Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

by Christopher McDougall

  Just goofing around, Ann was logging more miles than many serious marathoners, so by 1985, she figured it was time to see how she stacked up against some real runners. Maybe the L.A. Marathon? Yawn; she might as well be back hamstering around behind the high school if she was going to spend three hours circling city blocks. She wanted a race so wild and fun she’d get lost in it, just the way she did with her mountain jaunts.

  Now this looks interesting, she thought as she eyed an ad in a local sports magazine. Like Western States, the American River 50- Mile Endurance Run was a horseless horse race, a cross-country ramble over a course previously used for backcountry roughriders. It’s hot, hilly, and hazardous. (“Poison oak flourishes along the trail,” racers are warned. “You may also encounter horses and rattlesnakes. It is recommended that you yield to both.”) Sidestep the fangs and hooves, and you’ve still got a final punch in the face waiting before you finish: after forty-seven miles of trail-running, you hit a one-thousand-foot climb for the last three miles.

  So, to recap: Ann’s first race would be a double marathon featuring snakebites and skin eruptions under a sizzling sun. Nope, no risk of boredom there.

  And, no big surprise, Ann’s ultramarathon debut started miserably. The thermometer was hitting sauna levels, and she was too raw a rookie to realize that maybe carrying a water bottle on a 108-degree day might be a smart idea. She knew zip about pacing (was this thing going to take her seven hours? Ten? Thirteen?) and even less about trail-race tactics (those guys who walked uphill and flew past her on the descents were really starting to piss her off. Run like a man, goddammit!).

  But once the jitters wore off, she relaxed into her cradle-rocking stride. Her head came up, those bangs blew back, and she started feeling that jungle-cat confidence. By the thirty-mile mark, dozens of runners were wobbling in the damp heat, feeling as if they were trapped in the middle of a freshly baked muffin. But despite being badly dehydrated, Ann only seemed to get stronger; so strong, in fact, that she beat every other woman in the race and broke the female course record, finishing two back-to-back trail marathons in seven hours and nine minutes.

  That shock victory was the beginning of a scorching streak. Ann went on to become the female champion of the Western States 100— the Super Bowl of trail-running—-fourteen times, a record that spans three decades and makes Lance Armstrong, with his piddlin’ little seven Tour de France wins, look like a flash in the pan. And a pampered flash in the pan, at that: Lance never pedaled a stroke without a team of experts at his elbow to monitor his caloric intake and transmit microsecond split analyses into his earbud, while Ann only had her husband, Carl, waiting in the woods with a Timex and half a turkey sandwich.

  And unlike Lance, who trained and peaked for a single event every year, Ann was a girl gone wild for competition. During one stretch, she averaged an ultramarathon every other month for four years. Such a relentless battering should have wasted her, but Ann had the recovery powers of a mutant superhero; she seemed to recharge on the move, getting stronger when she should have been wilting. She got faster with every month, and came within a flu shot of a perfect record: she won twenty races over those four years, only dropping to second place the time she ran a sixty-miler when she should have been on the sofa with Kleenex and Cup-a-Soup.

  Of course, there was a weak spot in her armor. There had to be. Except… no one could ever find it. Ann was like a circus strongman who fights the toughest guy in any town: she won on roads and trails … on smooth tracks and scrabbly mountains … in America, Europe, and Africa. She smashed world records at 50 miles, 100 kilometers, and 100 miles, and set ten more world bests on both track and road. She qualified for the Olympic Marathon Trials, ran 6:44 a mile for 62 miles to win the World Ultra Title, and then won Western States and Leadville in the same month.

  But one prize kept slipping out of her fingers: for years, Ann could never win a major ultra outright. She’d beaten every man and woman in the field in plenty of smaller races, but when it came to the top showdowns, at least one man had always beaten her by a few minutes.

  No more. By 1994, she knew her time had come.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE WEIRDNESS STARTED as soon as Rick Fisher’s dusty Chevy rolled to a stop outside Leadville race headquarters and two guys in white wizard capes stepped out.

  “Hey!” Ken Chlouber called as he came outside to greet them. “The speed demons are here!” Ken stuck out his hand and tried to remember the phonetics for “welcome” that the Spanish teacher over at the high school had taught him.

  “Uh … Bee en benny—,” he began.

  One of the guys in the capes smiled and put out his hand. Suddenly, Fisher shoved his body between them.

  “No!” Fisher said. “You must not touch them in a controlling way, or you’ll pay. In their culture that’s considered criminal assault.”

  What the—Ken could feel the blood swelling in his head. You want to see some criminal assault, buddy? Try grabbing my arm again. Fisher sure as hell never had a handshake problem when he was begging Ken to find his guys free housing. So what, now he’s got a winner and a pocketful of Rockport sponsorship money and everyone’s supposed to treat them like royalty? Ken was ready to drive a steel toe up Fisher’s tail, but then he thought of something that made him exhale, relax, and chalk it up to nerves.

  Annie must really be making him edgy, Ken thought. Especially the way the media is playing this thing.

  The news stories had shifted dramatically since Ann confirmed that she’d be at Leadville. Instead of asking whether the Tarahumara would win, they were now wondering whether Rick Fisher’s team would be humiliated—again. “The Tarahumara consider it shameful to lose to a woman,” article after article repeated. It was an irresistible story: the shy science teacher heading bravely into the Rockies to battle the macho Mexican tribesmen and anyone else, male or female, who got between her and the tape in one of the sport’s premier events.

  Of course, there was one way Fisher could ease the media pressure on Team Tarahumara: he could shut up. No one had ever mentioned Tarahumara machismo until Fisher began telling reporters about it. “They don’t lose to women,” he said. “And they don’t plan to start now.” It was a fascinating revelation—especially to the Tarahumara, who wouldn’t have known what he was talking about.

  The Tarahumara are actually an extraordinarily egalitarian society; men are gentle and respectful to women, and are commonly seen toting infants around on the small of their backs, just like their wives. Men and women race separately, that’s true, but mostly for logistical reasons: moms with a passel of younguns to look after aren’t free to spend two days traipsing across the canyons. They’ve got to stay close to home, so their races tend to be short (by Tarahumara standards, “short” clocks in at forty to sixty miles). Women are still respected as crackerjack runners, and often serve as the cho’ kéame—a combination team captain and chief bookie—when the men race. Compared with NFL-revering American guys, Tarahumara men are Lilith Fair fans.

  Fisher had already been embarrassed once when his entire team had crapped out. Now, thanks to his own mistake, he found himself in the spotlight of a nationally televised Battle of the Sexes that, quite likely, he was going to lose. Ann’s best time at Leadville two years before was only thirty minutes behind Victoriano’s 20:03, and she’d improved phenomenally since then. Look at Western States; she’d gotten ninety minutes faster in the space of just one year. There was no telling what she’d do when she came roaring into Leadville with a score to settle.

  Plus, Ann was holding all the aces: Victoriano and Cerrildo weren’t coming back this year (they had corn to plant and had no time for another fun run), so Fisher had lost his two best racers.

  Ann had won Leadville twice before, so unlike whatever newcomers Fisher had drafted, she had the huge advantage of knowing every bewildering twist in the trail. Miss one marker at Leadville, and you could wander in the dark for miles before getting back on course.

&n
bsp; Ann also acclimated effortlessly to high altitude, and knew better than anyone alive how to analyze and attack the logistical problems of a one-hundred-mile footrace. At its essence, an ultra is a binary equation made up of hundreds of yes/no questions: Eat now or wait? Bomb down this hill, or throttle back and save the quads for the flats? Find out what is itching in your sock, or push on? Extreme distance magnifies every problem (a blister becomes a blood-soaked sock, a declined PowerBar becomes a woozy inability to follow trail markers), so all it takes is one wrong answer to ruin a race. But not for honor-student Ann; when it came to ultras, she always aced her quizzes.

  In short: thumbs up to the Tarahumara for being amazing amateurs, but this time, they were meeting the top pro in the business (literally; Ann was now a hired gun backed by Nike money). The Tarahumara had their brief, shining moment as Leadville champions; now they were coming back as underdogs.

  Which explained the guys in the wizard capes.

  Desperate to replace his two missing veterans, Fisher had followed Patrocinio up a nine-thousand-foot climb to the mountaintop village of Choguita. There, he found Martimano Cervantes, a forty-two-year-old master of the ball game, and his protégé, twenty-five-year-old Juan Herrera. Choguita is bitterly cold at night and sun-scorched by day, so even when running, the Choguita Tarahumara protect themselves with fine woolen ponchos that hang nearly to their feet. As they fly down the trail, capes flowing around them, they look like magicians appearing from a puff of smoke.

  Juan and Martimano were doubtful. They’d never left their village before, and this sounded like a long time alone among the Bearded Devils. Fisher cut right through their objections; he had cash and was ready to talk turkey. It had been a dry winter and worse spring in the Choguita highlands, and he knew food supplies were dangerously low. “Come race with us,” Fisher promised them, “and I’ll give your village one ton of corn and a half ton of beans.”

  Hmm. Fifty bags of corn wasn’t a lot for a village … but at least it was guaranteed. Maybe if they had some companionship, it would be okay.

  We have other runners here who are also very fast, they told Fisher. Can some of them come?

  No dice, Fisher replied. Just you two.

  Secretly, the Pescador was working on a little social-engineering scheme: by taking runners from as many different villages as possible, he hoped to pit the Tarahumara against each other. Let them tear after each other, he figured, and win Leadville in the bargain. It was a shrewd plan—and totally misguided. If Fisher had known more about Tarahumara culture, he’d have understood that racing doesn’t divide villages; it unites them. It’s a way for distant tribesmen to tighten the bonds of kinship and buddyhood, and make sure everyone in the canyon is in fine enough fettle to come through in an emergency. Sure it’s competitive, but so is family touch football on Thanksgiving morning. The Tarahumara saw racing as a festival of friendship; Fisher saw a battlefield.

  Men versus women, village versus village, race director versus race team manager—within minutes of arriving in Leadville, Fisher had storms brewing on three fronts. And then he really got down to business.

  “Hey, okay if we take a picture together?” a Leadville runner asked when he spotted the Tarahumara in town before the race.

  “Sure,” Fisher replied. “You got twenty bucks?”

  “For what?” the startled runner asked.

  For crimes against humanity. For the fact that “white guys” had taken advantage of the Tarahumara and other indigenous people for centuries, Fisher would explain. And if you don’t like it, too bad: “I couldn’t care less about the ultra community,” Fisher would say. “I don’t care about white people. I like for the Tarahumara to kick white butt.”

  White butt? Must have been a while since Fisher swiveled around for a look at his own behind. And what was he here for, anyway: a race, or a race war?

  No one could chat with the Tarahumara, or even pat them on the back and say “Good luck,” without the Pescador forcing his way between them. Even Ann Trason found a wall of hostility facing her. “Rick kept the Tarahumara unnecessarily secluded,” she would later complain. “He wouldn’t even let us talk to them.”

  The Rockport executives were bewildered. They’d just launched a trail-running shoe, and the whole marketing campaign was based around the Leadville race. The shoe was even named the Leadville Racer. When Rick Fisher called them for sponsorship (“Keep in mind, he came to us” then Rockport vice president Tony Post told me), Rockport made it clear that the Tarahumara would be a big part of the promos. Rockport would kick in cash, and in return, the Tarahumara would wear the banana-yellow shoes, work the crowd, appear in some ads. Was that cool?

  Totally, Fisher promised.

  “Then I get to Leadville and meet this strange guy,” Tony Post went on. “He seemed like an inconsolable hothead. That was the contradiction. Here you had these really gentle people, being managed by the worst of American culture. It was like …” Post paused to reflect, and in the silence you could almost hear the realization dawning and forming in his mind. “It’s like he was jealous they were the ones getting all the attention.”

  And so, with battles brewing all around them, the Tarahumara snuffed out their cigarettes and edged in awkwardly beside the other runners in front of Leadville’s courthouse, same place they used to hang the horse thieves. Among the hugs and handshakes, the we-who-are-about-to-die camaraderie shared by the other runners during the final countdown, the Tarahumara looked lonely and alone.

  Manuel Luna’s genial smile disappeared and his face hardened into oak. Juan Herrera adjusted his Rockport cap and shifted his feet in his new $110 screaming-yellow Rockports with the thick hiking-boot sole. Martimano Cervantes huddled inside his cape in the freezing Rocky Mountain night. Ann Trason stepped in front of all of them, shook herself loose, and stared into the darkness ahead.

  CHAPTER 13

  He who loves his body more than

  dominion over the empire

  can be given custody of the empire.

  —LAO TZU, Tao Te Ching

  DR. JOE VIGIL, a sixty-five-year-old army of one, warmed his hands around his coffee as he waited for the first flashlight beams to come stabbing toward him through the woods.

  No other elite coach in the world was anywhere near Leadville, because no other elite coach could give a hoot what was going on at that giant outdoor insane asylum in the Rockies. Self-mutilators, mean mothermuckers or whatever they called themselves—what did they have to do with real running? With Olympic running? As a sport, most track coaches ranked ultras somewhere between competitive eating and recreational S&M.

  Super, Vigil thought, as he stomped his feet against the chill. Go ahead and sleep, and leave the freaks to me—because he knew the freaks were onto something.

  The secret to Vigil’s success was spelled out right in his name: no other coach was more vigilant about detecting the crucial little details that everyone else missed. He’d been that way his entire competitive life, ever since he was a puny Latino kid trying to play high-school football in a conference that didn’t have many Latinos, let alone puny ones. Joey Vigil couldn’t outmuscle the meat slabs on the other side of the line, so he out-scienced them; he studied the tricks of leverage, propulsion, and timing, figuring out ways to position his feet so he popped up from a crouch like a spring-loaded anvil. By the time he graduated from college, the puny Latino kid was a first-team All-Conference guard. He then turned to track, and used that tireless bloodhound nose to become the greatest distance-running mind America has ever seen.

  Besides his Ph.D. and two master’s degrees, Vigil’s pursuit of the lost art of distance running had taken him deep into the Russian outback, high into the mountains of Peru, and far across Kenya’s Rift Valley highlands. He’d wanted to learn why Russian sprinters are forbidden to run a single step in training until they can jump off a twenty-foot ladder in their bare feet, and how sixty-year-old goatherds at Machu Picchu can possibly scale the Andes on a sta
rvation diet of yogurt and herbs, and how Japanese runners trained by Suzuki-san and Koide-san could mysteriously alchemize slow walking into fast marathons. He’d tracked down the old masters and picked their brains, vacuuming up their secrets before they disappeared into the grave. His head was a Library of Congress of running lore, much of it vanished from every place on the planet except his memory.

  His research paid off sensationally. At his alma mater, Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado, Vigil took over the dying cross-country program and engineered it into an absolute terror. Adams State harriers won twenty-six national titles in thirty-three years, including the most awe-inspiring show of strength ever displayed in a national championship race: in 1992, Vigil’s runners took the first five places in the NCAA Division II Championship meet, scoring the only shutout ever achieved at a national championship. Vigil also guided Pat Porter to eight U.S.A. Cross Country titles (twice as many as Olympic marathon gold medalist Frank Shorter, four times as many as silver medalist Meb Keflezighi), and was named College National Coach of the Year a record fourteen times. In 1988, Vigil was appointed the distance coach for American runners heading to the Seoul Olympics.

  And that explained why, 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. See, nothing about ultrarunning added up; and when Vigil couldn’t do the math, he knew he was missing something big.

  Take this equation: how come nearly all the women finish Leadville and fewer than half the men do? Every year, 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.”