My favorite book lately is definitely "Born to Run", by Christopher McDougall. It's basically an anthropological study on how crucial the ability to run long distances efficiently has been for the development of the modern Human. Believe me, the book is a lot more interesting than that; the book revolves around an Indigenous Tribe of Mexico, the Tarahumara, known for their superhuman abilities to run hundreds of miles for days on end. While studying how the Tarahumara can seemingly run hundreds of miles on flimsy homemade sandals without injury, the Author soon becomes concerned about their plight of extreme poverty and encroaching drug violence on their territory. With the help of an interesting cast of characters the author meets along the way (most notably Caballo Blanco and Scott Jurek), a 50-mile race is held deep in the Copper Canyons of Mexico, pitting the best Ultra-Marathoner's of the United States against the legendary Tarahumara runners, all to raise awareness to their hardships. In between all of this, the author weaves in the anthropology bits and makes a passionate case on why everyone should run because we’re all, as the title suggest, Born to Run!
Dat, I enjoyed "Born to Run" a lot too...the insights/perspective are invaluable. Although I am not as brave/committed as you running on vibrams, I took out my custom orthotics (which I used for 2 years) after finishing the book and got vibrams for walking. I chose the KSO trek in brown leather which I deem it as the prettiest vibram among all :) Not sure if you've read "Eat & Run" by Scott Jurek, I enjoy his ultra running stories and the talks about nutrition as well.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't say brave...more like stubborn when it comes to running in the Vibrams when other shoes may work better, but stubbornness is a virtue when it comes to Ultra Running :) Glad you're giving minimalism a try, it may take a long awhile to fix your feet, but you won't get anywhere if you continue to weaken it with "support" shoes. Vibrams have a few women's only options like the Entrada, Jaya, and the Alitza that are quite cute, but I like my Spyridon LS the most. Yeah, on the Scott Jurek book, even have a signed copy of his book and had my photo taken with him while he was in Dallas. I've been thinking of writing a book review for awhile on "Eat & Run", but I'll have to re-read it...maybe sometime before Cactus Rose for a little inspiration.
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