance, and you shall commune with that too, and transcend it, in a way that only folks willing to surpass their supposed limits know.
This is absolutely my favorite book of 2009. The main reason why: It inspires in me a hunger that I've hunted for via inspiring stories my whole life.
The Tarahumara, or Raramuri, are especially inspiring in that they live as they (and humans) must've lived hundreds and thousands of years ago. The Tarahumara call The Copper Canyon, or Barrancas home, where the terrain is so rough the only (mostly temporary) modern settlers are run-away thieves and drug-runners. These temporary settlers have disrupted the Tarahumara's natural way of life in some tragic and fatal ways, but it seems, as of McDougal's visit a few years ago, they are still largely living how their ancestors lived many generations ago. Their life is relatively free of fighting and conflict, as they're egalitarian and run as a daily activity - not for competition or glory, but for fun, for the feel of it, and to warm up on cool days.
Other characters I fell hard for are Emil Zatopek, a Czech whose talent was surpassed only by his big heart. His first Olympics was in 1952, where he won the 5,000 and 10,000 meters with a new Olympic record. At the same Olypmics he ran his very
first marathon (his first
official marathon - as he'd certainly logged as many miles in one run, but had never really timed himself), he asked the more experienced lead-man Peters, who at the ten-mile mark was already 10 minutes under his own record, "Excuse me, this is my first marathon. Are we going too fast?" Peters wanted to make him suffer and perhaps prove Emil inferior, so he replied, "no, too slow." Emil asked, "are you sure?" "Yes," Peteres replied. Emil responded by taking off, and finishing ahead of everyone, simultaneously setting a new Olympic record. But he wasn't met by his own teammates, they were too slow getting to the finish line to congratulate him. Emil was so friendly with all people and athletes that he met, that The Jamaican sprinters had already hoisted him up on their shoulders to parade him around the infield. He ran and lived with such infectious joy, that
everyone celebrated when he won.
Here's where I got teary-eyed. And though I sometimes joke that I cry willingly and with abandon, I don't often cry during books. But this one got me. After success and bonding with fellow athletes in Olympic competition, Emil Zatopek got caught in the cross-fire of politics and power in his home country. When he refused to be the pawn of the Red Army who in 1968 wanted him to be a soviet sports ambassador, he chose cleaning toilets over being a soviet pawn. But this is the part that really did me in...
Shortly after Zatopek's choice to clean toilets, he got a visit from a friend and fellow-runner. His visitor, Ron Clarke, who was actually Zatopek's rival for the title of world's greatest distance runner, was an enviably tall, tanned, and handsome Australian. Clark came to visit because although he was one of the world's best runners, he had a reputation for choking on the important runs, and had never landed an Olympic medal. Instead of going straight home to Australia, Clarke choose to visit Zatopek. The guy who always lost (the important races) stopped over in Prague to visit the guy who always won (prior to his toilet-duty-retirement).
Clarke must've known he'd get a friendlier reception with Zatopek than with his countrymen in Australia. Before he left he noticed Zatopek smuggling something into his suitcase. He didn't check to see what it was until he was safely away and on the plane. On their parting embrace, Zatopek said, "Because you deserved it." Later, when Clarke opened the package, he discovered Zatopek's 1952 Olympic 10,000 meters gold medal. Writes McDougal,
For Zatopek to give it to the man who'd replaced his name in the record books was extraordinarily noble; to give it away at precisely the moment in his life when he was losing everything else was an act of almost unimaginable compassion. "His enthusiasm, his friendliness, his love of life, shone through every movement," an overcome Ron Clarke said later. "There is not, and never was, a greater man than Emil Zatopek." (99)
Even now, having read this section of the book several times, I still have tears streaming down my face.
The extraordinary and simple thing that Christopher McDougall has done in this book is to inspire. He weaves his story of longing to run without pain and injury, with the amazing histories of great modern runners, to one of the greatest, ultra-marathons that had no sponsorship or spectators, with human evolutionary history.
We were always runners. Running is part and parcel to the cognitive evolution of the human species. We evolved because we are runners.
Check out the book. It will be available at your local library. Leave a comment, let me know what you think.
