Born to Run

There are some great resources for inspiration and knowledge on the web. Recently I found a video on Ted.com by Christopher McDougall: Are we born to run?   Every runner has read Christopher McDougall's book by the same name Born to Run.  If you haven't read the book I highly recommend it.  

If you have ever wondered why we run and most importantly why we run longer distances like the Marathon or an Ultra Marathon this video could give you the answer you need.    Most people call this crazy, why would anyone run 26.2 miles never less 100 miles. Seriously who are these people? I have a friend, Chris Twiggs, who runs the Hard Rock 100 every year, and yes he is crazy. 

Are women more crazy and more suited for a longer distance run? Christopher McDougall seems to think so.  As he points out in this video, women were not allowed to run the marathon until the 1980’s, because everyone thought that parts of our body would fall apart.  Sometimes after I run 20 miles I start to believe that this could be true.  But women are just 10 minutes off the fastest men. Not bad if you ask me.  Thank you Kathrine Switzer for going rouge in 1967 to run the Boston Marathon.  Every women today who runs Chicago, Boston, New York and every race out there owes it to you for your courage to run.

McDougall speaks about another amazing women who ran the Hard Rock 100.  That’s over 100 miles at a high altitude many of times in snow and blizzard conditions.  Emily Baer finished 8^th of 500 runners, stopping at ever water stop to breast feed her new baby.  Power to the women!

I have seen a number of t-shirts around that say “Running is Cheaper than Therapy” or “Running is my happy hours”.  I think we women run to get away.  To have a moment to ourselves and to feel powerful in our bodies. 

I’ll end with a quote from Christopher McDougall’s video Are we born to run?

“imagine a world where everybody could go out their door and engage in the kind of exercise that's going to make them more relaxed, more serene, more healthy, burn off stress -- where you don't come back into your office a raging maniac anymore, where you don't go back home with a lot of stress on top of you again.”