In an earlier post, I wrote about
three films I had seen. Here I’ve picked three books to ramble about.
50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days -- and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance!
by Dean Karnazes
(4 out of 5 stars)
Just as the title of the book suggests, this is a story about Dean Karnazes running 50 marathons, in 50 states, in 50 consecutive days. Yeah, pretty nuts. While Dean was accomplishing a hefty task in the running part, his journey was also significantly caught up in the logistics of traveling from one state to the next preparing to run 26.2 miles each day. Sprinkle in PR appearances before and after each run, finding a way to eat enough, and rest and recover to endure the travel not to mention continuing to run each day, and this was indeed quite a feat. Dean also includes stats from each run, a lot of running tips and other nuggets/wisdoms, and he seemed honest in his depiction of the day to day, run by run challenges he faced throughout the 50 days. He makes clear that while our human bodies can be frail at times suffering from aches and blisters, with the right training and willpower they can be conditioned as fortified machines capable of rigorous athleticism and endurance.
Ok, so let’s face it, many people think Dean Karnazes is just a stunt runner now. Instead of keeping on as a “pure runner”, he has resorted to more gimmick like pursuits such as trying to break the 24-hr treadmill run record (publicly in Times Square, would you believe he ran 130 miles on a treadmill and still fell short by over 20 miles!) and is currently in the middle of a run across America (running 40+ miles a day being promoted and covered by NBC). That said, no one can really discount the fact that he trains well enough to be able to do these things at all (simply finishing the 135 mile Badwater Ultramarathon, 1st place in 2004, Western States 100 or the Leadville Trail 100 is pretty amazing), and has raised countless funds for charitable causes and inspired people to get excited about health and fitness. Given the obesity issue looming over this country, getting folks of all ages on their feet and moving can’t be a bad thing, even at the expense of a few occasional pixels of Dean’s hammed up smirk on TV. Oh, and while he averaged around 4 hours for each of those 50 marathons, he ran a swift 3 hour NYC Marathon as his final 50th marathon for the book.
One thing that strikes me though is how much solitude he seems to take on in his running. While he traveled with family and a crew to support the overall trip, meeting countless fans along the way, he really seemed to thrive off of running by himself, or more simply by just being alone (while wife and kids waited in the wings). Most runners I know don’t mind the occasional solo run, even long runs to allow our minds to zone out or mentally to distill the stuff going on in our lives, but the time and distance Dean spends alone out on the roads seems a whole other level of solitude. This was most incredibly apparent in his decision on how to get back home to California after the celebration party in NYC marking the end of his 50 runs. Well, I won’t give away what he did, you’ll just have to give it a read to find out (yes, that’s a slightly veiled recommendation for this book).
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
by Haruki Murakami
(2 out of 5 stars)
The Japanese author describes his own personal journey into becoming an accomplished runner, illustrating his evolution from an owner of a bar to a greatly renowned author while pursuing his growing interest in running. He provides many accounts of his running experiences, including a heat scorched self-run marathon route in Greece (the origin of the marathon), grueling ultra marathons, and of common note to me, simply running along the Charles River through Boston and Cambridge.
Despite the compelling title and subject matter, I really didn’t find this book appealing, although many other runners seem to have really enjoyed it. Murakami is a very famous and popular Japanese author, confirmed by a Japanese friend of mine who said she and her friends have read and enjoyed many of Murakami’s other works in their original language. So my thinking is that there was a great deal of writing quality lost in translation from Japanese to English. Honestly, I thought the writing was choppy (again probably due to the translation) and also Murakami’s personality to be a bit condescending and rather egocentric (hard to tell if the translation had anything to do with this), though I guess one may be a bit like that anyway if you’re writing a book about yourself.
Born to Run: A Hidden Tride, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
by Christopher McDougall
(I rate this one: 10 PowerBar stars!)
Succinctly put: Fantastic book, great interwoven and entertaining writing style, cool storyline with appealing character development, informative about some fundamentals of running, and suspenseful. As it has for many others, it may very well change the way you run. This book is given much credit for stimulating the recent barefoot and minimalist running movement.
The Tarahumara Indian tribal people of Mexico are the centerpiece of this book. They are natural runners that fly like the wind with the greatest of ease and joy, in large part to their sense of community and interdependence through running as well as having played running games since childhood and keeping to their traditional footwear (barefoot or simple sandals).
In search of an answer to why his foot hurt, the author was led on a journey to discover and reveal the benefits of primitive running. These benefits are much debated by runners that aren’t yet “convinced” of the minimalist movement, but (I submit) rarely rejected by those who have since converted to minimalist form. The author uses injury statistics, real-world accounts by track and cross country coaches among other examples to build a case against the overbuilt modern day running shoe heavily loaded with arch support, cushioning, medial posting and other completely unnecessary bells and whistles.
Take one of these for example. Why does the human foot need arch support? If you look among the world’s great architecture, one of the most widely used and stable structures has been the arch. Downward vertical force on an arch might splay it slightly but keeps it rigid and capable of supporting great loads, while adding support upwards on the arch from underneath actually makes the structure weaker. I’d imagine the same holds true for the arch within the foot then, where adjacent muscles in the foot are strained by compensating for the weakened structure. Instead of arch support, shouldn’t we allow our natural arch structure to serve on its own to support our body weight? McDougall addresses these questions by citing the change in common injuries over time as more shoes with arch support were introduced. What do you think – did the number of injuries go up or down?
And what about medial posting? Unless a runner is heel striking, it’s just excess baggage built into a shoe. And take it from this runner who has sprained his ankles a plenty, why risk another twist? Landing forefoot or midfoot instead of heel striking significantly cuts the chances of an ankle roll. I’ll take that thank you.
Ok, getting back to the book – the running jargon and details came only after the author crafted an interesting story about the Tarahumara Indians, and even then gently interwove those technical aspects into a great tale of a kind, simple, traditional people living remotely in the deep canyons of Mexico. It’s about their culture, their traditions, their simplicity. It’s about a few extraordinary US runners, some fun personalities the reader can identify with, meeting the Tarahumara Indians on their own turf and competing in a climactic race between some of the best runners in the world. Who do you think wins?
