Living with Whine and Cheese: Born to Read - Yes! Born to Run

As I've mentioned before (see Stickwithititos), I'm not one who sticks with things well. One of the few things I have stuck with consistently for many years is reading. When I left my job two months ago, one of the things that just fell into the place was the revival of a book club I used to meet with. Last month the club read was Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Super Athletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall.

As a wannabe runner, I LOVED this book. As someone addicted to my fancy running shoes and orthotics, I was a little frustrated with this book.

This book is a biography. I read very few biographies of people currently living and might not have read this one if it had not been selected for our book club. However, like any really good book, I got completely sucked into it. While corresponding with a classmate from high school, she mentioned she knew some of the people in the book. Thought that was totally cool!

The anthropological segment of the story proved to be some of the most fascinating to me. The argument that humans were evolved to be a running animal instead of a walking animal was beautiful. The simple living of the running Tarahumara was inspirational. The discussions of running form were educational.

When I was a classroom teacher, I was saw a native Hawaiian student training for a cross country meet and was intrigued by his running form. Instead of his feet coming up and forward with each stride, they seemed to come almost straight down and kick back. This intrigued me and I tried copying it for awhile before I reverted back to me original form that really doesn't resemble anything traditional. Born to Run talked about this kick-back running style as a way to conserve energy and prevent injuries while running. I'm committed now to working on adopting that as my style.

After finishing this reading adventure, I was hungry for more. The story had talked about a photographer who had been so I went to Google to search for the images. I started off with a search on one of the main characters in the book, Caballo Blanco. Unfortunately, images of the Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon were not my first results. What came up instead was the awful news that Caballo Blanco was missing after setting off for a morning run. I followed the stories and the next day it was reported that his body was found. Not the ending I was hoping for, but then again, that's what happens in biographies that doesn't often happen in fiction.

Live long, read often and run.