In Chapter 2, McDougall backtracks to explain how and why he was in Mexico to learn about the Tarahumara. It all began, he explains, with a visit to his doctor in 2001 to find out why his foot hurt. He had only begun distance running five years earlier, but he had already suffered a number of serious injuries commonly associated with running. Three separate doctors specializing in sports medicine gave him the same diagnosis, and each suggested that he either give up running altogether or continue to get regular cortisone shots for pain and invest in expensive orthotics. This led McDougall to question why injuries like his do not affect all runners.

Two years later, McDougall was on assignment in Mexico when he saw an article concerning the Tarahumara. He argues that “the article [he] was writing suddenly seemed a snore compared to the one [he] was reading” (14). As McDougall learned more about the Tarahumara, his interest turned to fascination when he began to realize that the indigenous tribe had seemingly “solved nearly every problem known to man” (14). Not only did crime not exist in “Tarahumara Land,” but health issues such as obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease were nonexistent as well. However, it was the legendary tales of their endurance and ability to run unheard of distances on unthinkable terrain that truly fascinated McDougall. This led him to question modern running injuries even further because the Tarahumara do not suffer such injuries despite eating very little protein, not training or stretching, and wearing shoes that “barely qualify as shoes” (16).

As a writer for Runner’s World magazine, McDougall was assigned to trek into the Copper Canyons in search of the Tarahumara secret. Once across the Mexican border, the author enlisted a local man as a guide to take him into the Canyons and possibly meet Arnulfo Quimare, supposedly the greatest living Tarahumara runner (18). In addition to the difficulty of locating the secretive Tarahumara and the danger of the journey down the steep canyon walls, McDougall also discovered that a serious threat existed because two violent drug cartels now use the area as their bases. The latter threat was especially serious because the cartels had begun killing journalists who report on them. According to the author, “the death toll had gotten so bad, Mexico would eventually rank second only to Iraq in the number of killed or kidnapped reporters” (22). Not long into their trip into the wilderness, the pair were confronted by suspected drug runners in a truck, but after a few tense minutes they were allowed to pass through to the rim of the canyon.

Ditching their truck at the canyon’s rim, the pair arrived on foot at the bottom two days later and found the camouflaged hut occupied by the Quimare family. According to McDougall, “the Tarahumara prefer to live in such isolation, even from each other, that members of the same village don’t like to be close enough to see each other’s cook smoke” (26). Arnulfo came out and shook hands with them but quickly disappeared back inside. The pair had violated a key piece of Tarahumara etiquette by approaching his home rather than waiting for him to come out and approach them. When he did return outside minutes later, he offered them limes and sat with them, but McDougall violated etiquette again by directly questioning him about the local races he had won and whether he would ever race in the United States. Only later did McDougall learn that to the Tarahumara, “asking direct questions is a show of force, a demand for a possession inside their head” (28). Their mistrust of strangers emanated from centuries of violence and exploitation from outsiders and was the reason for their reclusiveness to begin with.

Later that night, the author was introduced to a local schoolteacher, who explained that an outsider would need to be in the canyons with the Tarahumara for a long time “before they’d feel comfortable with you” (30). As an example, the schoolteacher mentioned Caballo Blanco, a white runner who had showed up 10 years earlier and lived in a self-built hut in the mountains. Throughout Chapter 5, McDougall illustrates the mysterious, dangerous, and isolated nature of the Copper Canyons, which he describes as “the best open-air safe house on the planet” because they have “played host to just about every stripe of North American misfit” over the last century (33). Whereas Mexican bandits, revolutionary leaders, and Apache warriors once used the canyons to elude capture, nowadays they were used by the drug cartels.

Before McDougall and his guide raced back to the rim of the canyon the following day, they talked more with the schoolteacher as he orchestrated a game of rarajipari for the kids. He explained that “real rarajipari was the heart and soul of Tarahumara culture” and that “everything that made the Tarahumara unique was on display during the heat of a rarajipari” (41). The game is played by two evenly divided teams who kick a wooden ball and chase after it, continuing to kick the ball and chase it until the agreed upon distance is reached. On this day, the game would continue for roughly six miles, but the adult version of the game, in which villages compete against one another beginning the morning after a traditional party featuring their homemade corn beer, could go on for 24 or even 48 hours (41).

One of the children who stood out most to McDougall during the game was Marcelino, whose father Manuel Luna was one of the greatest Tarahumara runners. Marcelino spoke to the author after the game and told him that his father was good friends with Caballo Blanco, the man they were searching for. Before McDougall left to climb to the rim of the canyon, the schoolteacher gave him a cup of iskiate, assuring him that it would help for strength. McDougall explains that iskiate is otherwise known as “chia fresca” and is brewed by “dissolving chia seeds in water with a little sugar and a squirt of lime” (44). The next morning the two set out on the “word-of-mouth trail of the White Horse” but always seem to have just missed him at each stop (45).

In Chapter 7, McDougall traces back to the beginning of the book and his initial meeting with Caballo Blanco. He had finally found him in the lobby of a hotel in Creel, an old mining town leading to the Copper Canyons. Caballo was hungry after a daylong run but agreed to talk with him while he ate. McDougall explains that “one of the first and most important lessons he learned from the Tarahumara was the ability to break into a run anytime, the way a wolf would if it suddenly sniffed a hare” (49). According to the author, he told rambling stories for hours but also divulged that his name was Micah True and that he had been a highly ranked boxer in the United States before leaving to live with the Tarahumara 10 years earlier.