Book Love: Born to Run

I have fallen behind a bit on the Blog Every Day in May Challenge but I refuse to give up! Today's topic is "Book Love". Being an English graduate I have a list as long as my arm of my favourite books and quotes but I thought instead of share all of these I would write a post about a book which has recently changed the way I think about things.

"Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World has never seen" bu Christopher McDougall

Besides being the book with the longest name ever it is also a book which looks at the runners who run some of the longest and craziest races in the world - we are talking 100 miles through the desert! It introduces you to some of these runners, why they run, how they got into it, how they feel when they run - it makes you realise that running is such a personal past time!

Running throughout the book is the character of Caballo Blanco (a crazy almost mythical character who lives remotely in a Mexican Canyon and runs miles with nothing but the bear essentials) who is attempting to organise the worlds greatest race between the Tarahumara (the original and only remaining tribe of "Running People") and some of the world's best Ultra runners. This race isnt for publicity but for the love of running and a desire to get back that ancestral connection to running.

Which leads me onto another aspect of the book - the science behind running. I get so sick of hearing people say "It is unnatural to run regularly" and "we weren't built for running" that it was liberating to read different scientific theories for why we are meant to run and why so many of us do so.

It is hard to express the way this book will change the way you view running but everyone I know who has read it uses one word to sum it up - "Inspiring". So whether you are a runner, a fan of epic journeys, science or anthropology this is a must read for you.

And here are just a couple of my favourite quotes (although I could have picked hundreds!):

“If you don't think you were born to run you're not only denying history. You're denying who you are.”

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.”