Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall
Charlie’s Rating: 8.9/10
What an interesting read! It will make you want to start doing 3 things – (1) barefoot running, (2) travel to Mexico and find the Tarahumara Indians, and (3) drink loads of corn beer. But seriously, I found this book when searching for a cure to the aliments that plague us shoe wearing Americans (and other cultures that wear shoes with clouds of foam/air bubbles on the bottom for “protection”). The aliments include knee/hip issues, shin splints, planter fasciitis, etc.
In a sentence, this book challenges common beliefs around footwear and endurance pertaining to distance running.
In addition to blowing my mind of what I thought I knew about shoes and endurance, it is a super easy read and kept my attention quite well. McDougall is a powerful story teller.
This book started me down a journey to embrace the barefoot lifestyle. I have always been someone who wears shoes whenever possible and was terribly uncomfortable barefoot. However, since reading this book, I have embraced being barefoot whenever possible. I slowly decreased the size of the soles of my shoes and now wear sprinting shoes during workouts and runs. I see people wearing Hoka shoes that have soles the size of Texas and cringe… Because I had terrible shin splits for years, weak ankles and knee/hip problems, but guess what? Yup, they are all gone… Crazy.
Let it be known that this has been a journey and didn’t happen overnight. More like 2 years of careful and calculated decisions to decrease the size of my shoes and be barefoot whenever possible (walks on the beach, throwing the ball outside with the kids, walking around the house, any chance you can find to be barefoot!). The last thing I wanted to do was tear my achilles or hurt an ankle by jumping straight in to barefoot living. I DO NOT recommend jumping in head first to barefoot running, you may get hurt. But I do recommend you adopt the goal of getting rid of the Hoka’s and getting into small sprinting shoes, sandals or barefoot. Start small though, play the long game!
Count this as another book that has had a profound impact on my life.