The Book in 3 Sentences

1. Humans were born with the innate capacity to run long distances.
2. This is a crucial part of our lives but its importance has slowly been lost over time.
3. Adopting the habit of running is a key to a life of happiness and health.

Impressions

Born to Run was a joy to read. I initially picked this book up thinking it would be a cool story about this lost tribe of distance runners — which it was — but it was so much more than that. Packed full of deep characters, suspense, cutting edge science and incredible feats of athletic achievement, Born to Run is an epic adventure that illuminates the power of running and its integrality throughout human existence. I found the story to be super engaging and easy to read. Interleaved throughout this story were fascinating deep dives into the science, history and art of running that added so much depth to the book. The writing style is succinct and very easy to read. McDougall's incredible story was not only nutrition for my brain but an inspiration to take up running and integrate it further into my life.

Top Quotes

Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that's all you get, that's not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don't give a sh*t how high the hill is or how far you've got to go. When you've practiced that so long, that you forget you're practicing, you work on making it smooooooth. You won't have to worry about the last one - you get those three, and you'll be fast.

Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone.

If you don't have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain't getting them.

Notes & Quotes

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.

You don't stop running because you get old, you get old because you stop running.

If you don't have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain't getting them.

The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other,... but to be with each other.

That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered 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 hollow 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 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 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 always known.

You don't have to be fast. But you'd better be fearless.

Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone. ~Ken Chlouber, Colorado miner and creator of the Leadville Trail 100 mile race

Suffering is humbling. It pays to know how to get your butt kicked.

… there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love running. The engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you've got, being patient and forgiving and … undemanding … maybe we shouldn't be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other.

There's something so universal about this sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulses: fear and pleasure. We run when we're scared, we run when we're ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.

There are two goddesses in your heart,” he told them. “The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you.” Ask nothing from your running, in other words, and you’ll get more than you ever imagined.

Perhaps all our troubles - all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we can't overcome - began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way.

Nearly all runners do their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow." Ken Mierke says. "So they're just training their bodies to burn sugar, which is the last thing a distance runner wants. You've got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last." The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold — your hard-breathing point — during your endurance runs.

You can't muscle through a five-hour run; you have to relax into it like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it.

Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that's all you get, that's not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don't give a sh*t how high the hill is or how far you've got to go. When you've practiced that so long, that you forget you're practicing, you work on making it smooooooth. You won't have to worry about the last one - you get those three, and you'll be fast.

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

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