Books on the Run

Reviewing Christopher McDougall's Born to Run

Interesting note: In the original, there is 

another man sitting next to the silhouetted man 

on the cover, and the hill is covered with graffiti. 

Both were Photoshopp'd out for the book's cover. 

Today I'm beginning a series of posts about Chris McDougall's 2011 bestseller Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, & the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen. McDougall's book set off something of a firestorm in the world of runners, a storm that has only grown with the passage of time. I know a few barefoot runners for whom this book is something of a holy text. I've never read it, but as this blog's purpose is the investigation of the "correct" way to run, this book is a natural place to start. 

The book is not terribly long, but as I'm now about 100 pages into it and I already have enough material for several posts, I'm going to review it in chunks. The first major review post will be up tomorrow. For now, I'm going to introduce the book and make a few notes about its style and my general impressions. 

McDougall is a former war correspondent who writes for magazines like Esquire, Men's Health, and of course, Runner's World. He's a pretty good, if pedestrian, writer. Born to Run is written in a first person, new-journalism style that works well for this story. The book weaves inquiry into injury-free running with the story of the Tarahumara, a native Mexican tribe that lives in seclusion and produces distance athletes whose exploits are the stuff of legend. McDougall actually traveled to the Copper Canyons in Mexico and met this tribe, as well as a cast of others who seem to defy the modern runner's reality of constant injury. 

The book is certainly engaging. You might think this is a boring subject, but you'd be wrong. McDougall's writing flows quickly and keeps the story moving. He weaves in a Quixotic quest to meet Caballo Blanco, a white migrant runner who is known to the Tarahumara, as well as other bits of barefoot and ultradistance running lore. Reading the book is fun and enjoyable, and it doesn't feel like you're slogging through a dense academic treatise (this book is not in the least academic, a complaint I'll return to later). 

Praise for the engaging narrative aside, McDougall's oeuvre as a war correspondent and journalist for masculine magazines is on full display in Born to Run. The style is conversational, which makes for easy reading, but also includes its share of cringe-worthy stylistic moments. On pg. 20, for example: 

Schwatka was no prissy Parisian poet, either; he was a U.S. Army lieutenant who'd survived the Frontier Wars and lived among the Sioux as an amateur anthropologist, so the man knew from mangled corpses. He'd also traveled the baddest of badlands in his time, including a hellacious expedition to the Arctic Circle. But when he got to the Copper Canyons, he had to recalibrate his scoring table.

Or pg. 35:

Not even the two toughest hombres in US military history were any match for the Barrancas [...] The result: Black Jack and Old Blood & Guts could whip the Germans in two world wars, but surrendered to the Copper Canyons. 

This kind of thing gets old after a while, and the book is full of it. My expectations (and taste) are certainly of a literary bent, but even taking that into consideration, I find the ultra-masculine bravado dripping from the words to be a bit much. Mostly a minor quibble, though, especially considering that I don't think I'm the exact audience this book is intended for, and it remains an enjoyable read.

So enough about style. Tomorrow, we dive into Born to Run, and we get the controversy started.

Coming up tomorrow: A Review of Born to Run pp. 1-100!