Born to Run

by Christopher McDougall

  That’s why the Tarahumara bet like crazy before a ball race; it makes them equal partners in the effort, letting the runners know they’re all in it together. Likewise, the Hopis consider running a form of prayer; they offer every step as a sacrifice to a loved one, and in return ask the Great Spirit to match their strength with some of his own. Knowing that, it’s no mystery why Arnulfo had no interest in racing outside the canyons, and why Silvino never would again: if they weren’t racing for their people, then what was the point? Scott, whose sick mother never left his thoughts, was still a teenager when he absorbed this connection between compassion and competition.

  The Tarahumara drew strength from this tradition, I realized, but Scott drew strength from every running tradition. He was an archivist and an innovator, an omnivorous student who gave as much serious thought to the running lore of the Navajo, the Kalahari Bushmen, and the Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei as he did to aerobic levels, lactate thresholds, and the optimal recruitment of all three types of muscle-twitch fiber (not two, as most runners believe).

  Arnulfo wasn’t going up against a fast American. He was about to race the world’s only twenty-first-century Tarahumara.

  While the shopkeeper and I were busy setting the over-under, I saw Arnulfo strolling past. I grabbed a couple of Popsicles to pay him back for the sweet limes he’d given me at his house, and together we went looking for a shady spot to relax. I saw Manuel Luna sitting under a tree, but he looked so alone and lost in thought, I didn’t think we should disturb him. Barefoot Monkey, however, saw it differently.

  “MANUEL!” Barefoot Ted shouted from across the street.

  Manuel’s head jerked up.

  “Amigo, am I glad to see you,” Barefoot Ted said. He’d been looking around for some tire rubber so he could make his own pair of Tarahumara sandals, but figured he needed some expert advice. He grabbed mystified Manuel by the arm and led him into a tiny shop. As it turned out, Ted was right; all tire rubber is not the same. What Ted wanted, Manuel demonstrated with his hands, was a strip with a groove right down the middle, so the knot for the toe strap can be countersunk and not get torn off by the ground.

  Minutes later, Barefoot Ted and Manuel Luna were outside with their heads together, tracing Ted’s feet and slicing away at the tire tread with my big-bladed Victorinox knife. They worked through the afternoon, trimming and measuring, until, just before dinner, Ted was able to do a test run down the street in his new pair of Air Lunas. From then on, he and Manuel Luna were inseparable. They arrived for dinner together and hunted around the packed restaurant for a place to sit.

  Urique has only one restaurant, but when it’s run by Mamá Tita, one is plenty. From daybreak till midnight for four straight days, this cheerful sixty-something woman kept the four burners on her old propane stove blazing full blast, bustling away in a kitchen hot as a boiler room as she turned out mountains of food for all Caballo’s runners: stewed chicken and goat, batter-fried river fish, grilled beef, refried beans and guacamole, and minty, tangy salsas, all garnished with sweet limes and chili oil and fresh cilantro. For breakfast, she served eggs scrambled with goat cheese and sweet peppers, and on the side, heaping bowls of pinole and flapjacks that tasted so much like pound cake, I volunteered to apprentice in her kitchen one morning to learn the secret recipe.*

  As the American and Tarahumara runners squeezed around the two long tables in Tita’s back garden, Caballo banged on a beer bottle and stood up. I thought he was going to deliver our final race instructions, but he had something else on his mind.

  “There’s something wrong with you people,” he began. “Rarámuri don’t like Mexicans. Mexicans don’t like Americans. Americans don’t like anybody. But you’re all here. And you keep doing things you’re not supposed to. I’ve seen Rarámuri helping chabochis cross the river. I’ve watched Mexicans treat Rarámuri like great champions. Look at these gringos, treating people with respect. Normal Mexicans and Americans and Rarámuri don’t act this way.”

  Over in the corner, Ted thought he could help Manuel by translating Caballo’s clumsy Spanish into clumsier Spanglish. As Ted yammered, a faint smile kept flitting across Manuel’s face. Finally, it just stayed there.

  “What are you doing here?” Caballo went on. “You have corn to plant. You have families to take care of. You gringos, you know it can be dangerous down here. No one has to tell the Rarámuri about the danger. One of my friends lost someone he loved, someone who could have been the next great Rarámuri champion. He’s suffering, but he’s a true friend. So he’s here.”

  Everyone got quiet. Barefoot Ted laid a hand on Manuel’s back. Of all the Tarahumara he could have asked for help with his huaraches, I realized, he hadn’t picked Manuel Luna by accident.

  “I thought this race would be a disaster, because I thought you’d be too sensible to come.” Caballo scanned the garden, found Ted in the corner, and locked eyes with him. “You Americans are supposed to be greedy and selfish, but then I see you acting with a good heart. Acting out of love, doing good things for no reason. You know who does things for no good reason?”

  “CABALLO!” the shout went up.

  “Yah, right. Crazy people. Más Locos. But one thing about crazy people—they see things other people don’t. The government is putting in roads, destroying a lot of our trails. Sometimes Mother Nature wins and wipes them out with floods and rock slides. But you never know. You never know if we’ll get a chance like this again. Tomorrow will be one of the greatest races of all time, and you know who’s going to see it? Only crazy people. Only you Más Locos.”

  “Más Locos! ” Beers were shoved in the air, bottles were clinking. Caballo Blanco, lone wanderer of the High Sierras, had finally come out of the wild to find himself surrounded by friends. After years of disappointments, he was twelve hours from seeing his dream come true.

  “Tomorrow, you’ll see what crazy people see. The gun fires at daybreak, because we’ve got a lot of running to do.”

  “CABALLO! VIVA CABALLO!”

  *Any doubts I had about this theory were laid to rest the following year, when I went to crew for Luis Escobar at Badwater. At three o’clock in the morning, I drove ahead to check on Scott and found him bearing down in the midst of a four-mile-high hill. He’d already run eighty miles in 125-degree heat and was on pace for a new course record, but when he saw me, the first words out of his mouth were, “How’s Coyote?”

  *Tita’s secret (it’s okay, she won’t mind): she whips boiled rice, overripe bananas, a little cornmeal, and fresh goat milk into her batter. Perfection.

  CHAPTER 31

  Often I visualize a quicker, like almost a ghost runner,

  ahead of me with a quicker stride.

  —GABE JENNINGS, 2000 U.S. Olympic Trial 1,500- meter winner

  BY 5 A.M., Mamá Tita had pancakes and papayas and hot pinole on the table. For their prerace meal, Arnulfo and Silvino had requested pozole—a rich beef broth with tomatoes and fat corn kernels—and Tita, chirpy as a bird despite only getting three hours of sleep, whipped it right up. Silvino had changed into a special race outfit, a gorgeous turquoise blouse and a white zapete skirt embroidered with flowers along the hem.

  “Guapo,” Caballo said admiringly; looking good. Silvino ducked his head bashfully. Caballo paced the garden, sipping coffee and fretting. He’d heard that some farmers were planning a cattle drive on one of the trails, so he’d tossed awake all night, planning last-minute detours. When he got up and trudged down for breakfast, he discovered that Luis Escobar’s dad had already ridden to the rescue with old Bob, Caballo’s fellow wandering gringo from Batopilas. They’d come across the vaqueros the evening before while shooting photos in the backcountry and warned them off the course. Now without a stampede to sweat over, Caballo was searching for something else. He didn’t have to look far.

  “Where are the Kids?” he asked.

  Shrugs.

  “I better go get them,” he said. “I don’t want them killing themselves wit
hout breakfast again.”

  When Caballo and I stepped outside, I was stunned to find the entire town there to greet us. While we’d been inside having breakfast, garlands of fresh flowers and paper streamers had been strung across the street, and a mariachi band in dress sombreros and torero suits had begun strumming a few warm-up tunes. Women and children were already dancing in the street, while the mayor was aiming a shotgun at the sky, practicing how he could fire it without shredding the streamers.

  I checked my watch, and suddenly found it hard to breathe: thirty minutes till the start. The thirty-five-mile hike to Urique had, as Caballo predicted, “chewed me up and crapped me out,” and in half an hour, I had to do it all over again and go fifteen miles farther. Caballo had laid out a diabolical course; we’d be climbing and descending sixty-five hundred feet in fifty miles, exactly the altitude gain of the first half of the Leadville Trail 100. Caballo was no fan of the Leadville race directors, but when it came to choosing terrain, he was just as pitiless.

  Caballo and I climbed the hill to the little hotel. Jenn and Billy were still in their room, arguing over whether Billy needed to carry the extra water bottle which, it turned out, he couldn’t find anyway. I had a spare I was using to store espresso, so I hustled to my room, dumped the coffee, and tossed it to Billy.

  “Now eat something! And hustle up!” Caballo scolded. “The mayor is gonna blast that thing at seven sharp.”

  Caballo and I grabbed our gear—a hydration backpack loaded with gels and PowerBars for me, a water bottle and tiny bag of pinole for Caballo—and we headed back down the hill. Fifteen minutes to go. We rounded the corner toward Tita’s restaurant, and found the street party had grown into a mini-Mardi Gras. Luis and Ted were twirling old women and fending off Luis’s dad, who kept cutting in. Scott and Bob Francis were clapping and singing along as best they could with the mariachis. The Urique Tarahumara had set up their own percussion brigade, beating time on the sidewalk with their palia sticks.

  Caballo was delighted. He pushed into the throng and began a Muhammad Ali shuffle, bobbing and weaving and punching his fists in the air. The crowd roared. Mamá Tita blew him kisses.

  “¡Ándale! We’re going to dance all day!” Caballo shouted through his cupped hands. “But only if nobody dies. Take care out there!” He turned to the mariachis and dragged a finger across his throat. Kill the music. Showtime.

  Caballo and the mayor began corraling dancers off the street and waving runners to the starting line. We crowded together, forming into a crazy human quilt of mismatched faces, bodies, and costumes. The Urique Tarahumara were in their shorts and running shoes, still carrying their palias. Scott stripped off his shirt. Arnulfo and Silvino, dressed in the bright blouses they’d brought especially for the race, squeezed in beside Scott; the Deer hunters weren’t letting the Deer out of their sight for a second. By unspoken agreement, we all picked an invisible line in the cracked asphalt and toed it.

  My chest felt tight. Eric worked his way over beside me. “Look, I got some bad news,” he said. “You’re not going to win. No matter what you do, you’re going to be out there all day. So you might as well just relax, take your time, and enjoy it. Keep this in mind—if it feels like work, you’re working too hard.”

  “Then I’ll catch ’em napping,” I croaked, “and make my move.”

  “No moves!” Eric warned, not even wanting the thought to creep into my skull as a joke. “It could hit one hundred degrees out there. Your job is to make it home on your own two feet.”

  Mamá Tita walked from runner to runner, her eyes puddling as she pressed our hands. “Te n cuidado, cariño” she urged. Be careful, dearie.

  “¡Diez!… ¡Nueve!…”

  The mayor was leading the crowd in the countdown.

  “¡Ocho!… ¡Siete!…”

  “Where are the Kids?” Caballo yelled.

  I looked around. Jenn and Billy were nowhere in sight.

  “Get him to hold off!” I shouted back.

  Caballo shook his head. He turned away and got into race-ready position. He’d waited years and risked his life for this moment. He wasn’t postponing it for anyone.

  “¡BRUJITA!” The soldiers were pointing behind us.

  Jenn and Billy came sprinting down the hill as the crowd hit “Cuatro.” Billy wore surf baggies and no shirt, while Jenn had on black compression shorts and a black jog bra, her hair knotted in two tight Pippi braids. Distracted by her military fan club, Jenn whipped the drop bag with her food and spare socks to the wrong side of the street, startling spectators, who hopped over it as it flew between their legs and disappeared. I raced over, snagged it, and got it to the aid table just as the mayor jerked the trigger.

  BOOM!

  Scott leaped and screamed, Jenn howled, Caballo hooted. The Tarahumara just ran. The Urique team shot off in a pack, disappearing down the dirt road into the predawn shadows. Caballo had warned us that the Tarahumara would go out hard, but whoa! This was just ferocious. Scott fell in behind them, with Arnulfo and Silvino tucked in on his heels. I jogged slowly, letting the pack flow past until I was in last place. It would be great to have some companionship, but at this point, I felt safer alone. The worst mistake I could make would be getting lulled into someone else’s race.

  The first two miles were a flat ramble out of town and along the dirt road to the river. The Urique Tarahumara hit the water first, but instead of charging straight into the shallow fifty-yard crossing, they suddenly stopped and began rooting around the shore, flipping over rocks.

  What the hell…? wondered Bob Francis, who’d gone ahead with Luis’s dad to take photos from the far side of the river. He watched as the Urique Tarahumara pulled out plastic shopping bags they’d stashed under rocks the night before. Tucking their palias under their arms, they slipped their feet into the bags, pulled them tight by the handles, and began sloshing across the river, demonstrating what happens when new technology replaces something that has worked fine for ten thousand years: afraid of getting their precious Salvation Army running shoes wet, the Urique Tarahumara were hobbling along in homemade waders.

  “Jesus,” Bob murmured. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  The Urique Tarahumara were still stumbling over slippery rocks when Scott hit the riverbank. He splashed straight into the water, Arnulfo and Silvino hard behind. The Urique Tarahumara reached shore, kicked the bags off their feet, and stuffed them into their shorts to use again later. They began scrambling up the steep sand dune with Scott closing fast, sand spraying from his churning feet. By the time the Urique Tarahumara hit the dirt trail leading up the mountain, Scott and the two Quimares had made contact.

  Jenn, meanwhile, was already having a problem. She, Billy, and Luis had crossed the river side by side with a pack of Tarahumara, but as Jenn tore up the sand dune, her right hand was bugging her. Ultra-runners rely on “handhelds,” water bottles with straps that wrap around your hand for easy carrying. Jenn had given Billy one of her two handhelds, then rigged a second for herself with athletic tape and a springwater bottle. As she fought her way up the dune, her homemade handheld felt sticky and awkward. It was a tiny hassle, but it was a hassle she’d have to deal with every minute of the next eight hours. So should she keep it? Or should she once again risk running into the canyons with only a dozen swallows in her hand?

  Jenn began gnawing through the tape. Her only hope of competing with the Tarahumara, she knew, was to go for broke. If she gambled and crashed, fine. But if she lost the race of a lifetime because she’d played it safe, she’d always regret it. Jenn tossed the bottle and immediately felt better. Bolder, even—and that led to her next risky decision. They were at the bottom of the first meat grinder, a steep three-mile hill with little shade. Once the sun came up, she had little hope of sticking with the heat-eating Tarahumara.

  “Ah, fuck it,” Jenn thought. “I’m just gonna go now while it’s cool.” Within five strides, she was pulling away from the pack. “Later, dudes,” she called o
ver her shoulder.

  The Tarahumara immediately gave chase. The two canny old vets, Sebastiano and Herbolisto, boxed Jenn in from the front while the three other Tarahumara surrounded her on the sides. Jenn looked for a gap, then burst loose and pulled away. Instantly, the Tarahumara swarmed and bottled her back up. The Tarahumara may be peace-loving people at home, but when it came to racing, it was bare knuckles all the way.

  “I hate to say it, but Jenn is going to blow up,” Luis told Billy as they watched Jenn dart ahead for the third time. They were only three miles into a 50- mile race, and she was already going toe-to-toe with a five-man Tarahumara chase pack. “You don’t run like that if you want to finish.”

  “Somehow she always pulls it off,” Billy said.

  “Not on this course,” Luis said. “Not against these guys.”

  Thanks to the genius of Caballo’s planning, we’d all get to witness the battle in real time. Caballo had laid out his course in a Y pattern, with the starting line dead in the middle. That way, the villagers would see the race several times as it doubled back and forth, and the racers would always know how far they were trailing the leaders. That Y-formation also provided another unexpected benefit: at that very moment, it was giving Caballo plenty of reason to be very suspicious of the Urique Tarahumara.

  Caballo was about a quarter mile back, so he had a perfect view of Scott and the Deer hunters as they closed the gap with the Urique Tarahumara on the hill across the river. When he saw them heading back toward him after the first turnaround, Caballo was astounded: in the space of just four miles, the Urique crew had opened up a. four-minute lead. They’d not only dropped the two best Tarahumara racers of their generation, but also the greatest climber in the history of Western ultrarunning.

  “No. Way. In. HELL!” growled Caballo, who was running in a pack of his own with Barefoot Ted, Eric, and Manuel Luna. When they got to the five-mile turnaround in the tiny Tarahumara settlement of Guadalupe Coronado, Caballo and Manuel started asking the Tarahumara spectators some questions. It didn’t take them long to find out what was going on: the Urique Tarahumara were taking side trails and shaving the course. Rather than fury, Caballo felt a pang of pity. The Urique Tarahumara had lost their old way of running, he realized, and their confidence along with it. They weren’t Running People anymore; they were just guys trying desperately to keep up with the living shadows of their former selves.