According to the dust jacket and reviews, Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run is about the Tarahumara Indians and a couple ultra-marathons. But it’s not. Oh, sure, those things are described in the book, but the theme of the book is something different.

You know those comedies and dramas where the protagonist has this crazy idea that everyone thinks is impossible, but he doesn’t care, and he tries, and does it anyway? That’s Born to Run.

Everything thinks running marathons is crazy impossible. Only insanely fit people do it. Running is painful, causes injuries, and requires huge amounts of dedication, right? And the limit of human endurance is 26.2 miles, right? Wrong.

Born to Run is about superathletes; people that do what others think is impossible. There’s some of that in the biography of famous scientists, like Richard Feynman. I think there’s two parts here: (1) once you know it’s possible, trying and achieving become easier, and (2) it’s the shoes.

Making the Impossible Possible

People don’t try the impossible because, obviously, it’s a foolish waste of time. But what lots of other people are doing? Sure, try it! Tons of people run marathons. Even overweight people that aren’t in shape. Knowing it’s possible, they read blogs and forum posts and news articles and books about it. The do the training that others suggest. They study the success (and mistakes) of others and do it themselves. Following in others’ footsteps is much easier than laying first tracks.

Most people don’t know about ultra-marathons; most people don’t know that hundreds of overweight, unfit people train and complete marathons every year. Knowing it’s possible moves it into the realm of consideration. It becomes an option, and sometimes a goal.

Born to Run makes marathons seem easy, actually. It makes ultra-marathons seem possible to already-fit athletes that want to go further.

It’s the Shoes

I think mainly, though, Born to Run is about shoes – or the lack thereof. McDougall’s quest started with wondering why his foot hurt. In the process, he finds out why jogging shoes are evil. He finds a reclusive tribe where everyone runs long distances – and no-one wears fancy jogging shoes. I think there’s a huge correlation.

I wish I remembered where I heard the quote “no athlete performs at 100%” because it’s such a good quote. I want to use it here again. Most runners suffer some sort of running-related injury each year, and that injury rate is proportional to the cost of their shoes — even after adjusting for miles run and speed. Imagine if running wasn’t so likely to break something to the point where you couldn’t run? Finishing a marathon would be that much easier. And attempting an ultra-marathon would be possible, too.

Diet plays a part as well; cramming yourself full of sugar every 30 minutes just to be able to run is a view made possible only by the fact that the Standard American Diet is sugar and crappy, artery-clogging vegetable oils. I usually ride every day, throwing my 215 pounds through turns and sometimes crawling through foot-deep fresh snow, on an empty stomach. On 12 or more hours of fasting, usually. I bring along water, but not snacks.

It Makes Me Want to Run

What I enjoyed most about the book is that it made me want to run. It encouraged me to stay on my diet. This book (actually an earlier article by McDougall) is part of the reason I bought Vibram Five Fingers and run in those.

My favorite books are the ones that make their subject sound so fun and rewarding that I want to run out and do them. Kitchen Confidential made me want to be a cook and got me to cook more at home. 4HWW (and a talk at a social dynamics seminar six years ago) is part of why I left the dayjob behind to come out and spend six months snowboarding. Born to Run encouraged me to run, and it makes me want to complete a marathon.

Running shouldn’t be a chore, and I think the main reasons it is to many runners are shoes and diet. As paleo guys, we like science. Not the crap that scientists say we should believe, but the evidence that they gather. McDougall does a great job of gathering and presenting the evidence on shoes. If you’re in doubt, go to a bookstore and read chapter 25 (page 168 in my edition). After reading that chapter, you should want to buy the book – and then go buy a pair of vibrams, and then go out and run five miles. Or fifty.

I run in a pair of Vibram Five Fingers; the KSOs, to be specific.

Vibram Five Fingers KSO

When I started running last year, I looked into real running shoes. I picked up a couple issues of Runner’s World, surfed around on the net, and decided that I needed to check in to a running store and figure out if I pronate or supinate, and what kind of shoe would be best. I found a nice, expensive pair of Nikes and two months later… my ankles hurt so much when I ran that I couldn’t make it more than a couple hundred yards.

At some point I ran across a couple posts on Richard’s blog, then read through the New York Magazine article on “You Walk Wrong“, and started finding a whole bunch of related posts and news articles. I also picked up Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run — I loved it. I’ve read a handful of books that made me go “wow, I want to do that!” and Born to Run definitely inspired me to run more. It made me want to be an ultramarathoner! I picked up a pair of KSOs and set out running again.

I don’t really like wearing shoes. But yet I don’t like roomy shoes; I prefer shoes that are snug but not binding. Wearing the KSOs is like wearing socks. They’re different because they fit between the toes (like toe socks), yet still comfortable. They don’t feel like they’re crushing my foot, or blocking off circulation anywhere. After wearing them for a while, I’m much more socially comfortable kicking off my shoes at work.

Naysayers might suggest that science can do better than nature — and I agree, but only if science first understands nature. Big, padded heals in running shoes is a response to seeing people run in less-padded shoes. Look at how people run barefoot, and compare that to people running in sneakers. The biomechanics aren’t the same at all. Science should look not just at the heal, but how impact pressure is transmitted up the leg, and at studies that compare fancy shoes to bare feet. Although researchers have concluded that there’s no scientific evidence that fancy shoes help, and that the cost of shoes is correlated with injury (supposedly this study but the abstract doesn’t confirm), there’s no prospective, randomized study that’s shown that barefoot is better. But this is one of those cases where there’s tons of evidence suggesting that barefoot is better; do you want to risk it? Or would you rather just do what the TV tells you?

I’d really like to blog about why running barefoot is good for your feet, but really I learned that from the sources I read above. Lots of great stuff!

One of the benefits of running every day is that I can try something different each time I run, or experiment with running differently, different shoes — or breathing differently.

I posted on running out of breath back on my old blog. When I first started running, nearly a year ago in December of 2008, I could make it about 100 yards before I ran out of breath and slowed down. It was hard. I was able to gradually increase the distance that I run before I’m out of breath, but along the way I made one major discovery: when I run out of breath depends on how fast I run. The slower I run, the further I can make it before I have to stop and breathe.

When I was very out of shape, small bits of jogging or running were very difficult. Even at a slow pace, I’d quickly run out of breath. I could walk for miles, seemingly indefinitely, but climbing stairs and slow jogging were both limited-time activities.

I’m still “out of shape”, but getting better. I can jog a mile continuously; that’s been my target for the past couple weeks and I haven’t pushed further. (I was thinking of doing another lap, which would have been 1.7 miles, but my legs hurt, so I stopped.) But it’s obvious to me now that running faster just wears me out. I’m chosing to jog slow enough that I can make a mile without running out of breath. Sprints will tear the wind out of me quickly, a run a bit less so, and faster jogging before I finish a mile.

My breathing comes hard in the first quarter mile, but by the time I end the mile I’ve found a rhythm to both running & breathing. I spend the run thinking about it; do I need to modify my footfall? Breathe differently?

One difference I’ve noticed lately is that I’m breathing deeper. Quick breaths means I’m quickly out of breath; deeper breaths taken “from the diaphragm” (rather than higher up in the chest) keeps me from feeling oxygen-deprived.

Mostly I’m blogging this as a record. How I felt about breathing a year ago, six months ago, now. I’ll be interested in seeing how I think in another six months.

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P.S. I blogged recently about sprints vs running vs walking, and these two have some interplay: I think running faster improves fitness more quickly. This implies that running, jogging, and walking are pointless from a fitness perspective. So why do I run? Hmm. I’ll think about it and post more later!

My run routine has been a 1.7 mile course, of which I was running about half; walk a few hundred yards, run a couple blocks, walk a block, run a couple blocks, etc. When lifting weights and doing cardio both I’ve often taking the approach of trying to get to a certain performance level (i.e. twelve easy reps at a weight, or an “easy time” running the blocks as above) before I try a harder level.

Part of the gestalt of high-intensity training, Tabata, CrossFit, etc is not “getting comfortable” with a performance level, but rather pushing yourself as hard as you can, even if that means fewer reps or not running as far or as fast as you’d like. I talked a bit about this last time when I mentioned that I felt that I could push myself to do more sprints, instead of “giving up” after four or five. Indeed I was able to do six.

My Saturday group starts with a 3/4mi timed run, and then does sprints of various flavors. That’s shown me that I can run .7 miles continuously. I started modifying my daily run to be more continuous, and less interval-y. I did a full mile twice over the extended holiday weekend, without slowing down to walk at any point. It’s getting easier.

Pushing myself showed me that I can do it. The point I was trying to make in my previous post is that the body responds to challenge. If you’re not challenging yourself, then improvement will be slow. I’m challenging myself to run further and faster, and I’m seeing improvement! That’s awesome. It’s a great feeling to see dozens of seconds come off my times; to make it further without running out of breath. And it’s definitely motivating me to get out there again, and to try to run further and faster.

Plus, snowboarding in a month! Gotta get ready!

My normal run routine is a path that’s about 2.2 miles long. I walk about half of it and jog the other half. Over the last couple months I haven’t done any sprinting, but I started back up again a few weeks ago, in part because my Saturday morning running group does some sprinting exercises. Being in that group has also pushed me to start doing “long runs,” which for me right now means 3/4 of a mile. That is, a continuous run (no walking breaks) of 3/4 of a mile.

I weighed in at 246 pounds this morning, and that isn’t “all muscle.” Hah! So, yeah, I’m packing a lot of body fat. It feels to me that losing weight is having the biggest effect on my running right now. There were some easy gains early on as I started getting frequent exercise, but now I think I’m at a balance between needing to improve cardiovascular fitness and not having to propel so much mass around.

When I started running a year ago, I could make it about 100 yards before being out of breath and needing to stop. Foot pain set in a couple months later and I stopped running for a few months. Five Fingers got me back out on the road again. I’ve stepped up my running, and one of the great things about running is that it’s easy to see my progress.

Sprints are cake. I can do four or five short sprints (about 100 yards) before I stop; I think perhaps I’ll push to one more. When I lift weights, I push myself to lift until I can’t physically lift the weight any more. I think lifting to exhaustion is more effective than just pushing a weight around a bit; I’m surprised at the people that go into the gym and pick weights that they obviously have an easy time lifting. I think the stopping point should be physical, not psychological. Five sprints does wear me out a lot, but I’m not sure (now, in hindsight) that there really was no way that my body could do a sixth.

As I understand the physiology, sprinting burns up quickly-available energy sources and forces muscle cells to scavenge for energy. Mitochondria respond to that stress by replicating. To me, that suggests some measure of fitness is tuned on the scale of mitochondria, not on a human scale; that means that the system should respond much faster to stress than my whole body does. For example, it would be very difficult for me to lose more than a pound a day; losing weight is a process that takes months. Could I improve fitness faster? I don’t know, but I’m going to be sprinting tonight.

I use the word “jogging” to mean running at a slow pace. Jogging is a use-it-or-lose-it activity; that is, one jogs to prevent adaptation from fading. If injury prevents you from running or sprinting, then jogging will help keep your fitness up. It’s a crappy way to lose weight, and probably also a poor way to improve fitness, but if you aren’t going to sprint or run it’s better than sitting on the couch. Walking, likewise, is better than sitting down but is an ineffective way to improve fitness. Walking and jogging are also something to do if your fitness is very low and you are just starting to exercise.

Running is between these two extremes; it’s less effective than sprints but more effective than jogging or walking. Running is the “performance” speed: sprints build fitness, and then we test ourselves by running a 5k or 10k or half or full marathon. The common wisdom says to run a few miles every day and do a long run once a week, but the research I’ve seen on Tabata training suggests that intensity (sprints) is more important than volume (running). Given the success that most mainstream runners have with running itself as the training protocol for performance running, it seems that it’s a sufficient challenge to the body to induce adaptation.

I have issues with accepting the common wisdom of running 35 miles a week to train for a marathon, and doing a long run once a week, when that wisdom comes from a community that consumes lectins, phytates, and carbs with reckless abandon, and that insists on wearing giant padded shoes. Sure, if I eat crap and wear pillows on my feet, maybe that standard training protocol works; but I care about my fitness and health. I expect it will be years, if not decades, before any significant study on paleo-friendly training regimens. Until then, I’ll follow what good research I can find.

And that means sprints tonight!

I’m running nearly every day at this point, but not very far. During the week, I’ll run in the afternoons (around 4:30pm), going just over two miles. On Saturday, I get together with a group at my apartment complex and we do a 3/4 mile run then some sprints and other running/cardio exercises.

The daily runs haven’t been getting easier lately. But then, I feel like I’ve been sick for a couple months now. For a few weeks it was a cold, but now I’ve got an allergy cough that’s really annoying. I want to run three miles, or more, but making that distance without stopping is beyond me at this point.

I hope some of you can commiserate. Half the people in the Saturday running group have no trouble busting out that 3/4 mile. Anyone that’s a serious runner would scoff at that. But I’m at 250 pounds right now, and 5′10″. I’m carrying a lot of mass, and I’m not very fit. Running 3/4 mi would have been a crazy idea a year ago, so at least I’ve improved, but I still find it difficult.

Walking is cake. I can walk for miles. I can also sprint … for very short distances. At a slow jog, I can probably make it through a 5k without stopping to walk at any point, but I haven’t come close to trying. The 2.2 mile “run” I normally do is usually half jogging and half walking, skewed a little towards jogging. But I don’t run very fast.

What’s the difference between running and jogging? It’s useful to describe different concepts; I’d probably guess a run requires a faster pace. So: I’m jogging. Sprints are sprints, but normally when I go out for a “run” it’s just at a jogging pace.

I think I’m going to try doing sprints tonight. Haven’t done them in a long while (except during Saturday runs), and I think it’s a good way to improve fitness.