>> I'd like to welcome Chris McDougall to
Google today. Chris is a former war correspondent for the
Associated Press, and now a contributing editor for Men's Health.
He's a three time National Magazine Award finalist.
He's written for Esquire, New York Times Magazine, Outside Men's Journal, and the New York Magazine.
And you may have seen him recently on the Daily Show, speaking about his book, "Born
to Run," which he's speaking about again today for us.
I hope some of you got copies. The book is a chronicle of the tribe of the
Tarahumara, who live in Chihuahua, Mexico, and their extraordinary running ability, as
well as the politics surrounding running in this particular tribe.
And I'm very excited to welcome Chris to speak with us today.
Come on up. >> [Clapping] Chris McDougall: Hi. Thanks a lot for having
me in today. You know, it's weird.
I've been spending five months now, talking about what should be the simplest thing on
Earth. You know, just moving one leg, moving the
other leg, and going that direction. And yet, it has been really remarkable how
complicated this topic is. I don't know if any of you saw that raging
debate yesterday online on the New York Times website.
There was a posting about whether running in bare feet is good for you.
And out of the shadows, all the barefoot runners came roaring out saying like, "Why the hell
are shoes the default position?" You know? "Why isn't the question, Are running in shoes
good for you?" You know, "Why is it this notion that shoes
are somehow better than bare feet?" So, I'll get into that whole controversy in
a little bit, because it's kind of intriguing. But, first, I'd like to tell you a little
bit about how this whole thing began. Well, let me read for you a little bit.
Have a lot of you already read the book? No? Good. Excellent.
I've gone to some places where I try and pull a little surprise out of the book, and people
are sort of nodding along. They've already been there, so. Okay.
[reading] It all began with a simple question that no one could answer.
It was a five-word puzzle that led me to a photo of a very fast man in a very short skirt.
And from there, it only got stranger. Soon, I was dealing with a murder, drug guerrillas,
and a one-armed man with a cream cheese cup strapped to his head.
I met a beautiful, blond forest ranger who slipped out of her clothes and found salvation
by running naked in the Idaho forests, and a young surfer babe in pigtails, who ran straight
toward her death in a desert. A talented young runner would die.
Two others would barely escape with their lives.
I kept looking, and I stumbled across the barefoot Batman, naked guy, the Kalahari bushmen,
the toenail amputee, a cult devoted to distance running and sex parts, the wild man of the
Blue Ridge Mountains, and ultimately, to the ancient tribe of the Tarahumara, and their
shadowy disciple Caballo Blanco. In the end, I got my answer, but only after
I found myself in the middle of the greatest race the world would never see -- the ultimate
fighting competition of foot races, an underground showdown, pitting some of the best ultra distance
runners of our time against the best ultra runners of all time, in the 50-mile race on
hidden trails only Tarahumara feet had ever touched.
[talking] And it all because, in January of 2001, I asked my doctor this, "How come my
foot hurts?" That was the starting point. I was not a runner
at all. I was just a guy who was trying to work off,
you know, fat lunches every couple of days by running two or three miles and that was
it. But, after a few months, I was constantly
getting hurt. You know, I had Achilles' pain and arch pain
and heel pain and hamstring pulled and lower back pain.
And you know, I wasn't even attempting marathons. I was doing two or three miles every couple
days. The breaking point was, one day I went out
for a little 3-mile jog on a snow-covered road on a dirt, farm trail in the middle of
Amish farm country, technically the most forgiving surface you can run along on planet Earth.
After two miles, this blinding pain shot up my foot.
I went to see another sports medicine doctor, who said, "What do you expect, you know?
Running is bad for humans. The impact is bad for you. You keep this up"
-- particularly me, because at that point, I was like 240 pounds -- he says, "You keep
this up, and you have to get a new set of knees and a new set of hips."
So that was it. I gave up running and never planned to run again.
And the reason why is because of this pervasive attitude that exists in the world -- and so
pervasive that it's the kind of thing you hear all the time from the most respected
voices in the running world. I mean, let me just read you a quote.
This was a couple weeks ago from, you know, the editor of Runners World Magazine -- the
guy who you assume not only knows about running, but would want to sort of promote it and make
more people do it. And this is what he said on NPR -- he said,
"The concern I have is, a lot of people hear about these new shoes and read about and maybe
hear about this book called, 'Born to Run,' and feel like, 'Oh, I could just throw away
my running shoes and I'll just start tomorrow, and I'll become a barefoot runner.' If a lot
of runners, or all the runners out there in America, did that tomorrow, the vast majority
of them would get hurt very quickly and have to stop running for a very long time."
And the reason why you would get hurt very quickly and have to stop running for a long
time he said was because "the vast majority of people are not blessed in that way.
They've got some biomechanical inefficiencies." Okay, biomechanical inefficiencies.
Now, a guy named Dr. Maharam -- who is the medical consultant for the New York City Marathon,
and who's billed as the premier running position in the country -- says the same thing.
He said, if everyone tried to run in their bare feet, 95 percent of them would end up
in his office with injuries, because they are not 'biomechanically perfect'.
Now, you hear this, and you think, "Okay, well. If I were to prevent any organism from
performing any function, I will threaten it with pain. You know. Pain is a great dissuader."
So what they're telling you is, unless you are 'biomechanically perfect', running is
fraught with danger. It's this risky thing like trying to remove
your own appendix. "Don't try it at home."
And if you do, you better have the best possible equipment.
Now, that phrase, I've now heard over and over again for years.
And I was hearing it back when I was going to see sports medicine doctor.
They would look at me and say, "Well, you're not biomechanically perfect.
You need orthotics, you need cortisone shots. You need some $150 shoes, which you have to
throw away in three months. You get new $150 shoes."
But then, you know, you start to think about this, "Well, wait a minute.
What does 'biomechanically efficient' mean?" You hear that word and you think it means
'biologically efficient,' or 'biologically perfect.'
Well, biomechanical is not biological. Biomechanical just means you do it right,
period. You know? If you drop a kid in a pool and that kid starts
to sink, you don't say, "I'm sorry. You're not biomechanically efficient.
You're fucked, you know?" [laughter] No. You pull the kid out.
You give a few compressions, you know? And you teach him how to swim.
That's what's been lacking from this whole question about running.
Nobody ever tells you how to do this damn thing.
What they tell you to do is buy something. And we got into the situation today where,
you know, you're told over and over again, "Just buy something." as opposed to "Just
learn something." And that was the situation I found myself
in. I was constantly hurt.
You know, and I didn't particularly care about running.
But I had this feeling. It was kind of instinct inside.
I just wanted to have that liberty, that freedom to run, that everybody else seemed to have.
That I remember having as a kid too. You never see a five-year-old doing hot yoga
or putting on shoes, or doing a stretch or any kind of warm up.
A five-year-old wants to go, a five-year-old is gone -- at a sprint, all the time.
You never met a five-year-old on earth who says they hate running or they're tapering
or they're in training, you know? [laughter] Five-year-olds are just ready to fly all the
time. It's somewhere in that transit, there's sort
of an arc, where "Love running, Love running, Love running -- Hate running, Hate running,
Hate running" for the rest of your life. And that's where I became intrigued by is,
Where is that little tipping-over point between enjoying it naturally to taking it on as a
task to somehow giving up on it? And I found my answer, initially, when I was
down in Mexico researching a story for the New York Times magazine.
And I think sort of testament to the impact of the photo I was about to see that the second
I saw that photo, I immediately forgot about the assignment I was on.
And that assignment was to find this like, gorgeous, voluptuous, Mexican pop star, who
was secretly running her own fugitive brainwashing sex cult.
That's what I was looking for, but yet, I see this picture of this old man in a bathrobe
and sandals, running down this trail in these thin, little sandals.
And according to the caption, this guy had just run a hundred miles through the Rocky
Mountains and beaten hundreds of top, elite American ultra runners.
Fifty-five years old, running a hundred miles, in sandals, beating the best in the world.
And I look at this picture thinking, "Now, what's that dude doing that I'm not doing?
How come I'm told that 26-miles is the ultimate challenge, you know, 'You go beyond 26, you
could die like Pheidippides." This guy just did a hundred miles in sandals,
and he's 55 years old. He was twice my age, running four times the
distance in the thinnest shoes imaginable. That was my first introduction to the Tarahumara.
I made a lot of mistakes along the way trying to understand what they're all about.
And I wish I had originally spoken to a guy named doctor Joe Vigil, who is a distant running
coach in Colorado, who -- he's a strange guy, because even late in his life, as the most
successful running coach of all time, I think he's plagued by this roaring sense of vulnerability
-- that somebody's always going to pull something out that he can never be prepared for.
So Vigil does stuff like turn up at the Leadville Trail 100, which is a freaky mountain race,
in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
And there he is, 70 years old, like huddle in the woods with a little cup of coffee waiting
to watch these guys run by. He was there in 1994, because, long before
I'd heard of the Tarahumara Indians, he'd heard about them.
And nobody else on the planet could care less about freaky guys in bathrobes and sandals,
or even less about freakier guys who remove their own toenails and run these 100-mile
races. They remove their toenails, because they -- I
don't know if you saw the Time story yesterday about ultra runners keep jamming their toes
against the front of their shoes, so they will have their toenails surgically removed
and then burnt off with acid. So yeah, just remove some deadweight and move
on. So there was Vigil.
Vigil turned out in 1994, because it was one of the few times that the Tarahumara Indians
had ever left their homes in the bottom of the Copper Canyons of Mexico to come out and
compete. And this is what he saw.
And this is what intrigued him so much. [pause] [reading] Over the previous years, Coach Vigil
had become convinced that the next leap forward in human endurance would come from a dimension
he dreaded getting into -- character. Not the character that other coaches were
always rah, rah, rah-ing about. Vigil wasn't talking about grit or hunger
or the "size of the fight in the dog". In fact, he meant the exact opposite.
Vigil's notion of character wasn't toughness. It was compassion, kindness, love. That's
right, 'love'. Now, Vigil had figured out the body.
So now, he was moving on to the brain. Specifically, he wanted to know, How do you
make anybody actually want to do any of this stuff?
How do you make someone actually want to run? And that was the real secret of the Tarahumara.
They've never forgotten what it felt like to love running.
They remember that running was mankind's first fine art -- our original act of inspired creation.
Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollowed trees,
we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion
over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their
first cave paintings, what were the first designs?
A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and the middle -- Behold, the running
man. Distance running was revered, because it was
indispensable. It was the way we survived and thrived and
spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten.
You ran to find a mate and to impress her, and with her, you ran off to start a new life
together. You had to love running or you wouldn't live
to love anything else. And like everything else we love -- everything
we sentimentally call our 'passions' and 'desires' -- it's really an encoded ancestral necessity.
We were born to run. We were born because we run.
We're all running people, as the Tarahumara have never forgotten. [pause]
[reading] So there he was, Joe Vigil, an old man alone in the woods, and he suddenly felt
a burst of immortality. He was on to something, something huge.
It wasn't just how to run; it was how to live. The essence of who we are as a species and
what we're meant to be. Vigil had read Carl Lumholtz, the ancient
Norwegian explorer. And, at that moment, Lumholtz's words revealed
their hidden treasure. So that's what he meant when he called the
Tarahumara "The founders and makers of the history of mankind."
Perhaps all of our troubles -- all the violence and obesity and illness, all the depression
and greed we can't overcome -- began when we stopped living as a running people.
If you deny your nature, it will erupt in some other, uglier way.
[talking] What Vigil was on to was this really strange correlation between sports and social
living. The Tarahumara are remarkable for three things.
Number one, when the Conquistadors arrived in Mexico, back in the 1600s, you basically
had two choices: You either fight back or haul ass.
The Mayans and the Aztecs fought back, which is why you see very few Mayans and Aztecs
anymore. The Tarahumara just turned around and took
off. They disappeared down into this vast, spider-webbing
network of canyons -- one of the most inaccessible places on the planet.
And they've essentially been there ever since -- unchanged -- living the same way they
have for tens of thousands of years. So essentially, you can look at them as this
born-again Smithsonian exhibit. Nothing has changed since the Stone Age for
the Tarahumara. That's thing number one.
Number two, their running ability has been fabled throughout history.
Periodically, people would come across the Tarahumara hundreds of miles from the canyons.
These guys would tear off on 300 and 400-mile runs -- not just for a purpose, you know,
like the Navahos used to have a whole system of messengers.
The Tarahumara essentially did it for fun. Their recreational games were these super-long,
endurance contests. You know, we won a marathon?
They'll run ten marathons back to back to back, for fun, as a game.
That's number two. Number three -- and this is where Vigil was
really intrigued. The Tarahumara are free from crime, violence,
warfare, heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes, clinical depression, high blood
pressure, domestic abuse. Everything that we in the western world are
spending billions trying to eradicate -- things people are winning Nobel prizes for -- these
dudes sussed out thousands of years ago, and have never had a problem ever since.
So you can see this as some kind of quirky, indigenous, kind of eugenic society where
everything is beautiful. Or, you can be like Vigil and say, "These
things aren't coincidences." If you have two outliers in one community,
there's a cause and effect there; it's not a coincidence.
The people who run the most, and people who are the healthiest -- not just physically,
but psychologically and socially -- have got some kind of ancient wisdom going on.
That's what he wanted to find out. Unfortunately, he was 70 years old and on
the verge of having triple bypass. So that was it for Vigil's possibility of
going down into the canyons. Luckily, I was much younger and dumber than
he was at the time. So I thought I could just fly on down there,
get some quotes, get the hell out, have my article, and be done with it.
What I didn't realize is, these Copper Canyons -- you know, it's -- the way you remain a
reclusive tribe is by, number one, being a place that's really hard to get to, and number
two, not answering any questions when strangers show up.
I found myself down at the bottom of the canyons, and I actually had the luck to locate a hidden
home of a guy named Arnulfo Quimare, one of the greatest, living, Tarahumara runners.
His home is so concealed that, if you were standing on it right now, you would not realize
it's there. It is totally blended into the landscape.
I actually got there, found this hidden home. Arnulfo happened to be there -- wasn't off
on a 400-mile run. He happened to be right there.
It was two o'clock in the afternoon. We sat down. I looked him in the eye.
I started to ask my question, and for the next four hours, he said absolutely nothing
-- just stared at me, and then his eyes would just sort of drift off like, you know, maybe
heard something, but kind of wished he hadn't. And this went on and on and on for hours.
He just wouldn't talk. And finally, the guy who was guiding said,
"Let's get out of here." So, we got up, and we sort of retreated.
And there's nowhere else to go. So we went deeper into the canyons, and we
found this little Tarahumara schoolhouse. And there's a schoolteacher there, who's half-Mexican,
half-Tarahumara -- one of the few guys from the tribe who'd ever actually left and gone
to the outside world. And he gave us a place to stay for the night
and a little bowl of beans. And he tried to console me by saying, "Well,
what do you expect, you know? They're not going to talk to you.
These guys -- they are so private that you'd have to be down here for years.
You'd have to be down here about as long as the White Horse before they're going to talk."
I'm sort of eating my beans going, "Okay, yeah. I see your point. Wait -- what White
Horse?" And he tells me this story about some mysterious
guy who had appeared down the canyons 15 years ago -- just came running on into the settlement,
essentially naked, pair of sandals, pair of shorts, and got a cup of water and a little
bit of food, and then disappeared again, off into the canyons.
And he would periodically reappear. And over the months and the years, he'd become
friendly with the Tarahumara. And bit by bit, they had sort of absorbed
him into the tribe, and looked at him as kind of like this sort of freaky, you know, foreign,
ghostly half-cousin. All they knew about this guy was, he wasn't
from down there, and he had been there for long enough where he actually had absorbed
the same secrets of the Tarahumara I was trying to figure out.
So they said, "You go find the White Horse, and you'll find your answers."
Sounded really good at the time, you know, until you step back and you look up at these
vast canyons and realize there's one dude out there somewhere and even they didn't know
where he was, and they'd known him for 15 years.
Defying all odds -- and I sort of get into this in detail in the book how it actually
turned out, but I actually located this guy. And he is just as reclusive as the Tarahumara,
except for one thing. At that point, he realized that the thing
he was there to discover, was on the verge of being extinguished.
You know, the Tarahumara only number about 40,000 today.
Of that 40,000, only a small minority still practice the ancient running traditions.
And what this guy -- the White Horse, Caballo Blanco -- realized was that, in his lifetime,
that candle could be extinguished. That secret -- that synergy between the way
the body operates and the way society operates that Vigil wanted to find out could be gone
in our lifetime. So this guy, the White Horse, had this plan.
What he wanted to do was find people like him.
Now, think about that right there too. You know, a guy who lives by himself in the
bottom of the canyon wants to find other people like him out there in the world, bring them
down to the canyons, and set up a 50-mile race between this sort of elite group of specially
sort of karmically-screened, American runners and the Tarahumara.
Again, seems like a good idea until you realize, "I just met one of these guys.
This dude wouldn't even talk to me, let alone hike 30-miles through the canyons for a 50-mile
race." But that was his plan.
And I really wanted to be a part of it, despite the obstacles that -- There's no way in hell
you can have this race; No way racers were going to show up; and There's no way I could
do it. I couldn't run a mile, let alone 50-miles.
But I became really intrigued by something I learned from the White Horse.
In the time I'd met him, he was in his 50's. But the time he came down to the canyons,
he was almost a bizarrely like _____ for me. He was the same age I was at that moment.
He was the same height. He was the same shoe size.
And he had the same running injuries. And what he was telling me was, when he went
down to the canyons, he was in his like, late 30's, early 40's -- and had busted up ankles
and feet, had always wanted to run, but had given it up.
And then, within a few months, he was running like wild fire.
And he actually took me out for a little jog, just to show me what he meant.
And the kind of running he did was unlike any kind of running I'd ever seen in my life.
I don't know if you've ever been out here for like, the New York City Marathon, and
you watch 50,000 people go by, and it's like 50,000 different running styles, you know?
Everyone's sort of grimacing, pushing along. And the only thing they have in common is,
they're all miserable. [laughter] But I watched this dude, Caballo,
and this guy is in his 50's. And we went up this steep trail.
And he went up -- it looked like he was running downhill instead of uphill.
It was like smoke going up into the air, just [chuu chuu chuu chuu] this slid on up the
hill. And it looked exactly like some of the Tarahumara
children I'd seen the day before. Here's a guy in his 50's, running like five-year-olds,
not just with the same joyfulness and elasticity, but with the same exact style.
And, again, I'm just used to being told, "You run the way you run."
You know, there's no right or wrong way. You just run the way you run.
Some of you pronate, some of you supinate, heel to toe.
Doesn't matter what the hell you do. You just run the way you run, and you buy
the right shoe. I'm watching this dude, who basically is not
even in shoes. He's in this crappy, old pair of sandals.
And somehow, coincidentally or not, his running biomechanics -- the way he is running -- looks
identical to a five-year-old I'd seen the day before.
And I sort of think, "There's something here, you know?
Maybe there actually is a right way to do this thing.
And maybe that's the first step toward unlocking the secret of the Tarahumara."
It's the simplest thing of all. You learn how to do it right, and everything
else falls in place. So that became my ambition.
I wanted to come back to the States, spend nine months training for this race to see
if I could learn how to run like a Tarahumara, and turn myself into kind of like a 21st century
Caballo Blanco, and go back for that race. And see if, just by learning the motion -- you
know, there's the theory of psychology that if you want to be happy, the first step is
just to 'act happy', you know? Just smile a lot, and then you actually become
happy by mimicking the behavior of someone who is happy.
That's what I wanted to do. If I could mimic the behavior of the Tarahumara,
maybe I could get the rest of the benefits. So things are kind of cool, except for one
thing. Nine months later, I actually -- through this
whole process I described -- had actually learned how to run like a Tarahumara.
I was ready to go back down to the canyons, but I was still missing two things.
Number one was, no other racers. It was just basically me, this old dude, and
maybe or maybe not a bunch of Indians -- still to be determined.
There were no racers. And secondly, you know, I still had not gotten
the spirit of the thing. You know? I'd done the motions and the behavior, but
I still didn't quite get what the cause and effect was.
And then, I made this phone call to this girl named Jenn Shelton.
I was researching an article about ultra runners for Runners World Magazine.
And I called up Jenn Shelton, because she is one of the few runners who is in her 20's,
and is still doing these long races. I may have lost my page here so I may not
be able to do it. [pause] What was intriguing to me about Jenn was that
her first race that she ever ran in her life wasn't a 5K -- wasn't a 10K, wasn't a marathon
-- it was a 50-mile race, a trail race. She went out there in a pair of surf baggies
and a cotton sweatshirt and broke the course record.
She was 19 years old at the time. So I call her up on the phone to find out
why she was wasting her time as a teenager running these races on Saturday nights.
So I said to her, "So why not marathons? Don't you think you could qualify for the Olympics?"
She goes, "Dude, seriously. The qualifying standard is 248. Anybody can do that."
Jenn could run a sub-three-hour marathon while wearing a string bikini and chugging a beer
at mile 23, and she would, just five days after running a 50-mile trail race in the
Blue Ridge Mountains. Yeah, but then what?
I hate all this hype about the marathon. Where's the mystery?
I know this girl who's training for the trials, and she's got every single workout planned
for like, the next three years. She's doing speed work on the track like every
day. I couldn't take it man.
I was supposed to run with her once at six in the morning, and I called her up at two
a.m. to tell her I was shit-faced on margaritas and probably not going to make it.
Jenn didn't have a coach or training program. She didn't even own a watch.
She just rolled out of bed every morning, downed the veggie burger, and ran as far and
as fast as she felt like -- which usually turned out to be about 20-miles.
So she says to me, "You know, I never really discussed this with anyone, because it sounds
pretty pretentious, but I started running ultras to become a better person."
I thought, "Man, if you could run a hundred miles, you'd be in this zen state.
You'd be the fucking Buddha bringing peace and a smile to the world."
In my case, it didn't work. I'm the same old punk-ass as ever, but there's
always a hope that it would turn you into the person you want to be -- a better, more
peaceful person. She kept going on.
"You know, when I'm out on a long run, the only thing at life that matters is finishing
the run. For once my brain isn't going blah, blah,
blah. Everything quiets down.
And the only thing going on is pure flow. It's just me and the movement and the motion.
That's what I love. Just being a barbarian, running through the
woods. You know, listening to Jenn was like communing
with the ghost of Caballo Blanco. So, I said to her, "You know, it's weird how
much you sound like this guy I met in Mexico. I'm heading down there in a few weeks for
this race he's putting on with the Tarahumara." "No way!"
"And I think Scott Jurek" -- you know, the greatest ultra-distance runner in the world,
I think there's a chance he may be there too." "You're shitting me!" the budding Buddha exclaimed.
"Really? Can me and my friend go? Oh shit, we got midterms. Hang on. I'm going to have
to pull a fast one on them. Give me till tomorrow." And the next morning, as promised, I got this
message from Jenn. "My mom thinks you're a serial killer who's
going to murder us in the desert." >> [Laughter] Chris McDougall: "It's totally worth the risk.
So where do we meet you guys?" So that was it. That became the genesis.
A couple days later, against all odds, I suddenly found myself in El Paso, Texas, with Jenn,
who gave herself a black eye; Billy Bonehead Barnett, who passed out in my bathtub; a guy
named Barefoot Ted, who trained by running barefoot in the streets of Burbank pulling
his wife and daughter in a rickshaw; guy named Scott Jurek, who actually is a legitimate
runner, a 7-time winner of the Western States 100, course record holder for the Badwater
ultra marathon Death Valley, and myself. And we ended up heading down for this race
with the Tarahumara and Caballo Blanco. Every step of the way I assumed was going
to be the last step, especially when -- on his first day as a guide -- Caballo lost two
out of the six people that were part of his group.
But eventually, he actually pulled off this race.
And it was beyond anything I could have expected. Rather than it being one of these head-to-head,
drudge matchs where, you know, each runner blazes off for glory, it ended up becoming
like one of these old time, guitar-picker battles, you know, where people sort of swap
chords back and forth and sort of learn from each other and then, gradually things build
and build and build until they're both competing with the same song, with the same techniques
back and forth -- that's what it became. Rather than "Americans vs. Indians", it became
two groups learning from each other, and then, once they had adopted each other's techniques,
then going at it. And by the time I got back, I felt like I
was on to something much deeper and broader and more complex than I ever imagined.
It was not about a sport. It was really about a way of life -- about
how this human animal has developed and what it's meant to be.
And I'm always left with this analogy about, you know -- you take an animal and you stick
it in a zoo and look what happens, you know? That animal becomes kind of antisocial and
grumpy and lethargic and sexually dysfunctional and has eating disorders and essentially -- I
don't want to point any fingers, but -- like us, you know?
Then you take that animal out, and you put it back into its natural setting -- where
it's designed to do all these mechanisms are meant for -- and suddenly, it's a whole different
creature, you know? Much less aggressive, much less cannibalistic,
not competing against its species, but with its species. Much calmer.
And that's what I think we found ourselves today, you know?
We forget that we are, you know, all this great digital stuff around us, but we're basically
animals. And if that animal gets an opportunity to
use its body the way it was intended, things fall into place.
When we lose that opportunity, then we start to have problems.
And we can dismiss the Tarahumara as being this kind of quirky, funky, ancient, indigenous
tribe that has nothing to do with us. Or, we can look at them and say, you know,
"Let's be humble and realize that there are some serious transferable skills that we need
to look for, or else we're going to continue to suffer the consequences that we see all
around us today." So thanks a lot guys.
I hope that was worthwhile. And if you have any questions, fire away. >> [Clapping] Chris McDougall: Yeah. >> [pause] Chris McDougall: He's telling me how handsome
I am. >> Could you use the mic to for questions?
It's right over there. Chris McDougall: I'm doing fine without you. >> [pause] Chris McDougall: You're talking about my good
looks and _______ Q I was saying I got a chance to read the
book and found it wonderful as a historian, as a running inspiration, as a runner who's
marvelous in that respect. One of the parts of the book is quite sad
is that, any observation of the Tarahumara is going to impact on them.
And I was interested to know, What's happened to them since the book's come out?
And the attention that may have been drawn to them as a result of the book? Chris McDougall: Yeah, that's a great question.
And it's exactly the question that Caballo wrestled with for a long time before he decided
to launch this race. You know, the Tarahumara have voluntarily
lived in seclusion. That's the way they wanted it.
And so, to have some arrogant outsider show up and say, "Here's what you need is this
race." Caballo always said, "They don't need anything.
They're doing fine on their own." He offered to them; they accepted.
If they weren't interested, they would not turn up for the race.
Caballo's thinking is, "Look, they're backs are against the wall.
The Mexican government keeps pushing roads in here.
The drug cartels are dominating the region. It's a great place to grow drugs, because
you can't get helicopters or SUVs down there, so drug enforcement can't get down there.
You can grab the Tarahumara and dragoon them into carrying drugs out of the canyon.
Six bodies a week were turning up in the canyon being tossed off the edges of the cliffs.
So Caballo's thought was, "Look, yeah. This is a gamble. This is a risk.
But, it's an appreciable risk, because the payoff could be this validation of the Tarahumara
as the custodians of this lost art. That maybe he could turn into sort of this
U.N. sort of cultural buffer zone around them, where their techniques will be appreciated,
and that area will be sealed off and left for them to run in.
So, it's definitely a gamble, and he recognizes that.
And he's not convinced he's doing the right thing, but he hopes so. Q Thank you. Chris McDougall: Sure thing. >> [pause] Q You mentioned a unique style of running.
Can you describe it, or show it to us? Chris McDougall: Oh. The way they run? Q Yeah. Chris McDougall: Yeah. And I'll tell you,
if you had a five-year-old here, he could show you a lot better than I can.
It's bizarre how complicated we make the simple thing.
You know, when you think about all the animals on Earth.
There's only two that wear shoes -- us, and the ones we hold down and nail it to their
feet. Nobody else wears shoes.
No other animal wears shoes, and yet, they seem to do just fine.
Kids could give a crap what's on their feet, and they do just fine.
The way you run naturally is to run just like any kid does.
Or put it this way, if you take your shoes off right now and you go outside on the sidewalk,
you will learn how to run efficiently really fast.
Because any movement you do that hurts, you won't do twice.
And I can demonstrate if you want, but it's a real simple thing.
Basically, instead of using your heel -- Why on earth would you ever land on your heel?
If I jump off this thing on to the ground, the last thing I want to land on is my bony
heel with my legs straight. Running is essentially jumping. It's a series
of controlled jumps. So when you jump, you know, you want to land
on the balls of your feet and bend your knees for shock absorption. Real simple.
You can't bend your knees if your leg's in front of you.
You can't bend it if your heel's like this. That's painful. This is not painful.
So natural running technique is, essentially, to land on the ball of your foot, touch your
heel down, and lift the foot behind like that. It's all you're essentially doing is falling
forward through space -- kind of like you're like, belly-flopping into a pool or skydiving.
And, as you fall, you put a foot in front of you as you come around -- and that's it.
It's so simple. I can get everybody outside and, in ten minutes,
teach it to you and you can, you know, you'll have it mastered.
Does that help? Q Yep. Q Hi. Thank you.
I apologize if you answered these questions already, but I was wondering -- I've been
trying qi running lately, and my calfs are burning, so I was wondering if you had any
suggestions there. And then, two was, Do you have any mantras,
because I've been trying effortless, but I wanted to hear what you think about. Chris McDougall: Yeah. There's a couple good
ones. The thing about the burning calfs is, take
a day off. You know, if you go to the gym today and tomorrow
you're sore, take a day off. I think the thing with running is, people
are expecting pain -- they're expecting it to hurt -- and, at the first sign of pain,
they assume that's an injury. That's not an injury; that's just muscular
soreness. So yeah qi is really good.
So is pose, evolution -- all these running methods which are teaching to run the ball
of your foot are fine. Just be patient with it.
I think -- the best advice I got was from a guy named Barefoot Ken Bob, who said, "The
best way to learn is to let your feet tell you."
The problem with trying to learn how to run with your shoes on is, you're not getting
any feedback. So when you do something wrong, you're not
sure. You're constantly trying to sort of second
guess what your body is doing. When you're in your bare feet like, you know
instantly that's right or wrong. So I would say -- Are you using shoes to -- ? Q Yes. [laughing] Chris McDougall: Take them off. Honestly,
take them off. I was very slow -- I had to break a toe and
couldn't get my feet into shoes before I learned that lesson.
And then, when I tried to run with that broken toe, I had to go barefoot.
The difference is unbelievable -- the amount of feedback you get.
If your posture is a little bit off in shoes, you don't notice it.
In your feet, it hurts. So you just change. You become much more erect.
Your feet's down underneath your hips. So, number one, I would definitely go barefoot
to practice. Number two, again, something else Barefoot
Ken Bob said is that, "When in doubt, relax." If your stiffness or soreness, you are tense
somewhere. Just sag into it, relax, breathe out.
Your body should feel light and weightless. I mean, kids love the feeling of weightlessness.
And if you ever want to see if a motion is biomechanically efficient, figure out whether
a kid or a boxer does it. You know? You watch boxers, how they move -- light and
loose, bouncing, right? Same with kids.
Kids love to be on trampolines and swings and things like that.
They like to feel weightless, and your running should feel the same way.
So, when in doubt, relax. Caballo's thing was "easy, light, smooth,
and fast." Focus on 'easy' first, because if that's all
you get, that ain't so bad. Then work on 'light', then 'smooth', and when
you have all those three things, then worry about 'fast'.
Most people do the opposite. They go with 'fast' first, and then try to
make it easy. He says, "Reverse that." So good luck. Q Any mantra? Chris McDougall: You know, pretty much not.
Those things, "When in doubt, relax." "Easy, light, smooth and fast."
But, I just find running -- yeah, I just do it, you know?
I just sort of see what's out there and have a good time.
Sure, thanks. Q Hi. I thought your book was excellent. Chris McDougall: Thanks. Q It was very inspiring as a runner.
In the book, you speak a lot about the Running Man Theory, about why we run -- or why we
originally ran. Could you just elaborate on that maybe a little
bit for people that haven't read the book? Chris McDougall: Yeah. I was debating whether
to get into that in this talk too, but it can sort of octopus out in so many directions.
But it's essentially this. The idea of the Running Man Theory is that,
you know, running is not something we just sort of picked up like we developed bungee
jumping or triathlons or cycling. Running is actually what we are genetically
designed to do. It is our number one, dominant characteristic
as an animal. And it's based on a couple of mysteries in
human history which have never been solved. Number one is this one too.
Two million years ago, the human brain exploded in size, you know.
Australopithecus had this tiny, little, peanut brain.
And suddenly, we get these big old, melon heads about two million years ago.
You can only support a brain of that size if that organism has a regular source of dense
caloric energy. Essentially, homo erectus was eating dead
animals, having animal protein -- scientific fact.
Two million years ago, we're eating dead animals. The only problem is, the first weapon only
appeared 200,000 years ago. So somehow, you've got a gap with about two
million years -- somehow we're getting food with no weapons to kill the animals.
We're obviously not using our like, little sissy weapons, because we've got nothing,
you know? We got no claws, no fangs, no strength, no
speed. I mean, Usain Bolt is the fastest human in
history, and a squirrel can outrun Usain Bolt. [laughter] So how are we getting these dead
animals with no weapons? The Running Man Theory is, we were essentially
running animals to death -- that, what made human life viable two million years ago -- and
for a long time -- was the fact that we had these unique characteristics as long distance
runners. We were hunting pack animals.
Most animals vent heat by respiration -- they breathe it out.
We vent heat predominantly by perspiration. Which means that, if you're running against
a horse, at about ten miles, that horse has a choice.
It's either going to breathe or it's going to cool off, but it ain't doing both.
We can. There's a lot of other sort of physiological
components of this. What I find most intriguing about the Running
Man Theory is that the way we do this is not an individual.
You don't go up by yourself and run an animal to death.
It had to be a pack. The pack has to hunt together.
It's the only way it's going to work, which means old people, young people, men and women.
And what you find is that, if that theory is true, it essentially gives you a culture
much like the Tarahumara. The hunting pack theory to be accurate, that
means that old people can run as well as young people.
And that's actually born out by marathon finishing times.
People who are in their 60's are still running the same speed they were running back when
they were 19, 20 years old. You don't lose your top-end speed in endurance
contests for 45 years, unlike any other physical activity.
You get into long distances, you know -- women as sprinters, you guys suck; you're the worst.
There's not a fast woman sprinter ever. There are high school kids today that can
beat the fastest woman of all time. Even as milers, you guys are worse than mediocre.
The fastest woman miler did a 4:15. Again, I could throw a rock and hit a high
school boy somewhere in New York who can run faster than 4:15.
But, you get to 50-miles or a hundred miles, and suddenly, it's anybody's game.
The top female ultra marathoners can beat any guy on the planet in a head-to-head contest.
Emily Baer, back in 2008, was in the Hard Rock 100, one of the toughest 100-mile races.
She finished in the top ten while stopping to breast-feed her baby at the aid stations.
[laughter] So she beat basically 500 of the best, male, ultra runners on planet Earth,
while breast-feeding her kid on a super-hard 100-mile course.
So you have all these little bits of circumstantial evidence out there.
The fact that, as distances get longer, women get stronger, that old guys never lose their
top-end speed, that we vent this heat, that we have all this elastic recoil in our legs.
All those things add up to a picture of humans as being designed to be basically like a pack
of dogs, you know? When you live like that pack of dogs, you
can't be greedy, you can't be covetous, you can't hold grudges and be pissed off at the
other guy, because you've got to function as a pack.
Essentially, that left us with what the Tarahumara still are today. Q Thanks. Chris McDougall: Sure thing. Q Hi. I have two questions, actually.
One is, Are there any similarities between the Tarahumara and other tribes known for
running, like the Kenyans are very famous runners and others.
Have you studied them? And are there similarities? Chris McDougall: Yeah. What's kind of cool
about this Running Man Theory is that -- it was both cool and vexing at the same time
-- when these anthropologists at Utah and Harvard developed this theory that humans
ran animals to death. You know, anything is great in theory.
I can have a theory that "if you flap your arms, you're going to fly," but you got to
find someone who can actually do it, or else the theory ain't worth a damn.
So if humans are physiologically capable in theory of running an animal to death, there
should be some human out there somewhere on planet Earth that can do it.
And they actually found them in the Kalahari bushmen -- to this day still do the same thing.
They still run animals to death. And you find tales throughout all -- basically
every indigenous culture on the planet -- the aborigines, the Hopi Indians, the Navahos,
the Seris. Around the planet, there are all tales of
people who ran animals to death. To this day, Hopi and Navaho still have long
running rituals and traditions. So, yeah, there are sort of markers throughout
the planet of people who still practice the same things.
You mentioned that the Kenyans there -- one thing I should be sure to distinguish.
A lot of times people say to me, "Yeah. Listen, if these guys are such hot shit, how come
they're not winning the Olympic marathon?" You know, Kenyans have become specialists
at a really artificial form of running. We've taken an endurance event -- the marathon
-- we've basically turned it into a sprint. They have -- same way Jamaicans are very good
at sprinting, and guys from Lake Placid are very good at bobsledding -- Kenyans have taken
certain natural and geographical advantages and made themselves specialists in a real,
artificial form of competition. So if you took a bunch of Tarahumara and dropped
them off in the Rift Valley among the Nandi, you know, would they run as fast as the Kenyans?
Probably, if they cared to. But, the Kenyans are really essentially no
different than anybody else. Physiologically, they're the same.
They're just better, and they work harder at doing what we could all do.
Another question, Bill? Q Yeah, so. I've been experimenting with barefoot
running. And actually, I feel it's like much more fun
than normal running, because you get a lot of sensation in your feet.
But sometimes like, all the sidewalks in my neighborhood are like this super-bumpy like
kind of gravelly sidewalk, and it's actually very painful.
So I find that like, I can't even really run in my neighborhood.
If you are running barefoot, like what do you do when you encounter surfaces like that? Chris McDougall: Yeah, I mean you can buy
these things too. Have you seen these things? Q Yeah, that's what I have actually. Chris McDougall: And these are too painful
for you? Q No, no. It's fine with that. I was just
wondering if there's a way to go fully barefoot. Chris McDougall: Yeah. I mean, I do.
Where I live out in the _____ of Pennsylvania, it's all paved, asphalt farm roads.
What I do sometimes, if I'm heading off somewhere where I don't know what kind of road's ahead,
I'll just jam a pair of these in the back of my shorts, and so I'll run in my bare feet,
you hit something painful, jam these on, keep running, and take them off again.
And think about it too, it's not a question of, you know, "shoes vs. bare feet".
It's a question of what your shoes are doing to your feet.
And, you know, protection is fine up until the point where the protection starts to dominate
and control what your foot's doing. But some kind of minimal protection of your
feet, you know, Ice Age cavemen were wearing their own handcrafted shoes.
So I think that's fine. My beef is with these like, big, supportive,
motion control -- just the fact 'motion control' -- if you hear that word, stay the hell away.
That's my beef with those kind of shoes. Q Thanks. Chris McDougall: Sure thing. Anybody else?
Yep. Q I just like to say thanks for writing the
book. I read it back in June, and at that point,
I was on the verge of quitting running, because I've had so many chronic injuries.
Since I read that, I went and found a pose coach.
Last several months I've been training -- completely transformed -- miraculously, all of those
chronic injuries have just disappeared. Actually, I've been training with Lee Saxby,
who I think you know, in London. Chris McDougall: Oh yeah. So you have been
training with Lee Saxby? Q Yeah. Actually I have been training sessions
with Lee just last weekend. Chris McDougall: Oh, good. He's fabulous. Q Straight away. I think the same thing happened
to you? He sort of video-ed me 30 seconds, knew what
the problem was. Chris McDougall: Mind if I interrupt you and
tell this story? Do you mind if I interrupt you and tell them
this story? Q Oh, no. No. Please go ahead. Chris McDougall: Hang on. The one time I've
gotten injured in the past couple of years was the time I went back to wearing shoes.
I thought, "Okay, now I run like Caballo, I am technologically perfect. I am invulnerable."
I put on a pair of shoes, because we've got a lot of snow in Pennsylvania.
And a couple weeks later, I've got this big, blinding heel pain.
What in the hell's going on, because I'm on the verge of publishing this book about how
you can run injury-free forever -- friggin' injured. [laughter]
And I went back to the usual routine, went back to the sports medicine doctors and the
podiatrists and they told me the same old bullshit that does not work, you know?
"Roll your foot on the golf ball, stretch the calf, wear an ice plant."
I mean, it's bizarre to me that plantar fasciitis is as prevalent -- it's like chlamydia, and
nobody can get rid of this thing. And these guys just keep dishing out the same
old stuff. It does not work.
I happened to be in London -- to actually go to a seminar -- and someone told me, "Yeah,
you should go see this guy, Lee Saxby. He's a running coach."
I'm like, "You understand? I'm perfect. I'm the perfect runner.
I've got no problem with my technique. It's something else."
I go to see this dude, and he's a smart-ass Brit. [laughter]
And he's like, "Let me see your run." And I'm like, "All right, fine."
So I run down the sidewalk. He videotaped me for like, literally, 30 seconds.
I run from like here to there and back. He snapped shut the viewfinder, and he's like,
"Okay, you're cured. Problem solved." I've had this problem now for six months.
I've tried everything. So I go, "All right, what is it?"
He's like, "Describe to me the way you run." So I described, you know, the perfect Tarahumara
running technique. And he's like, "Yeah, look at this."
And he shows me the video. I'm doing the exact opposite of what I think
I'm doing. You know, I think I'm leaning forward, with
my feet under my hips, on the ball of my foot. Instead, I'm way back here.
My body weight is over my heels, not over my hips.
I'm leveraging my body over my ankles like that.
And I'm not landing on my forefoot; I'm landing on my heel.
But I couldn't sense it. To me, it felt like forefoot is actually banging
on my heel. This dude -- hand before God -- you know,
I know it sounded some bizarre, evangelistic, 'demons be gone' baloney -- this dude cured
me in and out. I walked out the door, and the heel pain was
gone. It has never come back.
So this is the guy we're talking about -- this guy, Lee Saxby. Q I had the same kind of thing.
I've been training with a pose coach for four months now, but I had this problem with calf
pain, and Lee did the exact same thing. He did it with me in 30 seconds.
That I was bending at the hip, not at the ankles.
Anyway, but that was my question. So, it's fair to say that I'm very bought
into this idea of us being evolved to run and to do it in a natural way.
I'm testing the Paleo Diet and these kinds of things.
There's one thing that sort of concerns me about sort of ultra running and ultra distance
events, anything that would be considered ultra.
I've read a few things from some -- the guy that says evolutionary fitness, primal blueprints.
Some of these guys are also -- have these similar ideas that we should train in the
way that [inaudible] Chris McDougall: Is that Archivanie? Q Yeah, I think that was the guy. I think
he recently posted an article. I thought it was questionable, but I wanted
to see what you thought -- that marathon running is bad for you.
And he cited a few things. A couple things that concern me -- it's damaging
to the liver, it's damaging to the kidneys. So the question is, you know, At what point
are we doing things that are artificial like, you know, running a marathon is not something
that we were evolved for. That's highly unlikely scenario in a hunter-gatherer.
You know, you wouldn't just run flat out for 26-miles or whatever it was.
So have you any ideas as to, What is a good way to tackle ultra events, you know?
Is it to do with intensity? Is it to do with the distance, you know?
And do you have any thoughts about it's potentially damaging beyond your mechanics [undecipherable]? Chris McDougall: Yeah, it's a great question.
I mean, I think I'm not actually a big fan of big, urban marathons, for that reason.
Because it really creates like, this 'moral obligation' to do more than you may want to
-- or are ready for. I mean, nowadays, if you start to run, you
make the mistake of telling anybody that you're running, the first question out of their mouth
is going to be, "Have you run a marathon? When are you going to run a marathon?
How fast can you run a marathon?" You know? And if you tell them you did a 4-hour marathon
as opposed to 3:59.59 like -- one's great and one sucks.
Who gives a shit? Who cares? This emphasis on doing this arbitrary distance
in this arbitrary amount of time -- I think it forces people beyond their capabilities.
I mean, if you're learning how to swim, you know?
They don't put you in a pool and show you doggie-paddle and go, "Have you swum English
Channel? When are you going to swim English Channel?
How fast can you swim the English Channel?" You learn how to swim gradually.
It's fun first. You go off the sliding board and off the diving
board. You play Marco Polo.
And I wish people would learn how to run the way they learn how to swim.
One thing about distance running is -- and I made this distinction between the way the
Tarahumara run and the way the Kenyans run marathons.
You know, we are endurance animals. We are not fast. And yet, we emphasize speed
all the time, you know? A hundred yard dash, and How fast can you
do a marathon? We're not fast. Our strength is not running
like the animals we're trying to kill, you know?
If you make an animal -- if you try to make that animal run as fast as it can, as long
as it can until it dies -- if we do the same thing, we'd have two corpses out there on
this event. What we're really good at is, surge and recover,
surge and recover -- go hard and back off again.
It's funny, there's a guy named Jeff Galloway, who came up with this form of running marathons,
where you basically run ten minutes, and walk a minute -- run ten, walk one.
This guy gets blistered all the time. People are, "Agh, that's not running."
That's exactly what running is supposed to be, surge and recover.
So this whole question of whether marathons are damaging.
You know, I think the anthropological evidence is pretty strong that we evolved -- I mean,
for instance, to run an antelope to death -- you know how long that takes?
Two to five hours. I mean, it's bizarre how the heat frustration
time for big game exactly correlates to the finishing times for marathon.
So, if you look down from, you know, Mars on November first, and you see like tens of
thousands of people running through Queens, I mean, it would look like some bizarre animal
panic. Yet, somehow we feel this atavistic desire
to gather in large groups and run for two to five hours.
So, my speculation -- it's not fact; it's speculation -- is that, this is what we're
designed to do. So, it's good for us.
But, through training and acclimation, and not just by, you know, moral obligation. Q But if you do it right and recover properly,
then there's no reason to -- those people maybe go to marathons without training [inaudible] Chris McDougall: Yeah. I mean, I like the
way -- I like the whole culture of ultra running. Even though people are running a hundred miles,
it's so much more relaxed. Nobody gives a crap how fast you run a hundred
miles. They can't believe you did it. [laughter]
So, you know? And the thing about ultras too, is again,
it's really kind of cool to the whole hunting pack thing.
You can't run an ultra by yourself. You need to have support there.
You need to have a pacer. You need to have friends waiting to give you
like M & M's at the 15-mile mark. There's something very comforting and social
and group-oriented and non-competitive about ultras as opposed to marathons, which are
all about like -- [deet] [deet] [deet] [deet], you know, and like just sprint and pass the
other guy at the finish line, so. Again, I think Barefoot Ken Bob's advice is
the best, "when in doubt, relax" -- and you'll be fine. Q [inaudible] Chris McDougall: Sure. Thank you. Q Thanks for coming today.
So, you know, you've talked a lot about technique. And this is very important.
I've done Pose myself. I realize, you know -- video analysis, working
with a coach -- it's pretty critical to really making the shift away from being a heel-striker
to running naturally. Do you support any one program to do this?
Do you suggest, you know, a certain path that people go on to relearn how to run? Chris McDougall: Absolutely, buy this book,
number one. Step one. [laughter] -- in quantity.
No, I'm sorry, do you want to finish your question? Q Pose. Any other programs that are out there
that people do? Any of the certifications or seminars that
happen? Do you have any that you can recommend that
people do? Because, I think it sounds great that, you
know, this is a new way to run, but there is a significant amount of work that has to
be done for people really to relearn how to get off of, you know, running on their heels. Chris McDougall: Yeah, it's true.
There's a significant amount of work to be done, but it's unbelievable how quickly you
can do it. Are you guys familiar with the Pose method
that he's referring to? The Pose method was invented by a guy named
Dr. Nicholas Romanov, who was originally part of the Soviet Olympic sports training system.
And he was trying to answer the same questions like, You know, we've got every eye here.
We tell them to go faster or do this or that, but we never actually tell them how they're
supposed to run. And so, he started studying the physiology
and the biomechanics of runners. And what he found was that, all runners -- no
matter what the distance -- the fastest guys are always in the same pose at a certain point.
Like, you can freeze-frame Jesse Owens or Usain Bolt or Frank Schroeder -- any runner,
any distance, throughout history -- and at some point, they're going to have that leg
bent with the foot directly underneath the hips and leaning forward, letting gravity
pull them forward. This guy named Arthur Lydiard, the great New
Zealand coach, talked about pushers vs. pullers. And he could watch the start of a race -- hundreds
of guys in a cross-country race and he can go, "That guy ain't going to win. That guy
ain't going to win. That guy might win." And the reason why was, he was looking for
'pushers' vs. 'pullers'. Pushers are pushing off with muscular strength.
Pullers were just pulling their foot up as they fell forward through space.
So Romanov -- back in early 80's, maybe even earlier -- developed this running method called
the 'pose method'. And it's so stinking simple, you can't believe
it. I actually spent two days with Romanov down
in Florida. Spent one whole day, where he's explaining
all the physiology and the history and the antecedents.
And then, he took me outside to actually teach me the method, and it was like half an hour.
I mean, no other activity -- you know, you try and learn how to play tennis or to fence,
it takes weeks. This dude, in 30 minutes, can radically transform
your running style. But what I find is that pose, qi, evolution
running -- they're all essentially, I believe, the same thing.
The difficulty with those methods, though, is -- and I really wish I had listened to
Barefoot Ken Bob, all these barefoot dudes. You know, you kind of disregard them, because
they call themselves 'barefoot' something? [laughter]
Do you ever see Ken Bob, you know? The guy looks like a troll.
He's got this beard, and he's crazy-looking. But what these dudes said was, You need to
remove the obstacle for the feedback. You've got to take the shoes off, so.
I tried to learn qi and pose. What I had to do is, constantly mentally remind
myself of all the stuff I was doing. It was kind of this constant checklist of
body angles and stuff. But if you take your shoes off, you get that
instantly. So, if I were doing it all over again, I would
take the shoes off first, and then pick up any one of them.
Even CrossFit. Have any of you guys do CrossFit? Q Yeah, that's what I do. Chris McDougall: Yeah, I was going to tell
you. You can kick my ass. I'm sure you can. Q I went to a CrossFit CFE, CrossFit endurance
seminar last weekend, actually. Chris McDougall: Those guys actually have
the best "before and after" videos I've ever seen online for running.
You watch the 'before' and then 'after' and the transformation that these CrossFit coaches
do with runners is unbelievable. Q Yeah. Chris McDougall: Yeah, I think any one of
these styles, but the one difference I would make is, go bare. Q [inaudible] Chris McDougall: Sure. Thanks. >> So, we're right at time, but thank you. Chris McDougall: You got one person there? Q Sorry. I'll be really quick.
Thank you so much for coming today. Chris McDougall: Yeah, thank you. Q Very appreciative of having you.
I haven't read your book, but I was mesmerized and very inspired by your speech today.
You're an eloquent presenter, so thank you. Chris McDougall: Oh thanks. Q I just did my first half marathon last weekend
in Indianapolis. Chris McDougall: Great, great. Q And there was one guy running barefoot,
and he got all the attention, because everyone's like -- and he even told me, he was like,
"Take off your shoes." I'm like, "Are you crazy, dude? Like, what
are you talking about?" But, I'm just curious about how advertisers
-- like a Nike -- is reacting to all this publicity.
I work in advertising, so I'm just kind of curious about -- like, when Supersize Me came
out, obviously McDonald's took a huge loss in revenue and cut, so I was just kind of
curious, have they'd approached you in Lancaster? Yay, I have family from there.
But, like kind of what it's been, in terms of all the publicity like kind of where it's
been at. Chris McDougall: Well, let me ask you, "What
would you do if you're facing this kind of crisis or this scandal as an advertiser/marketing
person? What would you do?" Q [laughing] If I was Nike? Chris McDougall: Yeah. Q I'd be hurting right now.
I don't know. I'd probably -- I might approach you. >> [voices] Chris McDougall: Yeah, you'd design something
else and try and capitalize on it, right? What they've essentially done is, they've
gone turtle and gone silent. And I think it's really scandalous.
And I keep waiting also too for, you know, "C'mon, journalistic watchdogs. Wake the fuck
up." And, "You guys keep repeating the same shit
over and over again." I mean -- not to be too profane and antagonistic.
I'm half-Sicilian, I can't help it, but -- yesterday, there's an article in the New York Times,
"Is running barefoot good for you?" I thought, "Wait, why isn't this story, 'Is
running in shoes good for you?'" Where is the scientific evidence that these
things do anything? There's never, ever been an experiment or
a study which indicates that running shoes do anything to prevent injuries.
And yet, the default position is somehow, "These are good, and bare feet are bad."
So, what are the major shoe manufacturers doing?
They're basically keeping their mouth shut. They've gotten nothing.
There's no science on their side. So essentially, they're going to keep quiet,
wait for this to blow over, and just hope that people just keep sleepwalking, you know?
Again, I'm not really faulting the shoe companies, you know?
They want to sell garbage, they can sell garbage. It's up to people, who are supposed to be
more discriminating, to examine this stuff and broadcast it.
I mean, I read you these quotes from the editor of Runners World, you know?
Why isn't this dude owning this thing? Well, you know, you might suggest that, "because
his magazine sells a lot of running shoes." So their response today has been absolute
silence. I've not seen a single quote from anybody
about anything responding to this thing yet. Q Interesting. Thank you. Chris McDougall: Yeah, thanks a lot. Q [inaudible] Chris McDougall: No. I mean, there's still
shoes. You know, barefoot is barefoot, and there's
been sort of a confusion about terminology. No one's really quite sure.
I saw someone refer to it as 'natural running' the other day.
I thought, "That's probably the best term I've heard."
Bill Rogers, you know, the great American marathoner -- guy actually owns running shoe
stores -- he said, you know, "The shoe that allows your foot to act as if it's barefoot,
that's the shoe you want." And that's essentially what it's all about.
Protection is always better than no protection, but not to the point where the protection
starts to take over and the give orders. Kind of like, you know, the Terminator, the
cyborgs have become self-aware? You don't want the shoes to become self-aware.
You want your foot to give the orders, and not the shoe.
So, I mean, this one's good. I mean, there are plenty of shoes out there.
What I like about this one is the fact that, everywhere your foot goes, this thing goes
too. It's never sort of left behind.
That's it? Cool. Hey guys, thank you.
Thanks. >> [Clapping]
