Christopher McDougall Quotes & Sayings

The heroes of the past are untouchable, protected forever by the fortress door of time - unless some mysterious stranger magically turns up with a key. — Christopher McDougall

There's something so universal about that sensation, the way running unites our two most primal impulses: fear and pleasure. We run when we're scared, we run when we're ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time. — Christopher McDougall

RUNNERS wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123 percent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes, according to a study led by Bernard Marti, M.D., a preventative-medicine specialist at Switzerland's University of Bern. — Christopher McDougall

Awareness of the world begins with your feet, he believes. — Christopher McDougall

Anatoly Karpov, his by-the-book opponent, was too conservative to pressure Kasparov early in the game, so Kasparov put the pressure on himself with a Queen's Gambit - and won. — Christopher McDougall

Shoes block pain, not impact! Pain teaches us to run comfortably! From the moment you start going barefoot, you will change the way you run. — Christopher McDougall

One of the most dangerous and best-kept secrets of the medical profession is the epidemic of anesthesiologists who are addicted to their own drugs. — Christopher McDougall

Just because men and women of our era don't live up to the myths doesn't mean no one ever has, or ever will again. — Christopher McDougall

You get leafy greens in your body first thing in the morning and you'll lose a lot of weight. — Christopher McDougall

Perhaps all our troubles - all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we can't overcome - began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way. — Christopher McDougall

Over the previous few years, Vigil had become convinced that the next leap forward in human endurance would come from a dimension he dreaded getting into: character. Not the "character" other coaches were always rah-rah-rah-ing about; Vigil wasn't talking about "grit" or "hunger" or "the size of the fight in the dog." In fact, he meant the exact opposite. Vigil's notion of character wasn't toughness. It was compassion. Kindness. Love. That's right: love. — Christopher McDougall

I have the idea that running shoes are based on a kind of cult idea - that our feet are flawed and we need shoes to correct those flaws. The shoe companies are in the business of selling shoes. But there's no evidence from running shoe manufacturers that they're right. There's no scientific data that running shoes reduce injury. — Christopher McDougall

The Tarahumara would party like this all night, then rouse themselves the next morning to face off in a running race that could last not two miles, not two hours, but two full days. According to the Mexican historian Francisco Almada, a Tarahumara champion once ran 435 miles, the equivalent of setting out for a jog in New York City and not stopping till you were closing in on Detroit. — Christopher McDougall

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running. — Christopher McDougall

Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. — Christopher McDougall

We don't woo our wives with clubs. We don't leave old folks on ice floes. And maybe the time has come to quit diving into rip tides to save people we don't know. We've outgrown a lot of survival-of-the-fittest strategies, and risking our lives for strangers might be one of them. — Christopher McDougall

Iskiate is otherwise known as chia fresca - "chilly chia." It's brewed up by dissolving chia seeds in water with a little sugar and a squirt of lime. In terms of nutritional content, a tablespoon of chia is like a smoothie made from salmon, spinach, and human growth hormone. As tiny as those seeds are, they're superpacked with omega-3S, omega-6S, protein, calcium, iron, zinc, fiber, and antioxidants. — Christopher McDougall

Vegetables, grains, and legumes contain all the amino acids necessary to build muscle from scratch. Like — Christopher McDougall

Darwin's great gift to science was simplifying all life to pure mathematics: your one and only goal on earth is multiplication. Everything you do, every instinct you have, is an evolutionary urge to make babies and leave behind as many copies of yourself as possible. From that perspective, heroism makes no sense. Why risk the grave for someone else if there's no guarantee of a biological payoff? Dying for your own kids: smart. Dying for a rival's? Genetic suicide. — Christopher McDougall

As much for his mind as for his body, Erwan likes to run it barefoot. — Christopher McDougall

Your body needs to be shocked to become resilient. Follow the same daily routine, and your musculoskeletal system quickly figures out how to adapt and go on autopilot. But surprise it with new challenges
leap over a creek, commando-crawl under a log, sprint till your lungs are bursting
and scores of the shorts out of consideration for my eighty-two-year-old neighbor. — Christopher McDougall

It's a natural law (or supernatural, if you're so inclined) that weird things appear where people tend to disappear. African jungles, Pacific islands, Himalayan wastelands - wherever expeditionary parties go missing, that's where lost species, Stonehengey stone idols, the flitting shadows of yetis, and ancient, unsurrendering Japanese soldiers are sure to pop up. The — Christopher McDougall

If you can run six miles on a summer day, then you, my friend, are a lethal weapon in the animal kingdom. — Christopher McDougall

He seemed to be a pure racing animal, which explained two of his other peculiar habits: at the start of every race, he'd let out a bloodcurdling shriek, and after he won, he'd roll in the — Christopher McDougall

But you can't muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it. — Christopher McDougall

We've got a motto here-you're tougher than you think you are, and you can do more than you think you can. — Christopher McDougall

There was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love *running*. The engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you've got, being patient and forgiving and ... undemanding ... maybe we shouldn't be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other. — Christopher McDougall

Middle-aged women are likewise no strangers to the lead pack in ultramarathons. Pam Reed was forty-one when she outran all the men to win the 135-mile Badwater ultra across Death Valley in 2002; the following year, she returned and did it again. Diana Finkel was just shy of forty when she led for the first ninety miles of the brutally hard Hardrock 100, finishing second overall. — Christopher McDougall

To live with ghosts requires solitude. - ANNE MICHAELS, Fugitive Pieces — Christopher McDougall

That's because goats eat everything. Only the prickliest survive. — Christopher McDougall

Lesson two,' Caballo called. 'Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that's all you get's that's not so bad. Then work on light. Make it effortless, like you don't give a shit how high the hill is or how far you've got to go. — Christopher McDougall

pretty girl the German had danced with in a Cretan tavern during the Occupation was actually Xan in disguise. — Christopher McDougall

After all, what else did we have going for us? Nothing, except we ran like crazy and stuck together. Humans are among the most comunal and cooperative of all primates; our sole defense in a fang-filled world was our solidarity, and there's no reason to think we suddently disbanded our most crucial challenge, the hunt for food. I remembered what the Seri Indians told Scott Carrier after the sun had set on their persistence-hunting days. "It was better before," a Seri elder lamented. "We did everything as a family. The whole community was a family. We shared everything and cooperated, but now there is a lot of arguing and bickering, every man for himself."
Running didn't just make the Seris a people ... it also made them better people. — Christopher McDougall

The death toll had gotten so bad, Mexico would eventually rank second only to Iraq in the number of killed or kidnapped reporters. — Christopher McDougall

The friend of wisdom is also a friend of the myth. - ARISTOTLE — Christopher McDougall

Sometimes,' she said, 'it takes a woman to bring out the best in a man. — Christopher McDougall

Everyone knew that at some point in history, early humans got access to a big supply of protein, which allowed their brains to expand like a thirsty sponge in a bucket of water. Our brains kept growing until they were seven times larger than the brains of any comparable mammal. They also sucked up an ungodly number of calories; even though our brains account for only 2 percent of our body weight, they demand 20 percent of our energy, compared with just 9 percent for chimps. — Christopher McDougall

We say the rarajipari is the game of life, ' Angel said. 'You never know how hard it will be. You never know when it will end. You can't control it. You can only adjust. — Christopher McDougall

Maybe the wild ones weren't hyperactive; maybe they were misplaced heroes. After all, in another era, the same behavior that is now throttled with Ritalin and disciplinary rap sheets would have been the mark of greatness, the early blooming of a true champion. Riordan played with the idea, imagining the what-ifs. What if strong, assertive children were redirected rather than discouraged? What if there were a place for them, an outdoor training camp that felt like a playground, where they could cut loose with all those natural instincts to run, wrestle, climb, swim, and explore? — Christopher McDougall

The Neanderthals had it tougher; their long spears and canyon ambushes were useless against the fleet prairie creatures, and the big game they preferred was retreating deeper into the dwindling forests. Well, why didn't they just adopt the hunting strategy of the Running Men? They were smart and certainly strong enough, but that was the problem; they were too strong. Once temperatures climb above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, a few extra pounds of body weight make a huge difference - so much so that to maintain heat balance, a 160-pound runner would lose nearly three minutes per mile in a marathon against a one hundred-pound runner. In a two-hour pursuit of a deer, the Running Men would leave the Neanderthal competition more than ten miles behind. Smothered in muscle, the Neanderthals followed the mastodons into the dying forest, and oblivion. The new world was made for runners, and running just wasn't their thing. Privately, — Christopher McDougall

For nearly 2 million years, our ancestors survived and thrived and spread across the planet because they could run other mammals into heat exhaustion. — Christopher McDougall

Distance running demands a brain-body connection that no other creature is capable of. — Christopher McDougall

If he could do it, Churchill was certain, so could his fellow misfits. — Christopher McDougall

Vigil couldn't quite put his finger on it, but his gut kept telling him that there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love running. — Christopher McDougall

You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running or you wouldn't live to love anything else. — Christopher McDougall

the only man in modern history to successfully kidnap a commanding general. Paddy — Christopher McDougall

But there's a problem," Dr. Bramble said. He tapped his forehad. "And it's right up here." Our greatest talent, he explained, also created the monster that could destroy us. "Unlike any other organism in history, humans have a mind-body conflict: we have a body built for performance, but a brain that's always looking for efficiency." We live or die by our endurance, but remember: endurance is all about conserving energy, and that's the brain's department. "The reason some people use their genetic gift for running and others don't is because the brain is a bargain shopper. — Christopher McDougall

[He] coluldn't quite put his finger on it, but his gut kept telling him that there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love *running*. The engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you got, being patient and forgiving and undemanding. — Christopher McDougall

Only recently have we come up with the technology to turn lazing around into a way of life. We've taken our sinewy, durable, hunter-gatherer bodies and plunked them into an artificial world of leisure. — Christopher McDougall

The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other, ... but to be with each other. — Christopher McDougall

error. It was Saturday evening, February 25, 2006, and I had twenty-four hours — Christopher McDougall

In 'Tarahumara' land, there was no crime, war or theft. There was no corruption, obesity, drug addiction, greed, wife-beating, child abuse, heart disease, high blood pressure, or carbon emissions. They didn't get diabetes, or depressed, or even old: 50-year-olds outran teenagers. — Christopher McDougall

Opportunity makes thieves." What — Christopher McDougall

Human urine is both nutrient-rich and an effective tooth whitener — Christopher McDougall

Just look at the architecture, Dr Hartmann explained. Blueprint your feet, and you'll find a marvel that engineers have been trying to match for centuries. Your foot's centerpiece is the arch, the greastest weight-bearing design ever created. The beauty of any arch is the way it gets stronger under stress. The harder you push down, the tighter its parts mesh. No stonemason worth his trowel would ever stick a support under an arch; push up from underneath, and you weaken the whole structure. Buttressing the foot's arch from all sides is a high-tensile web of twenty-six bones, thirty-three joints, twelve rubbery tendons, and eighteen muscles, all stretching and flexing like an earthquake resistant suspension bridge. — Christopher McDougall

I'm supposed to spread my fingers as wide as they were with the rubber band, mash my palms hard into the floor, and pull myself down. When I do, I surprise even myself when my elbows straighten with barely any effort. — Christopher McDougall

Because we have to answer to one another, and they did not. — Christopher McDougall

I am a shepherd, too, like Polyphemus, so I knew all about it. — Christopher McDougall

The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you. — Christopher McDougall

The math is stark: cut the fat, and cut your cancer risk. — Christopher McDougall

When it comes to mentors, you can't beat survival. — Christopher McDougall

Blaming the running injury epidemic on big, bad Nike seems too easy - but that's okay, because it's largely their fault. — Christopher McDougall

it's like in life, you have obstacles and you train to overcome them. You search for the best technique. You keep the best, you repeat it, and then you get better. — Christopher McDougall

Whenever an art form loses its fire, when it gets weakened by intellectual inbreeding and first principles fade into stale tradition, a radical fringe eventually appears to blow it up and rebuild from the rubble. Young Gun ultrarunners were like Lost Generation writers in the '20s, Beat poets in the '50s, and rock musicians in the '60s: they were poor and ignored and free from all expectations and inhibitions. They were body artists, playing with the palette of human endurance. — Christopher McDougall

You don't have to be fast. But you'd better be fearless. — Christopher McDougall

He'd figured out the body, so now it was on to the brain. Specifically: How do you make anyone actually want to do any of this stuff? How do you flip the internal switch that changes us all back into the Natural Born Runners we once were? Not just in history, but in our own lifetimes. Remember? Back when you were a kid and you had to be yelled at to slow down? Every game you played, you played at top speed, sprinting like crazy as you kicked cans, freed all, and attacked jungle outposts in your neighbors' backyards. Half the fun of doing anything was doing it at record pace, making it probably the last time in your life you'd ever be hassled for going too fast. — Christopher McDougall

Even your breakfast burrito plays a role; Lieberman's investigations had revealed that as our diet shifted over the centuries from chewy stuff like raw roots and wild game and gave way to mushy cooked staples like spaghetti and ground beef, our faces began to shrink. Ben Franklin's face was chunkier than yours; Caesar's was bigger than his. — Christopher McDougall

There's this kind of war on running - people keep telling you you'll get hurt, get injured, that you need orthotics, that you need go to a special running store before you try it. There's this totally misconceived notion that it's hard to do, and it's not. — Christopher McDougall

Anyone can do running. Running should be easy. It should be fun. It should include everyone. It shouldn't be a punishment for eating cheesecake, which is what we've turned it into. — Christopher McDougall

That it took him nearly the entire walk to notice what was happening: his back didn't hurt. Didn't hurt a bit. Heyyy ... Ted thought. Maybe I can — Christopher McDougall

We are the biggest sissies in the jungle. Every other animal is stronger than we are - they have fangs, they have claws, they have nimbleness, they have speed. We think Usain Bolt is fast - Usain Bolt can get his ass kicked by a squirrel. — Christopher McDougall

Running is the heart of what it means to be human. — Christopher McDougall

In terms of nutritional content, a tablespoon of chia is like a smoothie made from salmon, spinach, and human growth hormone. — Christopher McDougall

Imagine your kid is running into the street and you have to sprint after her in bare feet," Eric told me when I picked up my training with him after my time with Ken. "You'll automatically lock into perfect form
you'll be up on your forefeet, with your back erect, head steady, arms high, elbows driving, and feet touching down quickly on the forefoot and kicking back toward your butt."
You can't run uphill powerfully with poor biomechanics," Eric explained. — Christopher McDougall

When I'm out on a long run," she continued, "the only thing in life that matters is finishing the run. For once, my brain isn't going blehblehbleh all the time. Everything quiets down, and the only thing going on is pure flow. It's jus time and the movement and the motion.That's what love
just being a barbarian, running through the woods. — Christopher McDougall

Runners in shoes that cost more than $95 were more than twice as likely to get hurt as runners in shoes that cost less than $40. — Christopher McDougall

Heroes aren't perfect; with a god as one parent and a mortal as the other, they're perpetually teetering between two destinies. What tips them toward greatness is a sidekick, a human connection who helps turn the spigot on the power of compassion. Empathy, the Greeks believed, was a source of strength, not softness; the more you recognized yourself in others and connected with their distress, the more endurance, wisdom, cunning, and determination you could tap into. — Christopher McDougall

Endurance, after all, is the only reason we even exist. We think of ourselves as nature's deadliest animals, but the truth is, a naked human is the biggest wimp in the wild. We have no fangs, no claws, no strength, and no speed. — Christopher McDougall

We're all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known. But the American approach
ugh. Rotten at its core. It was too artificial and grabby, Vigil believed, too much about getting stuff and getting it now: medals, Nike deals, a cute butt. It wasn't art; it was business, a hard-nosed quid pro quo. No wonder so many people hated running; if you thought it was only a means to an end
an investment in becoming faster, skinnier, richer
then why stick with it if you weren't getting enough quo for your quid? — Christopher McDougall

An hour in running shoes, I got almost instantly from these Kangoo boots," Ted says. "My worldview of what I needed was shattered." Furious and frustrated, he yanked them off his feet. He couldn't wait to shove the stupid Kangoos back in the box and mail them back to Switzerland with instructions for further shoving. He stalked — Christopher McDougall

Strictly by accident, Scott stumbled upon the most advanced weapon in the ultrarunner's arsenal: instead of cringing from fatigue, you embrace it. You refuse to let it go. You get to know it so well, you're not afraid of it anymore. — Christopher McDougall

We've created an unnatural form of running. It's not just the shoes, but we run on artificial surfaces - straight ahead, hard and steady - instead of speeding up and slowing down, reacting to the terrain with changes of pace and rhythm. — Christopher McDougall

To the tarahumara, asking direct questions is a show of force, a demand for a possession inside their head. — Christopher McDougall

Nothing works out according to plan, but it always works out. — Christopher McDougall

Theodore, you have the mind but not the body," his father said. "And without the help of the body the mind cannot go as far as it should. You have to make your body. — Christopher McDougall

Wilt Chamberlain, all seven feet one inch and 275 pounds of him, had no problem running a 50-mile ultra when he was sixty years old after his knees had survived a lifetime of basketball. — Christopher McDougall

You know what kind of nerves are in your feet? The same ones that network into your genitals. Your feet are like a minnow bucket full of sensory neurons, all of them wriggling around in search of sensation. Stimulate those nerves just a little, and the impulse will rocket through your entire nervous system; that's why tickling your feet can overload the switchboard and cause your whole body to spasm. — Christopher McDougall

at that moment, old Joe Vigil was the only coach in America shivering in a freezing forest at four in the morning, waiting for a glimpse of a community-college science teacher and seven men in dresses. — Christopher McDougall

There is a growing subculture of barefoot runners, people who got rid of their shoes. And what they have found uniformly is you get rid of the shoes, you get rid of the stress, you get rid of the injuries and the ailments. — Christopher McDougall

Relax enough, and your body becomes so familiar with the cradle-rocking rhythm that you almost forget you're moving. And once you break through to that soft, half-levitating flow, that's when the moonlight and champagne show up: "You have to be in tune with your body, and know when you can push it and when to back off," Ann would explain. You have to listen closely to the sound of your own breathing; be aware of how much sweat is beading on your back; make sure to treat yourself to cool water and a salty snack and ask yourself, honestly and often, exactly how you feel. What could be more sensual than paying exquisite attention to your own body? Sensual counted as romantic, right? — Christopher McDougall

more than 90 percent of the female runners come home with a buckle, while 50 percent of the men come up with an excuse. Not even Ken Chlouber can explain the sky-high female finishing rate, but he can damn well exploit it: "All my pacers are women," Chlouber says. "They get the job done. — Christopher McDougall

We're designed for persistence hunting, which is a mix of running and walking. What's built into that kind of running is a sense of pleasure. You are designed and built and perfect for this activity, and it should be enjoyable and fun. — Christopher McDougall

Know why people run marathons? ... Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles, Starry Night, intravascular surgery; they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human - which means its a superpower all humans posses. — Christopher McDougall

This ninety-five-year-old man came hiking twenty-five miles over the mountain. Know why he could do it? Because no one ever told him he couldn't. No one ever told him he oughta be off dying somewhere in an old age home. You live up to your own expectations ... — Christopher McDougall

If you don't think you were born to run you're not only denying history. You're denying who you are. — Christopher McDougall

If you read folklore and mythology, any kind of myths, any kind of tall tales, running is always associated with freedom and vitality and youthfulness and eternal vigor. It's only in our lifetime that running has become associated with fear and pain. — Christopher McDougall

We were born to run; we were born because we run. — Christopher McDougall

If it feels like work, you're working too hard. — Christopher McDougall

where you have more experts, you create more bystanders. Professionals — Christopher McDougall

Absolutely, says Steve Maxwell. And with the little device in his pocket, he can prove it. Steve is a former world champion Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter and now a strength-and-conditioning coach who specializes in recovering lost innovations. "The old-timers knew what was up with fascia long before we even had a word for it," he explains. "You'll always be safe if you go back to the mighty men of old, the guys before the 1950s. Look at the old gyms, with their Indian clubs and medicine balls. What's that all about if not balance, range of motion, being fluid, using elastic recoil? — Christopher McDougall