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- Running is the most prevalent in the country.
Born to Run comes along and introduces this concept that maybe we've been doing it wrong
this whole time.
- McDougall's book came along and everybody went crazy about barefoot running.
- The conversation started which as not been in existence for the last 30 years.
KATHY MARTIN: At a point, I remember lying in bed reading it and my heart was just racing.
It was like you were on the starting line ready to go.
MICHAEL PERLSTEIN: The book has opened up a whole new world for me in looking at things
which regards to running.
JOHN DURANT: Born to Run complimented and reaffirmed taking this evolutionary approach
to health.
DANIEL LIEBERMAN: Running is a skill and there are better and worse ways to run and Born
to Run has helped make that more of a public debate.
CHRISTOPHER MCDOUGALL: Born to Run is this bizarre adventure story that takes place down
in the Copper Canyons of Mexico where there is this lost tribe, the Tarahumara who run
these fantastic distances of 200 miles at a time and the book is really centered on
this one of a kind race that took place, pitting this bizarre group of American culture runners
against the Tarahumara.
DANIEL LIEBERMAN: Chris McDougall, I don't think he's capable of writing even a boring
email.
One of the things that makes the book fun is that he makes everything exciting.
MICHAEL PERLSTEIN: Get this group of weirdos together, that's what made the race so exciting.
DANIEL LIEBERMAN: Chris collects characters, particularly in culture running.
JOHN DURANT: One of the great characters is Barefoot Ted.
He is the pioneer.
Everybody else is running in sneakers and he is barefoot.
DANIEL LIEBERMAN: They're not your average Joe or Janes.
JOHN DURANT: It's just a bunch of lunatics that love running, going up against an indigenous
tribe of people who are born to run.
CHRIS MCDOUGALL: The Tarahumara lived in seclusion since the 1600s.
KATHY MARTIN: Before reading the book, most of us—runners included—never heard of
them before.
DANIEL LIEBERMAN: Here are these people who are removed from civilization.
There's just not a shop for thousands of miles and they've got no money and they run simply
because they love to run.
What's so enticing about the book is the idea that we can learn from evolution.
Humans evolved to be long distance runners because when we diverged from chimps, became
bipeds and one of the big problems of becoming a biped is that you become slow.
You can't gallop.
And we know that at least about 2 million years ago, our ancestors were hunting.
CHRIS MCDOUGALL: Except the first projectile weapons only appear 200,000 years ago.
So for 1.8 million years, we're killing stuff with no weapons, so how are we doing it?
DANIEL LIEBERMAN: Persistence hunting.
Most animals can't hold down as well when running as humans.
JOHN DURANT: A group of runners will run down an animal.
DANIEL LIEBERMAN: And the animal of course will run faster than a human can, but the
humans can track it and then chase it again.
As they keep doing that over and over again, its core body temperature will go up and up
and up and up and eventually it gets heat stroke and dies.
There's sort of this a-ha moment where humans are designed to run.
CHRIS MCDOUGALL: For most of human existence, we got by just fine with almost nothing on
our feet, but then we started to re-engineer the foot.
We created a running shoe and cushioned-engineered structured running shoes are the worst thing
which has ever made contact with the human foot.
Before you couldn't run and land on your heel.
It was just too painful.
Now you're constantly banging down on that heel.
DANIEL LIEBERMAN: One of the advantages of running barefoot is that it forces you to
run a bit more as we were designed to run.
CHRIS MCDOUGALL: The first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna get up on your forefoot
and you're gonna bend and flex your ankles and your knees and you're naturally gonna
absorb the shock instead of having it hit all those joints up your leg.
MICHAEL PERLSTEIN: I don't think everybody can do that.
I myself have a flat foot, I know if I tried to do that, I'd just rip my knee right out
of its socket.
You really have to have the right musculature, the right articulation of your bones to do
this kind of thing.
DANIEL LIEBERMAN: We're so used to the world today as it is, we think it's normal to wear
shoes and we think it's abnormal to go barefoot, which is really preposterous if you think
about it.
Y'know, as an evolutionary biologist, I can tell you that shoes are the fad and that barefoot
running is the natural, normal state of running.
JOHN DURANT: What I found so shocking was that there wasn't a single scientific study
that showed that modern running shoes reduce injury.
KATHY MARTIN: People that I know had given up running.
They just weren't able to run with back injuries and knee injuries.
They took up barefoot running and they're running like the wind.
CHRIS MCDOUGALL: I gotta tell you, the only controversy comes from pediatrists.
MICHAEL PERLSTEIN: From a podiatry perspective, we really do walk a certain way and we call
that the heel to toe phase of gate and if that sequence is changed, people who are doing
this barefoot running for example are then prone to having injuries.
CHRIS MCDOUGALL: The running injury rate hasn't changed in 30 years because the shoes don't
work.
MICHAEL PERLSTEIN: Know there are people with lousy feet, myself included, and if I did
not have a really supportive running shoe, I probably couldn't even do the kind of exercise
they want to do.
CHRIS MCDOUGALL: No, just take your shoes off and that will answer all of your questions.
DANIEL LIEBERMAN: That's something I disagree with McDougall about.
There's no magical fix, y'know, just take your shoes and all of a sudden you'll become
a perfect runner.
It doesn't happen that way.
JOHN DURANT: The mistake that everybody makes when they try barefoot running is they do
too much too soon.
Everybody can learn to run this way, but you can't do it overnight.
MICHAEL PERLSTEIN: Well, since I read the book, I'm looking at how people run a whole
lot differently.
The first time I read about the Tarahumara doing this barefoot running, everyone thought
that this is all crazy, this is all wrong and now I'm looking at it for the second or
third time from a different perspective.
CHRIS MCDOUGALL: I think the best result that has come from this book is the fact that a
conversation is taking place which hasn't taken place in 30 years.
People are talking about about running form again.
Any other activity, golf, swimming, badminton, is all about technique, it's all about form.
Only in running, were you told well just buy some shoes.
I just want people talking about it.
Let them explore for themselves because as long as they understand it's not the shoes,
but it's the style.
That's the winning ticket.
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