Category Archives: Book Review

Book Review: Born to Run

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Born to Run Cover

If you’ve not heard of the best-selling book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen you might be want to double check that you are a runner with a network of runners.  It seems every runner on the web has written or talked about Born to Run, so why not me?

Well I haven’t really wanted to spend the money and who wants to be part of a fad? That all changed a few weeks ago.  We had some time to kill and decided to go to a book store.  We were already in Uptown so we checked out Magers & Quinn, a great Minneapolis treasure. I walked out with four books, all purchased below their market price.  Born to Run was the only new book, the rest were used.

I was getting bored by the other book I was reading and wasn’t sure if I’d make it through the 282 pages with only 2 weeks left in the month.  Well, I was pleasantly surprised that the book was a super-easy read and I finished it with time to spare in March.  I was prepared for a book like Bill Bryson’s Walk in the Woods where it was story mixed in with a lot of random facts/rabbit trails/personal issues.  McDougall’s is almost all story.  Much of what I had heard about the book led me to believe it would be a treatise on barefoot running and a lot of research to back up that perspective.

It is actually pretty late (chapter 25 page 168) in the book before McDougall really starts to present any heavy research and opinions on barefoot running.  And it does make you think.  For obvious reasons I really liked this quote on pg 201:

Once PF [plantar fasciitis] sinks its fangs into your heels, you’re in danger of being infected for life. Check any running-related message board, and you’re guaranteed to find a bunch of beseeching threads from PF sufferers begging for a cure. Everyone is quick to suggest the same remedies – night splints, elastic socks, ultrasounds, electroshock, cortisone, orthodics – but the messages keep coming because none of them really seems to work.

Isn’t that great! Most of the book is about the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico and how they run for days eating only pinole and wearing thin pieces of rubber (known as Huaraches) and never seem to get hurt.  In fact when some of them receive and start wearing running shoes they ended up getting hurt shortly thereafter.  The main emphasis of the book is a race held in Mexico in which Scott Jurek, Barefoot Ted, and a few not so famous runners take on the adventure and challenge of a 50 mile trail race against the Tarahumara’s best runners.  I won’t tell you the ending!  The book spends a lot of time providing the back story for each of the runners and how the Tarahumara became known in the US running world.

McDougall also takes a section of his book to look at the evolution of man and how we evolved into runners.  This quote made me laugh (pg 243):

To be fair, our brain knew what it was talking about for 99 percent of our history; sitting around was a luxury, so when you had the chance to rest and recover, you grabbed it. Only recently have we come up with technology to turn lazing around into a way of life; we’ve taken our sinewy, durable, hunter-gather bodies and plunked them into an artificial world of leisure.
So with that I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of Born to Run, it alone may not convince or me to go barefoot but it is an excellent story about “A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen”
If you’ve read the book what are your thoughts on it?  Would you rather borrow mine instead of purchasing it?
[tags] book review, Born to Run, barefoot, barefoot running [/tags]
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Book Review: Once a Runner

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Once a Runner Cover

John L Parker’s Once a Runner is a cult classic for runners.  And I would throw my hat into the ring on this one.  The worst thing about this book is that it made me want to run more than I could at the time.  Don’t read this book while you are recovering from an injury or you might try to sneak in for a run.

Parker bring his imaginary runner, Quentin Cassidy, to life.  It brought back many memories of college life.  Our antics were different, but we had plenty of weird traditions and antics.  I roomed with 3 other guys from the cross-country team senior year and we had a great time – those bonds are amazing and long-lasting.

This book sat on my Amazon Wish-List for quite awhile until my wife got it for me for my birthday.  I quickly finished this book which intermixes fictional characters and stories with real life hero’s such as Frank Shorter.  Quasi-villian John Walton was based off of John Walker (according to Wikipedia).

I’m sure many of us dream of running a sub-4 minute mile but Cassidy is actually really close before, stupid southern small town politics get in the way and almost ruin his career.  I won’t give anything away but he puts in some killer miles and some killer workouts – 60 x 400 with 200m rest.  The Trials of Miles is brutal, even for an elite athlete like him.

I highly recommend reading this book and getting re-inspired to “pound the pavement” and reach your goals.  I’ve not heard a bad word about this book.  What do you think of it?

[tags] Book Review, Once a Runner, John Parker, Running [/tags]

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Finding Your Running Life Balance

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In the final chapter of Running – the Sacred Art we come full circle to the concepts laid down at the onset of this book.  I really like this George Sheehan quote Warren Kay uses to open the chapter:

Don’t be concerned if running or exercise will add years to your life, be concerned with adding life to your years.

We need to find a balance and find a way to enjoy life.  As runners running will be a large part of that enjoyment. I think running for all of us is fun and at some level we all want to improve and push ourselves to our physical limits.  Most of us need help doing that.  I thought I could train for a marathon by myself but at the last minute realized I’d be much better off taking the marathon training class offered by my running club.  That was the right choice.  Not only did I receive coaching, but I also met new people and had others to push me when I was tired and encourage me along the way.

Kay says that it is important for all runners to have a “coach”, but especially spiritual runners.  I put coach in quotes because your coach might be your running group.  I don’t think you need a specific person to coach you but having someone or a group of people to push and challenge you is vital.  I think he used the coach term because it translates better for most of us to the spiritual.  We need someone or a group of people to challenge and push us spiritualy as well as in our running.  This could be a pastor, imam, priest, or other spiritual leader.

In both the running and spiritual realms Kay thinks coaches provide three valuable things:

  1. Proper guidance
  2. Adequate support
  3. The right attitude

Just like it takes pain to become a better runner, it can take some pain and brokenness to become a more spiritual person.  Kay compares it to running up a hill, most people don’t like to do it – requiring an attitude change, you have to adjust your stride – or adjust your life to find balance, and it can be slow going – it takes patience and fortitude.

I think he ties the whole point of his book together with this final quote:

Having made contact with that pat of myself, the spiritual quest – which is the endeavor to find who I am and be truly at home with myself, to establish a healthy relationship with others, and to have a healthy relationship with God – is a natural outcome.

We runners are special and have a unique opportunity to find our way to God through our running.

The last section of the book is a list of suggested readings. I have created an Amazon collection of the books I could find in their selection.

[tags] Warren Kay, Sacred Art, Balance, Spiritual [/tags]

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Running for Pilgrimage

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Tibetans on a pilgrimage to Lhasa; they are ko...
Tibetans on Pilgrimage to Lhasa; they are kow-towing every few steps.
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I think pretty much every major religion requires some type of sacrifice. We are familiar with some of them – giving our time in service or our money as alms or charity. But for most of us I bet the sacrifice of a pilgrimage is a little more extreme or even unheard of.  For many Christians and Jews a trip to Jerusalem or a holy site in Europe is a pilgrimage, Muslims are required to visit Mecca during their life (or at least try) and many Eastern religions have holy sites as well.

Again you ask, how does this apply to running? I’ve never taken a pilgrimage and I don’t think it would be safe for me to run around any of the sacred sites I mentioned above. But combining all we have talked about so far – prayer, sanctuary, meditation, etc – pilgrimage is a major step, think of it as a spiritual quest.

As I was reading the background on pilgrimage in Running the Sacred Art, my mind started drifting to the marathon.  Yes, Warren Kay agrees with me on that and links the two!

To ensure we are all the same page, Kay defines a pilgrimage as a journey made to a sacred shrine for spiritual purposes, such as healing, blessing, prestige, camaraderie, and a source of faith.  He sees three major steps to a pilgrimage – separation from the routine, being at the shrine, and the journey home.  The following quote about pilgrimage really hit me as being similar to many of my running experiences:

You find yourself among like-minded people who are making a similar quest, and through the journey, you recognize and respond to the humanity in them. You are likely to open up easily, talk to strangers and engage them as people, even as friends. This realization of community can become so profound that you may also experience a compassion for the whole of humanity.

Does that sound familiar to you? Let me quickly highlight the comparison of a marathon (or other run) to a pilgrimage.

  1. For many the marathon is a “holy grail” to obtain.  They have a specific location they want to race it at with a purpose behind it.
  2. You go through a long process of training, sacrificing and separating yourself from others to accomplish it.
  3. You often travel to a different city for a race, meeting and interacting with other runners at the expo and pasta dinners.
  4. The level of excitement and community grows as you jam into the starting corrals.
  5. You become separated from the mere mortals (aka spectators) as you run the course.
  6. Everyone running beside you has the goal of accomplishing this 26.2 mile quest and often will help you make it if you stumble.
  7. Crossing the finish line brings ecstatic joy, even as you collapse into the waiting arms of medical personnel.
  8. You become transformed by calling yourself a marathoner.

I want to make sure I don’t take too lightly the idea of a pilgrimage because I have heard from others that it can be a profound experience.  I know in accomplishing the marathon my perspective on running and life has changed even if just a little.  Previously we talked about running as sanctuary, but sanctuary and pilgrimage are different.

Kay describes the difference simply.  A sanctuary run is like going to church – you go regularly because it is convenient.  It can be powerful but is also part of the routine.  A pilgrimage run is something more unique like visiting the tomb were Jesus was buried.  It is unique and not part of the routine. A pilgrimage run could be going back to your old stomping grounds and running an old trail or cross country course from your past, like I did over Christmas.  It was a time of remembering and reflecting, even though I didn’t necessarily intend that at the start.

Have you ever gone on a pilgrimage run?  Could your first marathon experience equate to a pilgrimage?

[tags] Warren Kay, Sacred Art of Running, Pilgrimage, Spiritual [/tags]

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Running as a Sacrament – What?

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The Last Supper in Milan (1498), by Leonardo d...
Image via Wikipedia

So far in this series on the spiritual side of running we’ve talked about a lot of issues that are pretty forthright.  The next topic in Running the Sacred Art is a little harder to talk about because it has more theological underpinnings and isn’t as widely acknowledged across religious groups – sacraments.

First, lets look at Warren Kay’s definition of the sacramental thinking which occurs during a “sacramental run.”

An experiential kind of knowing that involves your heart, your emotions, even your instincts and intuition.

Sacramental runs occur when you have an intimate experience of God.  Kay’s definition of sacramental is:

When God is revealed and when we are ready and waiting the sign is received. Experiences like that are called sacramental. They are possible not only because the Divine reaches out to us, but also because we have been given the capacity – the grace, if you will – to respond. (pg 91)

I told you this was a little harder to grasp! The Christian tradition has two major sacraments – baptism and communion or the Lord’s Supper.  The Catholic church has 5 sacraments. Kay quotes St Augustine, a 5th century scholar, who defines sacraments as a “visible sign of an invisible reality.”

So what does this have to do with running? Excellent question. I think what Kay is getting at is that through running when can get a glimpse of the divine presence around us. He talks about the runner’s high and how it is something “magical” that sometimes happens while running.  It can’t be forced but it happens.

One thing he suggests is to ensure that you live a balanced life.  More than just making sure to balance work and family commitments, Kay suggests we seek balance between the spiritual and material – the body and soul.  He believes, and I think it makes sense, that when we are running we are expressing our bodies in a physical way that can open our heart and mind to the spiritual realm.

I feel this is the hardest section for me personally to grasp – what do you think? I’ve been a Christian most of my life, even attending a Christian university and the idea of the sacrament is still not something I completely understand. Let alone the connection to running. Do you have any insights??

[tags] Warren Kay, Spiritual, Sacred Art of Running, Sacraments [/tags]

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