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Summary and Analysis of Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Ever Seen
Based on the Book by Christopher McDougall
By Worth Books OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4404-2
CHAPTER 1
Summary
Chapter 1
Christopher McDougall has been searching Mexico's Sierra Madre for Caballo Blanco (the White Horse) for days. He's desperate to find this mythical man, hoping he'll share the Tarahumara's ancient secrets about running. The Tarahumara are a tribe of superathletes renowned for their ability to run great distances on the tough terrain of the Barrancas, the remote desert canyons they've called home for generations. Since Caballo Blanco has been living among them, he's the perfect link to the outside world. Finally, Caballo walks into the same remote hotel lobby as Christopher.
Chapter 2
At 6'4" and 230 pounds, Christopher has been through a number of experiences that have been physically testing — from long-distance mountain biking to river rafting to reporting from African war zones — yet he has sustained the most injuries while training to become a marathoner.
While on another assignment in Mexico, Christopher came across an article about the Tarahumara. The small, reclusive tribe has no crime, heart disease, obesity, drug addiction, depression, or carbon emissions. They live off barbequed mouse, ground corn, and alcohol; their economic system is based on trading favors and beer; and they can all, regardless of age, run for two days straight on rough canyon trails.
Chapter 3
Runner's World assigned Christopher to cover the Tarahumara. Salvador Holguín, a municipal administrator by day and mariachi singer by night, thought he might be able to find Arnulfo Quimare, the greatest living Tarahumara runner. However, it's not so easy to find the Tarahumara — their homes are both notoriously difficult to reach and extremely well hidden in the Barrancas. The canyons are also home to ruthless rival drug cartels, whose members are as wary of journalists — and even singers — as they are of the police. While driving into the canyons, Christopher and Salvador are passed by a narcotraficante truck. For several harrowing minutes, the truck stops next to them on the dusty road. Salvador and Christopher hold their breath. Finally, the truck moves on. Eventually, the duo gets lost in the woods and ends up at the edge of a canyon — just as night falls.
Chapter 4
Christopher and Salvador leave their truck and take a two-day hike down into the canyon, through narrow crevices filled with water. When they finally arrive, Arnulfo Quimare's home is so well camouflaged that Christopher doesn't see it until Salvador points it out.
The Tarahumara prefer to live far from even their fellow people. There is a specific etiquette for approaching their homes because they "like to be visible only if they decide to be." Asking direct questions of them is rude — making Christopher's role of interviewer that much more difficult. This may stem from their past of being harmed by "outsiders," like the bounty hunters during the days of the Wild West or the Jesuit missionaries with their Bibles and influenza.
Arnulfo and his family are notorious even within the Tarahumara community for their running prowess.
Chapter 5
Ángel Nava López runs the Tarahumara schoolhouse and tells Christopher that he'd have to be with the people for years before they'd feel comfortable with him. He also tells Christopher about Caballo Blanco, who's been coming around for a decade. Frightened by his light skin color, flame-colored hair, and thin body, Ángel's students thought Caballo Blanco was an ariwará — a soul of the dead — when they first encountered him in the countryside ten years earlier.
Ángel tells Christopher about the first time he met Caballo Blanco. When Caballo arrived at the village a decade ago, he was wearing little clothing and carrying nothing. Ángel gave him some pinole and water and was entertained, yet confused, by Caballo's history, spoken in mediocre Spanish. Then Caballo left the way he came. Apparently, he had been staying in a hut he'd built across the Batopilas mountains and was living off the land while he ran — the Tarahumara way. Today, the Tarahumara often stay in Caballo's hut on long treks, so they welcome him to eat and rest in their community when he visits.
Chapter 6
Ángel invites Christopher to stay the night at the school. In spite of the hospitality, Christopher worries that the story of Caballo Blanco is a myth Ángel made up to protect his people from outsiders' inquiries.
Ángel's students play the running game rarájipari, an important game to the tribe. Played with a ball and two teams, it represents how we cannot control life, so we have to constantly adjust. It requires the support of the whole community instead of glorifying a single person's talent. It also demands each of the Tarahumara virtues: "strength, patience, cooperation, dedication, and persistence."
Ángel tells Christopher that he has seen Caballo recently: He was on his way to Creel. So Christopher and Salvador prepare for the two-day hike back to their truck. Ángel gives Christopher some iskiate — a traditional energizing drink made with chia seeds — to give him strength for the trek. After camping overnight, Christopher and Salvador make it back to their truck and drive off in search of Caballo, asking each person they pass if he or she has seen him, getting closer and closer until they end up at the hotel where Chapter 1 began: face to face with Caballo Blanco.
Chapter 7
Caballo, wary about meeting a stranger who seems to know too much, grudgingly begins to answer Christopher's questions.
Skinny, tanned, in dirty running shorts and Teva sandals, and with eyes in a permanent squint from the desert sun, Caballo takes after the Tarahumara in that he runs for transportation and for the joy of it. In fact, he's been running almost the entire day, up and down mountains, just because he felt like it.
The two head to the house of a woman whom Caballo affectionately calls Mamá and they are served beans and cold beer. Eventually, realizing that Christopher means him no harm, Caballo begins to warm up and regales him with stories. Beer and a belly full of food help, too.
Chapter 8
Caballo has a plan, and Christopher's participation is key. But before hearing about it, it's necessary to hear first about Rick Fisher. In the 1990s, Fisher was a talented outdoorsman, and he loved being in the limelight. On a trip to the Barrancas, Fisher and his fiancée, Kitty Williams, met Patrocinio, a somewhat westernized Tarahumara man. Curious about the reclusive tribe's affinity for running, they asked Patrocinio if he would bring them to watch a game of rarájipari. Patrocinio agreed — if they'd pay to supply food to the whole village. Amazed by how talented the Tarahumara were, Fisher had an idea: What if he could get them to compete in the Leadville Trail 100, a famously difficult 100-mile race in Colorado that Kitty's father had been running for years? The incredibly talented but highly reclusive Tarahumara — who run in sandals and rely on chia seeds for sustenance — competing with US ultramarathoners — who have science, medicine, and technology on their side. Who would win, the old world or the new? For someone who loved publicity, this was heaven.
Chapter 9
Leadville is the highest city in North America, is often the coldest, and it's always been wild. Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp used to drink in Leadville's saloons.
At the end of the Cold War, the Leadville mines closed, and the bustling town turned into a ghost town. After hearing about endurance races in California, Ken Chlouber, a former miner, decided to start his own crazy endurance race in Leadville. The town was notoriously tough, so why not use that as its selling point? Chlouber created the race in 1982 — against physician advice. With an altitude of 10,000 feet, the 100-mile-long trail is full of inclines. Fewer than half of the contestants are able to finish the race, and many of them end up in the emergency room. Yet tough races attract a particular type of athlete — a fearless one.
Chapter 10
In August 1992, Fisher went to the Tarahumara village and, thanks to some convincing on Patrocinio's part, brought five Tarahumara men with him back to Colorado to run in the Leadville Trail 100. At the starting line, they struggled to put on the shoes Fisher had purchased for them before making their way to the back of the pack. All of them dropped out before the halfway point.
Patrocinio had recruited runners who lived closest to the new paved road because he thought they'd be the most comfortable with outsiders. Fisher realized that "the easiest Tarahumara to recruit may not be the ones worth recruiting."
The next year, he brought four runners who didn't look like much — two old and not terribly impressive, two young and scared — but three of them began passing other runners in mile 40, running in formation. Ken was surprised by how unfazed they looked at the halfway point. The two older runners, Victoriano Churro and Cerrildo Chacarito, finished first and second, one after the other. One of the younger runners, Manuel Luna, whose shoes had fallen apart at mile 83, finished fifth. At fifty-five, Victoriano was the oldest runner to win in the race's history, and eighteen-year-old Felipe Torres was the youngest runner to ever finish the race. The first non-Tarahumara runner to finish was nearly an hour behind first place.
Chapter 11
After the Tarahumara wowed at the Leadville Trail 100, the media took notice. Suddenly, the Tarahumara had a shoe sponsor (despite hating shoes), ESPN had broadcast rights to the race, and reporters from all the major magazines and newspapers were swooping in for the story. The big question: "Are they unbeatable?" Ken only knew one person who had a chance: Ann Trason.
A community college science teacher, Ann wasn't really a dedicated ultramarathoner, at least not to start — she just enjoyed running. In 1985, she decided to enter her first race: the American River 50-Mile Endurance Run. She struggled at first, but hit her stride later on and ended up setting the female course record (7:09).
That was just the start. She was the female champion of the Western States 100 fourteen times. In one four-year period, she ran an ultramarathon every other month — on average — winning twenty of them. However, while Ann won outright — beating all the men and women — in lots of smaller races, she had never won a major ultra. A man always beat her by a few minutes. But in 1994, she knew her time to win had come.
Chapter 12
The media was focusing on Ann vs. the Tarahumara at the 1994 Leadville 100, claiming that the Tarahumara considered it "shameful to lose to a woman." However, this idea of Tarahumara machismo came from Rick Fisher, not the Tarahumara themselves, since theirs is an egalitarian society.
It looked like Ann would win: She had been improving dramatically and the two best Tarahumara racers were staying home to plant corn, which meant the newcomers wouldn't know the course, while Ann did. She'd won it twice as the fastest female racer. Fisher had convinced these two new runners, recruited from a different town, to come by promising their village food.
In Leadville, Fisher picked fights and acted jealous, power-hungry, and hot-tempered. He refused to allow anyone to come near the Tarahumara runners and demanded money from other competitors if they wanted to take a photo with them. Rockport, an athletic company, was sponsoring the Tarahumara, so they had to wear incongruous Rockport gear in the race, including bright yellow sneakers.
Chapter 13
Dr. Joe Vigil is a famous distance-running coach. He's also data-driven and insatiably curious about different running techniques from around the world. After hearing about the Tarahumara and Ann Trason, people that run a hundred — or thousands — of miles happily and without destroying their bodies, he traveled to Leadville to learn their secrets.
Interestingly, women are overall better at ultrarunning than men, despite the fact that they are behind men in more traditional race distances, like the mile. In fact, more than 90% of women finish the Leadville 100 while only 50% of men do.
This year, when the race began, the Tarahumara surged to the front of the pack. Johnny Sandoval, a distance runner from Colorado, followed close behind, along with Ann. Thirteen miles in, the Tarahumara swapped their running shoes for sandals. At the 40-mile mark, where the runners are required to get their vitals checked, Ann was just in the lead. Taking the lead in an ultrarace can be a death sentence. Up front, you're vulnerable, a prisoner to your pace, while running just behind the leader means you only have to run as fast as you need to — until you push past the lead at the end. By breaking out to the front, Ann was using fear to keep her going.
Chapter 14
In ultrarunning, there are no prizes, fame, wealth, or medals. So unlike other forms of competitive running, ultrarunners don't cheat with steroids or shortcuts. At the Leadville 100, all finishers, regardless of place, get the same metal belt. For that reason, Dr. Vigil thought of ultrarunning as a pure data experiment and could study the runners without skepticism.
Ann made her final push up Pass Agony in agony but nearly two hours ahead of Victoriano's time from the previous year. Not far behind her, the entire Tarahumara team began catching up.
At the 50-mile mark, runners are allowed to be joined by pacers — key to maintaining a runner's health and sanity after a long night and morning. Ann's husband, Carl, who'd been keeping her fed and equipped at all of the aid stations, joined her.
Good pacers are notoriously difficult to find. They must be supportive, strong ringers and be prepared for anything. Fisher took the Tarahumara to a pre-running party in Leadville the night before the race to try to find a pacer for them. Martimano Cervantes, an elder Tarahumara racer, found one quickly: a jovial man with a long beard whom the author nicknames Shaggy. Fisher also convinced an experienced runner who was interested in Tarahumara culture to be a second pacer.
Although twelve minutes behind Ann at the 60-mile mark, the Tarahumaras were in high spirits. In fact, when they left the aid station and jogged up the hill, they were laughing! Ken Chlouber had seen many things, but never that.
Chapter 15
As recently as the 1970s, running was much simpler: Distance runners were outcasts, shoes were essentially sandals with tops, and people weren't terribly competitive. But then money became a factor, specifically when the 1984 Olympic games were opened to professionals.
Dr. Vigil knew all the about the tricks for becoming a better runner. Russian sprinters jumped off high ladders, which strengthened their leg muscles and trained the nerves in their feet to fire more rapidly. Kenyan teens ran 18,000 more miles than their American counterparts. But Dr. Vigil began to think it wasn't only this science that made great runners; it was something else: love.
Emil Zátopek, a Czech soldier, was someone who ran just for the joy of it; he even loved talking with his fellow runners while racing. He had horrible form and would often run in his combat boots through the snow. Over the course of three years in the late 1940s, he went 69–0. At the 1952 Olympics, he ran all of the distance races and won all three, setting records in each. And he was well loved within the racing community.
As kids, we sprint all the time. In fact, we have to be told to slow down. Humankind used to love — and revere — running because it was essential to survival. The Tarahumara never stopped loving running.
Chapter 16
For the first time in his life, Martimano's knee was giving out. He was convinced that Ann, the bruja, put a spell on it. His pacer, Shaggy, stayed with him as Juan Herrera, a young Tarahumara runner, surged ahead.
Ann had a twenty-two-minute lead when Juan got to the 72-mile mark, but then he started gaining on her, passing her with only ten miles to go. Juan finished in 17:30, beating the course record by twenty-five minutes. Ann finished in second with a time of 18:06, beating her previous time by more than two hours and setting a women's record that hasn't been broken. Martimano got third, and the rest of the Tarahumara runners weren't far behind.
Fisher, pleased that his team won but overly protective of them and obsessed with publicity, fame, and money, went nuts, lashing out on the media and everyone around him. He demanded money for photos, he refused to let anyone see or speak with the Tarahumara, and he spread lies in order to drum up even more publicity. In response, these Tarahumara runners decided to avoid Leadville from that point on. And Martimano's pacer — now known as Caballo Blanco — went with them to Mexico.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Summary and Analysis of Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Ever Seen by Worth Books. Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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