Natural Born Hero: Christopher Mc Dougall

By TrailRunMag

He’s the most famous as the author of the-book-every-runner-worth-their-salt-has-read-even-if-it’s-passe-to-now-admit-it: Christopher McDougall, the man behind and featured in the classic run novel ‘Born To Run‘. Travelling to New Zealand for the New Zealand Festival Writers Week being held in Wellington in March (from the 12th), the writer chatted to Trail Run Mag about his new book Natural Born Heroes, his approach to running and its growth in popularity around the world.

Casting though across your running-related writing, can you talk to the different reasons you have found within others (‘others’ being your subjects of study) as to why they run?

Think about how weird a spectacle it would be if an alien life form could look down from space and see tens of thousands of humans gathering in cities all over the world to run 26 miles in a giant pack. No other creature acts that way — you don’t see thousands of leopards getting together for a four-hour recreational jog. To me, that speaks to our ancestral roots as long-distance runners. No matter what day-to-day reason we give for getting out for a run, I’m convinced the motivation for all of us is the same: running is our native legacy, our first natural superpower, and some internal instinct never lets us forget.

How and why do you think endurance running can ‘touch’ the average person’s life in a meaningful way?

All you have to do is go for one short run and you’ll have your answer. Who ever came back from a run and didn’t feel better — physically and emotionally? I once asked Anton Krupicka why he runs 200+ miles a week, and he said, “I never came back from a run and thought, ‘Well, THAT was a bad idea.’”

Reading your books, the characters (including yourself) all remain ‘forces of nature’ – that is, they all exhibit in various ways strong personalities, hence the fire and chase for life-inspiration through running – but how does (or could) someone not as full of passion and persistence find their way to a running life?

It’s just playtime. The most addicted runners I know get out there every day because it’s FUN. Focus on fun and you can’t go wrong.

Running technique is everything when it comes to maintaining a running life. True or false and why?

Yes, just like in every other human activity, the secret to doing something for a long time is learning how to do it right. Imagine you belly-flopped every time you tried to dive into the pool. Sooner or later you’d get sick of it and give up. Now imagine someone corrected your form and taught you a graceful, pain-less swan dive. You’d want to keep diving forever. Same thing with the way you hit the ground while running.

As a sweeping generalisation, I tend to find that runners are readers – what part do you think literature (high and low) has played in reinvigorating an interest in running?

For a long time, the running bookshelf was pretty slim. All you had were how-to books of generally useless or obvious advice. There still aren’t many really good adventure books about running out there. Adharanand Finn is just about the only writer who’s doing something interesting, and of course there’s always Dean Karnazes’ classic, “Ultramarathon Man.” Otherwise, I think the renewed interest in running is coming from the shift into trail and ultra-racing, which gets people out into the woods and brings a new sense of playfulness to the sport.

Born To Run was published a while back now – how have you seen the dynamic in the ‘trail/nature/adventure/endurance running’ scene(s) change since then?

Yes, there’s been a huge surge in trailrunning, which I think speaks to an embracing of our ancestral roots as hunting-pack animals.

I recently wrote an editorial in Trail Run Mag, where I stated that technique kept me in trail running and that I was on a mission to die on my feet, of old age, while running through the wilderness. What are your thoughts on the notion of it being possible to run until you drop, be that in your 80s, 90s or older?

I saw Tarahumara geriatrics in their eighties and nineties cruising up switchbacks in the thinnest of sandals. If I’m still moving that way at their age, I’ll be happy. I think it’s all about consistency — do a little every day, and you’ll still be going late in life.

In your latest book, Natural Born Heroes, you travel to Crete to investigate endurance feats of a very different nature to those you covered in Born To Run – can you contrast the lessons you took away from Crete as opposed to those from the Tarahumara?

Really, it’s all the same lesson: as humans, we have far more latent strength and endurance than we realize. Once we remember how to release it, we’re ALL capable of remarkable feats.

What has your journey been since Born To Run reached its crescendo of popularity (and must-read status) among the running crowd, in terms of your life journey but also your personal running journey?

I’ve become a lot more like Barefoot Ted, who only runs for fun. I once asked him how on earth he could run a 24-hour Leadville Trail 100 on only 25 miles of training per week, and he said, ‘Because most people are busy practicing pain. I practice PLEASURE. All my runs are enjoyable, so I’m always ready to run more.” That’s become my motto.

A thematic in your latest book is about ‘unlikely types’ becoming heroes by undertaking physically demanding journeys, and also the ability of an individual to find a ‘hero’ within – “The art of the hero is the art of natural movement.” – what lessons have you gleaned about how ordinary folk can go about finding their hero within?

The first step is to forget about competition and focus on skills. We tend to get all worked up about instant achievement — we all want to get faster and stronger immediately — but I’ve learned that the best way to really access our greatest talents is to forget about instant results and instead focus on the slow process of mastering skills.

How can an Ordinary Joe runner start the journey towards awakening their fascia profunda?

Take off your shoes. Learn how your foot wants to move naturally, without all that cushioning and motion-control gunk in the way, and go from there.

In Natural Born Heroes touch on nutrition and a return to the ancient fatty-meat, low-carb diet which sustained our ancestors until agriculture came to the fore? How do you answer critics crying ‘another fad diet on repeat’ and what does it matter to runners?

It’s not a fad if it’s been around for 2 million years. Humans have thrived on a high fat diet since the dawn of time. The true fad are the white flour/processed sugar which have only been prevalent for the relative blink of an eye.

FIVE QUICKFIRES

If I could only give one piece of advice to a runner, it would be… Focus on fun.

My most treasured experience while running was… Pacing Barefoot Ted over the last four hours of his Leadville Trail 100. We had a fantastic party in the woods, and I grew to appreciate him more than ever.

The worst mistake I ever made on a run outing was… I get lost ALL THE TIME, but I’m not sure I’d call that a mistake. More like regular blessings in disguise.

A place I have always wanted to run but am yet to get to is…Auckland, where Lydiard created the entire sport of recreational running, and Percy Cerutty’s old Stotan camps in Australia.

My next big run adventure is…Getting lost all over Wellington when I’m there for the NZ Festival’s Writers Week. I expect to spend half my time wandering happily around with no idea where I’m going.

Postscript: Christopher McDougall is a guest at the New Zealand Festival Writers Week in Wellington in March. He will discuss extraordinary feats of endurance with journalist Rachel Smalley on 10 March, and the true limits of human potential with four-time world champion adventure racer, Nathan Fa’avae, ultramarathoner, Lisa Tamati, and record-breaking Masters runner, Roger Robinson, on 12 March. See festival.co.nz/writersweek for details.

McDougall will also be leading free fun runs open to runners of all abilities on 9, 10 and 12 March. See meetup.com/WellingtonRunningMeetup for start times and meeting points.

GIVEAWAY: We have TWO Writers Week Bookmark Passes (worth $200 each) to giveaway to Trail Run Mag readers. The Bookmark Pass gives you 15 tickets to Writers Week sessions at the Embassy, BATS and Circa theatres, with 40 events to choose from. Bookmark Passes may also be used to secure multiple tickets to a single event; so why not experience Christopher McDougall’s events with your running group?

The first two readers who:

email chris@trailrunmag.com with the answer to this question:
What is the title of Christopher McDougall’s latest book?

Like Trail Run Mag Facebook
and who are on our email subscriber list (if not already, you can subscribe via the subscribe field found on our homepage, just under the headline image. Look for this on the home page:

The FIRST TWO WHO DO WILL WIN! ENTER NOW!

Editorial: Mix’n’match

By TrailRunMag

This editorial appears in the latest edition of Trail Run Mag (Ed #18), downloadable for FREE here. You can also purchase a subscription on iTunes for your iPad/iPhone or Kindle Fire.

Have you ever bought a new car, perhaps something slightly unusual, and all of a sudden that’s all you see on the roads? Suddenly all you see are burgundy Toyota Tercels everywhere, like a Clone War of obscure imported All Wheel Drive station wagons?

What about a new sport? You start rock climbing and you start to see routes everywhere. Every bluestone rock wall along the highway becomes an imaginary red point, every mountain a wonderland, every quarry a vertical playground. Familiarity and an increased interest in a subject prepares our subconscious mind and more readily attracts our conscious attention.

Long before I was a trail runner I was a hiker, climber and surfer; a generalist. Impatience inspired a natural shift from long hikes to fastpacking and then trail running, but the passion for being in the outdoors, comfortable and physically able, never left. Every hiking trail became a running track and campsites spread along multi-day hikes became water stops on a long run. Looking at maps was like a visual-learner’s version of Choose Your Own Adventure. The pause between ridgelines, peaks and rivers was henceforth measured in hours, not days.

While the outdoors came first and the running second, I often forget this proper order of things. As I’ve spent less time working in the field (hiking, paddling, educating) and more organising other people’s trips and training for trail races I’ve become more specialised. Specificity has had a positive effect on my pace but has resulted in broader limitations and repetitive stress injuries I’d never even heard of.

Over the last few months I’ve been reminded of a number of subjects I’d previously studied but had largely forgotten: Phil Maffetone; Natural Movement Training; and a Renaissance approach to life that assumes specificity = stagnation = death. Reading Christopher McDougall’s (of Born to Run fame) most recent book, Natural Born Heroes, has perfectly tied them all together. Fascinated by the connections, I now can’t help but see Toyota Tercels everywhere I look!

For those who don’t know of him, Phil Maffetone (right) is an old hippy musician with a snow-white pony tail who just happens to be one of the all-time great endurance coaches. He coached the likes of Mark Allen, Mike Pigg and Stu Mittelman at their peak and has worked to improve the endurance of everyone from stealth bomber pilots to Formula One drivers and musicians like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and super-producer Rick Ruben. In short, his approach goes like this: develop your aerobic base (with a heart rate monitor as your guide), eat well, reduce stress, improve brain function.

Natural Movement, a concept largely developed by Frenchman Georges Herbert in the early 1900s, was based on the idea that:

The final goal of physical education is to make strong beings. In the purely physical sense, the Natural Method promotes the qualities of organic resistance, muscularity and speed, towards being able to walk, run, jump, move on all fours, to climb, to keep balance, to throw, lift, defend yourself and to swim.

If this sounds like parkour or an obstacle course race, you’re spot on. The founding father of parkour, David Bell, is known to have drawn heavily on Herbert’s work and philosophy. While the parkour videos you see on YouTube are normally set in urban environments, there’s a rapidly expanding community applying the same concepts to natural environments and physical training in general, regardless of the environment. CrossFit, while perhaps the best-known, is just one of a growing number of generalist approaches to physical preparedness that shun specificity. The incredible explosion of Tough Mudder and Spartan Races is another expression of changing attitude.

I love running trails and I identify as a trail runner, but I’m afraid I’m paying for specialisation with my health and wellbeing. Over the last few months I’ve been training for an obstacle course race and a freaky hybrid called the Survival Run. The training has involved a good amount of running to rebuild my aerobic base, but it’s been mixed with climbing, lifting and carrying. Survival Run even has me sewing, working with leather, crafting packs and (to my girlfriend’s raised eyebrows) learning how to swing a machete. All I can see when I look around are opportunities for movement, adaptation and improvisation. Welcome back to the land of the living, the thriving, the capable!

In the next edition of TRM I’m examining the cross-over of OCR and trail running and I can’t wait to share it with you!

Your mix-it-up or die AU editor, Tegyn Angel

This editorial appears in the latest edition of Trail Run Mag (Ed #18), downloadable for FREE here. You can also purchase a subscription on iTunes for your iPad/iPhone or Kindle Fire.

Run The Planet: in the footsteps of legends

By TrailRunMag

Can an ultra runner who has already run two times around the planet and a beginner who has run a few times around the block answer the question: were humans really born to run?

To find out, two runners – master and apprentice – will look to push mind and body to the limit and beyond in a proposed television series, dubbed Run The Planet. The series will will take viewer on a journey following a number of grueling ultra-distance challenges that trace the footsteps of history’s greatest feats of endurance through the wildest environments on the planet.

The pair will investigate what drives endurance runners to push the boundaries of what is possible; is there an evolutionary need to run? Is it part of our DNA? Is there something in our psychology that makes some people push the limits of endurance, to forge past frontiers, to be pioneers, explorers and adventurers? Is there an innate instinct to run? Was the ability to run in an ancient world the difference between life and death – the ultimate survival of the fittest?

Here’s a ‘screener’ – a small abridged taste of Run The Planet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8MEBdHjiKo

From chasing down food as hunter gathers to running hundreds of miles for a message of war, Run The Planet will take viewers to the edge of what is possible to run. And what is not.

During the series Lisa will mentor her student in the art of endurance running, the pair battling through some of the scariest ultra-challenges on earth. Will they make it? Is Chris tough enough to endure Lisa’s world? Can she find an answer to the question she has been asked a million times before: why do you do it?

Viewers will join the pair on an rollercoaster journey as they face medical crises, hallucinations, sleep deprivation, exhaustion, breakdowns, meltdowns, triumph and failures: all part of the experience of extreme running.

The program concept for Run The Planet was developed when Trail Run Mag editor, Chris Ord, journeyed to Kashmir, India, on assignment for Australian Geographic Outdoor Magazine to cover Lisa’s attempt to run La Ultra The High, a 222km ultra through the Himalayas.

While embedded in Lisa’s crew, as he watched her throw up, faint, and push her body and mind to oblivion, Chris got to thinking about why people would consider undertaking such extreme runs in the first place.

Lisa’s answer echoed that of Christopher McDougall and his famous book, Born To Run: humans were born to run. She went further, saying that anyone could be an ultra runner. We all had it in us.

Trying to run with Lisa over two of La Ultra’s 5400m passes, Chris had doubts.

Conversations ensued about big runs undertaken throughout history. Suddenly the pair had the bet (‘I can turn you into an ultra runner’) and they had plenty of legends to unearth and feats to recreate. And Run The Planet was born.

More info at www.runtheplanettv.com.