Born to Run author Chris McDougall.

While most media attention surrounding the bestselling book Born to Run has focused on Five Fingers and other minimalist shoes, author Chris McDougall believes that running form is far more important than footwear. Like the indigenous Tarahumara, run lightly on your forefoot rather than your heels, lean slightly forward, and above all—smile. Running should be fun and joyful, not pain and punishment, says McDougall. He shared his candid thoughts while touring the Southeast in May.

Born to Run is like a combination adventure story, running manual, and anthropological discussion. How did the idea for the book develop?
When I started to research the book, I had no idea there was so much lost running lore and fascinating science out there. Take the whole saga of Emil Zatopek, or Louis Liebenberg’s crazy adventures with the Kalahari Bushmen — those were total bonuses that I never realized were waiting to be explored. But it was a serious challenge to figure out how to weave all those elements into a single adventure story about a race in the Copper Canyons. It ended up taking me two years of writing and nearly 3 full drafts to make it come together.

Do you believe that humans really were born to run? That our ability to run long distances at a consistent pace is what kept us alive as we evolved?
That’s not an opinion; that’s just about scientific certainty. We like to think of ourselves as big-brained masters of the universe, but the truth is, we’re physical animals like every other creature on this planet. But unlike most land-based mammals, for most of our history we had very little in the way of natural advantages. We have no fangs, no claws, no speed, no great strength. For over a million years, we didn’t have projectile weapons or even spear tips. So how did we survive and thrive and spread across the planet? Only because of our unique genetic gift of being able to run long distances over wild terrain. Think about it — is it just random chance that we gather by the tens of thousands to run marathons? Or is it an inherited ancestral instinct?

How have your experiences with the Tarahumara changed the way you think about running?
It was so simple but so dramatic; life-changing, really. I’d been told for years that running was bad for the human body, especially big ol’ human bodies like mine, yet when I encountered the Tarahumara, I found people of all ages and genders having a blast and treating running like play. And once I learned to run the way they do, gently and joyfully, it transformed running into a pleasure. I haven’t missed a day of running because of injury since then, and it’s become the best daily medicine I can imagine.

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