I haven't written much for about a month, in part because the school term has begun and I have gotten into what appears to be a routine: get up at 6am, plan for lessons from 7am, teach and work on curriculum until 4pm, play volleyball or help officiate a club until 5:30pm, go for a run until 6:30 or 7pm (By the way, I am training for a half-marathon - or maybe full marathon? - at the end of June), eat a little, bathe, read, and meditate until bed. As a write this, it is dawning on me just how many of my days in the past month have followed this exact pattern...

So that is my excuse for why I haven't written more, but what I really want to write about is this book, Born to Run, which was lent to me by another Peace Corps volunteer.

Ever since I ran cross country in high school I have ended almost every season/period of training with an injury. Even now, as I am training for this run I have been ending each run with sharp pain in my groin muscle and an aching right knee. I have always blamed my body for not being able to run without injury, but it turns out that I have just never known the proper way to run... As soon as I got the hint from this book I changed my stride and since then the aching in my knee has subsided and the pain in the groin has entirely disappeared.

The book chronicles Christopher McDougall's research into a tribe in Mexico that routinely runs 50-100 milers. As he studies them, he also studies ultra-marathoners in the United States and anthropologists who are studying our evolutionary roots.

According to their research, homo-erectus evolved as persistence hunters (read the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting). This means that we ran animals to death... We have the unique ability to dissipate heat on the run, where as most other animals have to stop and pant in order to expel excess heat (example: dogs have to stop and pant). So all of our ancestors were regular marathoners. On the great open plains in Africa they would run after a gazelle just fast enough that the gazelle did not get time to rest, until finally, after between 10 and 20 miles, the gazelle would die of heat exhaustion. They even found a small tribe near South Africa that still persistence hunts.

These guys run these distances until their 60's and they do it bare-foot. We, on the other hand, buy $150 shoes and get injured after running regularly for 5 months... The reason is because these shoes are so padded that they allow us to use the worst running form ever known to man.

The book has changed my life because I know have a slightly better idea of how to run, and how to run long-distance. I also have a better idea of who I am, because I have a better sense of how we evolved into what I am today.

The writing is totally gripping and I lost sleep in order to continue to read the book. I think that the book would be interesting even if you are not particularly interested in running.