54 pages • 1-hour read
Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
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Background
Social Context: The Culture of Ultrarunning
Ultrarunning is the name given to any type of running that exceeds the 26.2 miles of a traditional marathon. Distance running is how humans spread across the planet, and before the invention of advanced hunting tools it’s how they obtained meat through persistence hunting. However, ultrarunning as an activity and competition is a relatively new concept, and a distinctive culture has developed with its growth over the last quarter-century. Cultural aspects of ultrarunning may include running tips, discussions about equipment or clothing, historical analyses of runners or races, or insights about diet. Community is another cultural aspect of ultrarunning and one that differs strongly from other sports because ultrarunners seem to find competitiveness against the course while finding camaraderie with their opponents. Born to Run touches on all these cultural aspects of ultrarunning but also provides sociological, anthropological, political, and geographical contexts within its narrative concerning the Tarahumara people of Northwestern Mexico.
Unlike other books on ultrarunning, such as field guides, training manuals, or even narratives like Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner by Dean Karnazes, Born to Run blurs the lines of genre and is clearly aimed at a larger audience than ultrarunners themselves. The book looks at the Tarahumara people through historical, political, and anthropological lenses but still places them within the culture and community of ultrarunning. Approaching his story from a new journalism, stream of consciousness, or gonzo-journalism style, McDougall immersed himself in the culture and community of ultrarunning, beginning with his own running-related injuries, then moving to historical examinations of famous races and runners, then to scientific examinations of running, and finally to a culminating race organized through the culture and community of ultrarunning.
Cultural Context: Born to Run and the Rarámuri
Since the publication of Born to Run and its widespread acclaim, journalists and anthropologists have begun to reevaluate the book’s depiction of the Tarahumara. One key reappraisal is the widespread shift to calling the tribe the Rarámuri, the name they claim for themselves, over the name that was given to them by conquistadors, the Tarahumara. The researcher who inspired the book, evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman, has noted that “Tarahumara (Rarámuri) running, like many other aspects of Tarahumara culture and biology, has too often been mischaracterized by what we label the ‘fallacy of the athletic savage.’ Let’s banish this false and dehumanizing notion” (Hutchison, “Reexamining the Mythology of Tarahumara Runners”).
What much of the reappraisal of Rarámuri culture is centered around is criticizing the romanticized Othering of their practices by an American writer as well as how the success of the barefoot running movement has changed the lives of the tribe by bringing (often unwanted) tourism and industry to the area the Rarámuri do not control. In the most ardent criticism of McDougall’s book, it is argued that his book is recreating the patterns of colonization and overwriting the Rarámuri’s agency with his own agenda.
Silvino Cubesare, a Rarámuri tribal member, is a noted critic and has expressed incredulity that people would choose to run barefoot. Another Rarámuri, Irma Chavez, described the barefoot running industry as “an insult” (Huber, “This New Film Debunks the Tarahumara Myth”) because those who have the means to buy specialized footwear believe there is some performance advantage to running without when the truth is that the Rarámuri simply do not have the access nor the means to acquire such footwear. Both Cubesare and Chavez appear in The Infinite Race, an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary challenging the assumptions of McDougall’s book. Chavez notes that “Running […] is our resistance to imposition,” suggesting that the barefoot running movement has coopted their way of life and become the thing that the Rarámuri are trying to escape.
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