Are we born to run?

Christopher McDougall explores the mysteries of the human desire to run. How did running help early humans survive -- and what urges from our ancient ancestors spur us on today? At TEDxPennQuarter, McDougall tells the story of the marathoner with a heart of gold, the unlikely ultra-runner, and the hidden tribe in Mexico that runs to live.

Running: it's basically just
right, left, right, left, yeah?

I mean, we've been doing it
for two million years,

so it's kind of arrogant to assume
that I've got something to say

that hasn't been said and performed
better a long time ago.

But the cool thing about running,
as I've discovered,

is that something bizarre happens
in this activity all the time.

Case in point: A couple months ago,
if you saw the New York City Marathon,

I guarantee you, you saw something
that no one has ever seen before.

An Ethiopian woman named Derartu Tulu
turns up at the starting line.

She's 37 years old.

She hasn't won a marathon
of any kind in eight years,

and a few months previously,

she had almost died in childbirth.

Derartu Tulu was ready to hang it up
and retire from the sport,

but she decided she'd go for broke

and try for one last big payday
in the marquee event,

the New York City Marathon.

Except -- bad news for Derartu Tulu --
some other people had the same idea,

including the Olympic gold medalist,

and Paula Radcliffe, who is a monster,

the fastest woman marathoner
in history by far.

Only 10 minutes
off the men's world record,

Paula Radcliffe is essentially unbeatable.

That's her competition.

The gun goes off, and -- I mean,
she's not even an underdog;

she's, like, under the underdogs.

But the under-underdog hangs tough,

and 22 miles into a 26-mile race,

there is Derartu Tulu,
up there with the lead pack.

Now, this is when something
really bizarre happens.

Paula Radcliffe, the one person
who is sure to snatch the big paycheck

from Derartu Tulu's under-underdog hands,

suddenly grabs her leg
and starts to fall back.

So we all know what to do
in this situation, right?

You give her a quick crack
in the teeth with your elbow

and blaze for the finish line.

Derartu Tulu ruins the script.

Instead of taking off,

she falls back and she grabs
Paula Radcliffe,

and says, "Come on.
Come with us. You can do it."

So Paula Radcliffe,
unfortunately, does it.

She catches up with the lead pack

and is pushing toward the finish line.

But then she falls back again.

The second time, Derartu Tulu
grabs her and tries to pull her.

And Paula Radcliffe, at that point,
says, "I'm done. Go."

So that's a fantastic story,
and we all know how it ends.

She loses the check,

but she goes home with something
bigger and more important.

Except Derartu Tulu
ruins the script again.

Instead of losing, she blazes
past the lead pack and wins.

Wins the New York City Marathon,

goes home with a big fat check.

It's a heartwarming story,

but if you drill a little bit deeper,

you've got to sort of wonder
about what exactly was going on there.

When you have two outliers
in one organism,

it's not a coincidence.

When you have someone who is more
competitive and more compassionate

than anybody else in the race,
again, it's not a coincidence.

You show me a creature
with webbed feet and gills;

somehow water's involved.

Someone with that kind of heart,
there's some kind of connection there.

And the answer to it,
I think, can be found

down in the Copper Canyons of Mexico,

where there's a reclusive tribe,
called the Tarahumara Indians.

Now, the Tarahumara
are remarkable for three things.

Number one is:

they have been living essentially
unchanged for the past 400 years.

When the conquistadors arrived
in North America you had two choices:

you either fight back and engage
or you could take off.

The Mayans and Aztecs engaged,

which is why there are very few
Mayans and Aztecs.

The Tarahumara had a different strategy.

They took off and hid

in this labyrinthine, networking,
spider-webbing system of canyons

called the Copper Canyons.

And there they've remained
since the 1600s,

essentially the same way
they've always been.

The second thing remarkable
about the Tarahumara is:

deep into old age -- 70 to 80 years old --

these guys aren't running marathons;

they're running mega-marathons.

They're not doing 26 miles,

they're doing 100, 150 miles at a time,

and apparently without injury,
without problems.

The last thing that's remarkable
about the Tarahumara is:

all the things we're going
to be talking about today,

all the things we're trying to use
all of our technology

and brain power to solve --

things like heart disease
and cholesterol and cancer;

crime, warfare and violence;
clinical depression -- all this stuff --

the Tarahumara don't know
what you're talking about.

They are free from all
of these modern ailments.

So what's the connection?

Again, we're talking about outliers;

there's got to be some kind
of cause and effect.

Well, there are teams of scientists
at Harvard and the University of Utah

that are bending their brains
and trying to figure out

what the Tarahumara have known forever.

They're trying to solve
those same kinds of mysteries.

And once again, a mystery
wrapped inside of a mystery --

perhaps the key to Derartu Tulu
and the Tarahumara

is wrapped in three other
mysteries, which go like this:

Three things -- if you have the answer,
come up and take the microphone,

because nobody else knows the answer.

If you know it, you're smarter
than anybody on planet Earth.

Mystery number one is this:

Two million years ago,
the human brain exploded in size.

Australopithecus
had a tiny little pea brain.

Suddenly humans show up,
Homo erectus, big old melon head.

To have a brain of that size,

you need to have a source
of condensed caloric energy.

In other words, early humans
are eating dead animals --

no argument, that's a fact.

The only problem is,

the first edged weapons only appeared
about 200,000 years ago.

So somehow, for nearly two million years,

we are killing animals
without any weapons.

Now, we're not using our strength,

because we are the biggest
sissies in the jungle.

Every other animal
is stronger than we are,

they have fangs, they have claws,
they have nimbleness, they have speed.

We think Usain Bolt is fast.

Usain Bolt can get
his ass kicked by a squirrel.

We're not fast.

That would be an Olympic event:

turn a squirrel loose,
whoever catches it gets a gold medal.

(Laughter)

So no weapons, no speed,
no strength, no fangs, no claws.

How were we killing these animals?
Mystery number one.

Mystery number two:

Women have been in the Olympics
for quite some time now,

but one thing that's remarkable
about all women sprinters:

they all suck; they're terrible.

There's not a fast woman on the planet
and there never has been.

The fastest woman
to ever run a mile did it in 4:15.

I could throw a rock
and hit a high-school boy

who can run faster than 4:15.

For some reason,
you guys are just really slow.

But --

(Laughter)

But, you get to the marathon
we were just talking about --

you've only been allowed to run
the marathon for 20 years,

because prior to the 1980s,
medical science said

if a woman tried to run 26 miles --
does anyone know what would happen

if you tried to run 26 miles?

Why you were banned
from the marathon before the 1980s?

Audience Member: Her uterus would be torn.

Christopher McDougall:
Her uterus would be torn, yes.

Torn reproductive organs.

The uterus would literally
fall out of the body.

(Laughter)

Now, I've been to a lot of marathons,

and I've yet to see any ...

(Laughter)

So it's only been 20 years

that women have been allowed
to run the marathon.

In that very short learning curve,
you've gone from broken organs

up to the fact that you're only 10 minutes
off the male world record.

Then you go beyond 26 miles,
into the distance

that medical science also told us
would be fatal to humans --

remember Pheidippides died
when he ran 26 miles --

you get to 50 and 100 miles,
and suddenly, it's a different game.

You take a runner like Ann Trason
or Nikki Kimball or Jenn Shelton,

put them in a race of 50 or 100 miles
against anybody in the world,

and it's a coin toss who's going to win.

I'll give you an example.

A couple years ago,
Emily Baer signed up for a race

called the Hardrock 100,

which tells you all you need
to know about the race.

They give you 48 hours
to finish this race.

Well, Emily Baer -- 500 runners --

she finishes in eighth place,
in the top 10,

even though she stopped
at all the aid stations

to breastfeed her baby during the race.

(Laughter)

And yet, she beat 492 other people.

The last mystery:

Why is it that women get stronger
as distances get longer?

The third mystery is this:

At the University of Utah,
they started tracking finishing times

for people running the marathon.

What they found is that if you start
running the marathon at age 19,

you'll get progressively
faster, year by year,

until you reach your peak at age 27.

And then after that,
you succumb to the rigors of time.

And you'll get slower and slower,

until eventually you're back to running
the same speed you were at age 19.

So about seven, eight years
to reach your peak,

and then gradually you fall off your peak,

until you go back to the starting point.

You'd think it might take eight years
to go back to the same speed,

maybe 10 years -- no, it's 45 years.

64-year-old men and women

are running as fast
as they were at age 19.

Now, I defy you to come
up with any other physical activity --

and please don't say golf --
something that's actually hard --

(Laughter)

where geriatrics are performing
as well as they did as teenagers.

So you have these three mysteries.

Is there one piece in the puzzle
which might wrap all these things up?

You've got to be careful anytime
someone looks back in prehistory

and tries to give you
a global answer because,

it being prehistory, you can say
whatever the hell you want

and get away with it.

But I'll submit this to you:

If you put one piece in the middle
of this jigsaw puzzle,

suddenly it all starts
to form a coherent picture.

If you're wondering
why the Tarahumara don't fight

and don't die of heart disease,

why a poor Ethiopian
woman named Derartu Tulu

can be the most compassionate
and yet the most competitive,

and why we somehow were able
to find food without weapons,

perhaps it's because humans,

as much as we like to think of ourselves
as masters of the universe,

actually evolved as nothing more
than a pack of hunting dogs.

Maybe we evolved as a hunting pack animal.

Because the one advantage
we have in the wilderness --

again, it's not our fangs,
our claws or our speed --

the only thing we do really well is sweat.

We're really good
at being sweaty and smelly.

Better than any other mammal
on Earth, we can sweat really well.

But the advantage of that little bit
of social discomfort

is the fact that, when it comes to running
under hot heat for long distances,

we're superb -- the best on the planet.

You take a horse on a hot day,

and after about five or six miles,
that horse has a choice:

it's either going to breathe
or it's going to cool off.

But it ain't doing both. We can.

So what if we evolved
as hunting pack animals?

What if the only natural advantage
we had in the world

was the fact that we could
get together as a group,

go out there on that African savanna,
pick out an antelope,

go out as a pack,
and run that thing to death?

That's all we could do.

We could run really far on a hot day.

Well, if that's true, a couple
other things had to be true as well.

The key to being part
of a hunting pack is the word "pack."

If you go out by yourself
and try to chase an antelope,

I guarantee there will be two cadavers
out in the savanna.

You need a pack to pull together.

You need to have
those 64- and 65-year-olds

who have been doing this for a long time

to understand which antelope
you're trying to catch.

The herd explodes
and it gathers back again.

Those expert trackers
have to be part of the pack.

They can't be 10 miles behind.

You need the women
and the adolescents there,

because the two times in your life
you most benefit from animal protein

is when you're a nursing mother
and a developing adolescent.

It makes no sense to have
the antelope over there, dead,

and the people who want
to eat it 50 miles away.

They need to be part of the pack.

You need those 27-year-old studs
at the peak of their powers

ready to drop the kill,

and you need those teenagers
who are learning the whole thing involved.

The pack stays together.

Another thing that has to be true:
this pack cannot be materialistic.

You can't be hauling all your crap around,
trying to chase the antelope.

You can't be a pissed-off pack.

You can't be bearing grudges, like,
"I'm not chasing that guy's antelope.

He pissed me off.
Let him go chase his own antelope."

The pack has got to be able
to swallow its ego,

be cooperative, and pull together.

What you end up with, in other words,

is a culture remarkably similar
to the Tarahumara,

a tribe that has remained
unchanged since the Stone Age.

It's a really compelling argument

that maybe the Tarahumara are doing
exactly what all of us had done

for two million years,

that it's us in modern times
who have sort of gone off the path.

You know, we look at running
as this kind of alien, foreign thing,

this punishment you've got to do
because you ate pizza the night before.

But maybe it's something different.

Maybe we're the ones who have taken
this natural advantage we had

and we spoiled it.

How do we spoil it?
Well, how do we spoil anything?

We try to cash in on it. Right?

We try to can it and package it
and make it "better"

and then sell it to people.

And then what happened was,
we started creating

these fancy cushioned things
which can make running "better,"

called running shoes.

The reason I get personally
pissed-off about running shoes

is because I bought a million of them
and I kept getting hurt.

And I think if anybody in here runs --

I just had a conversation with Carol.

We talked for two minutes backstage,
and she talked about plantar fasciitis.

You talk to a runner,
I guarantee within 30 seconds,

the conversation turns to injury.

So if humans evolved as runners,
if that's our one natural advantage,

then why are we so bad at it?

Why do we keep getting hurt?

A curious thing about running
and running injuries

is that the running injury
is new to our time.

If you read folklore and mythology,

any kind of myths, any kind of tall tales,

running is always associated
with freedom and vitality

and youthfulness and eternal vigor.

It's only in our lifetime
that running has become associated

with fear and pain.

Geronimo used to say, "My only friends
are my legs. I only trust my legs."

That's because an Apache triathlon
used to be you'd run 50 miles

across the desert,

engage in hand-to-hand combat,
steal a bunch of horses,

and slap leather for home.

Geronimo was never saying, "You know
something, my Achilles -- I'm tapering.

I've got to take this week off."

Or, "I need to cross-train.
I didn't do yoga. I'm not ready."

(Laughter)

Humans ran and ran all the time.

We are here today.
We have our digital technology.

All of our science comes from the fact

that our ancestors were able to do
something extraordinary every day,

which was just rely
on their naked feet and legs

to run long distances.

So how do we get back to that again?

Well, I would submit
to you the first thing is:

get rid of all packaging,
all the sales, all the marketing.

Get rid of all the stinking running shoes.

Stop focusing on urban marathons,

which, if you do four hours, you suck,

and if you do 3:59:59, you're awesome,

because you qualified for another race.

We need to get back to that sense
of playfulness and joyfulness

and, I would say, nakedness,

that has made the Tarahumara

one of the healthiest and serene
cultures in our time.

So what's the benefit? So what?

So you burn off the Häagen-Dazs
from the night before.

But maybe there's another
benefit there as well.

Without getting too extreme about this,

imagine a world where everybody
could go out the door

and engage in the kind of exercise

that's going to make them
more relaxed, more serene,

more healthy,

burn off stress --

where you don't come back into your office
a raging maniac anymore,

or go home with a lot of stress
on top of you again.

Maybe there's something
between what we are today

and what the Tarahumara have always been.

I don't say let's go back
to the Copper Canyons

and live on corn and maize,
which is the Tarahumara's preferred diet,

but maybe there's somewhere in between.

And if we find that thing,

maybe there is a big fat
Nobel Prize out there.

Because if somebody could find a way
to restore that natural ability

that we all enjoyed
for most of our existence

up until the 1970s or so,

the benefits -- social and physical
and political and mental --

could be astounding.

What I've been seeing today
is there is a growing subculture

of barefoot runners,
people who've gotten rid of their shoes.

And what they have found uniformly is,

you get rid of the shoes,
you get rid of the stress,

you get rid of the injuries
and the ailments.

And what you find is something
the Tarahumara have known

for a very long time:

that this can be a whole lot of fun.

I've experienced it personally myself.

I was injured all my life; then
in my early 40s, I got rid of my shoes

and my running ailments
have gone away, too.

So hopefully it's something
we can all benefit from.

I appreciate your listening to this story.

Thanks very much.

(Applause)