Born to Run - Notes

• Caballo’s running technique: easy, light, smooth, fast. Make it look effortless, like you don’t give a shit.

• Fringe groups reignite art forms when they lose their fire. They rebuild from the rubble. A fringe group of ultrarunners reignited the sport when it got bogged down by science and shoes and administrative races and coaches, etc. Like beat poets and stuff.

• Kenyans don’t run in shoes until they’re 17.

• Nike’s Bowerman invented the term jogging and said you had to buy his shoe to do it properly (by landing on your heels). In a stroke of dark irony, he named the shoe the Cortez—after the conquistador who plundered the New World for gold and unleashed a horrific smallpox epidemic.

• Running hills: if you can’t see the top, walk.

• One training technique: set a metronome for 180 bpm. Run to the beat. This is what one guy did training for a fast 400m. Probably would want to start slower.

• There’s some evidence humans evolved to stand up to be better runners and, in particular, better persistence hunters. Standing up helped us breathe better. It may be the reason homo sapiens beat out Neanderthals, which really shouldn’t have happened, because Neanderthals had bigger brains, bigger muscles, denser bones, better tools. Scientists still don’t know, but maybe homo sapiens won because they were better runners.

• Kalahari bushmen average about 10 minutes per mile when hunting, although some of that is through sand and brush.

• Humans are still really, really good at running into their 60s. 19 year old and 64 year old marathoners are roughly equal.

• There’s a survival instinct urging you to relax. Sitting around used to be a luxury, so if you had a chance to rest and recover, you took it.