Born to Run: The book that changed the way we run
There are some books that you close feeling as though you have been running yourself. Born to Run, published in 2009 by American journalist Christopher McDougall, is one of them. Fifteen years after its release, it remains one of the most widely read books on running in the world—and one of the few to have concretely changed the way millions of runners strike the ground.
An investigation starting with foot pain
It all begins with a very simple question: why does McDougall, like so many runners, feel pain after every run despite increasingly technical and cushioned shoes? This query leads him deep into the Barrancas del Cobre, or Copper Canyons, in northern Mexico, where a discreet people live: the Tarahumara (or Rarámuri, meaning "those who run fast" in their language).
They are capable of covering hundreds of kilometers in the mountains over several days, wearing simple makeshift sandals—huaraches—cut from tire rubber. No overuse injuries, no chronic tendonitis: McDougall sees this as a radical challenge to everything the running industry had sold him.
Caballo Blanco and the secret Copper Canyon race
The book draws its strength from its narrative flair. Around the mythical figure of "Caballo Blanco" (Micah True), an American runner who came to live among the Tarahumara, McDougall constructs the story of a clandestine race organized in the depths of the canyons, bringing together a few exceptional American ultra-trail runners and the best Rarámuri runners. You encounter Scott Jurek, multi-time winner of the Western States, and a gallery of larger-than-life characters. It all reads as much like an adventure novel as it does a scientific and anthropological investigation.
The shockwave of minimalism
Upon its release, Born to Run had an immediate effect on the industry: a boom in minimalist shoes and "barefoot running," heated debates among scientists over heel-striking versus forefoot-striking, and questioning of the maximal cushioning that had dominated the market since the 1980s. Fifteen years later, the debate has become more nuanced—the science of movement is more complex than a simple shod versus barefoot opposition—but the book has permanently opened the discussion on the biomechanics of the stride and the fact that there is no single right way to run.
What this book says, fundamentally, about the joy of running
Beyond the question of footwear, Born to Run is primarily about something else: the primal joy of running, far from chronometers, podiums, and state-of-the-art gear. The Tarahumara do not run to break a record or for a sponsor: they run because that is what their bodies are made to do, in community, with a smile. This philosophy is not so far from that which already animated the magazine Spiridon in the 1970s: running as freedom, as sharing, away from performance at all costs and the logic of pure competition.
It is, in fact, anything but a coincidence that the story of the Tarahumara left its mark on the Spiridon archives: the brand paid tribute to them from the very beginning, through a typeface and a "Road Runner" bird designed by Karel Matejovsky, which are still present on certain pieces of the Archive collection today.
Why read (or re-read) it today
Born to Run is just as rewarding for a curious casual runner as it is for a seasoned trail runner in search of meaning. It is a book that makes you want to go out for a run, without a watch or a performance goal, just for the pleasure of feeling your foot strikes. A read that deserves a place in every runner's library, to be found in our selection of running and trail books, alongside other stories that have shaped the history of running—including Born to Run itself, available in the Bibliothèque Spiridon.