Born to Run

Born to Run is journalist Christopher McDougall's account of tracking down the Tarahumara, a reclusive Indigenous people in Mexico's Copper Canyons renowned for running extraordinary distances without injury, in an attempt to solve his own chronic foot pain. The book moves between the Copper Canyons and Harvard biomechanics labs, weaving McDougall's personal quest together with the science of why humans evolved as endurance runners in the first place. Along the way he profiles a growing subculture of ultrarunners pushing their bodies across mountains and deserts, and builds toward a climactic cross-cultural race pitting elite American ultrarunners against Tarahumara runners in their homeland. Its most debated claim is that modern cushioned running shoes, introduced in the 1970s, may have caused rather than prevented the injury epidemic among runners, in contrast to the minimalist sandals worn by the Tarahumara. The book is written for runners and non-runners alike who are interested in human endurance, injury prevention, and what an isolated culture can teach about a capability modern life has mostly engineered away.