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

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

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so it's kind of arrogant to assume

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that I've got something to say

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

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

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is that something bizarre happens

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in this activity all the time.

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

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I guarantee you, you saw something

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that no one has ever seen before.

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An Ethiopian woman named Derartu Tulu

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turns up at the starting line.

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She's 37 years old,

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

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and a few months previously

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she almost died in childbirth.

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

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but she decided she'd go for broke

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and try for one last big payday

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in the marquee event,

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the New York City Marathon.

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

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including the Olympic gold medalist

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and Paula Radcliffe, who is a monster,

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the fastest woman marathoner in history by far.

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Only 10 minutes off the men's world record,

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Paula Radcliffe is essentially unbeatable.

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That's her competition.

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The gun goes off, and she's not even an underdog.

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She's under the underdogs.

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But the under-underdog hangs tough,

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and 22 miles into a 26-mile race,

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there is Derartu Tulu

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up there with the lead pack.

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Now this is when something really bizarre happens.

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

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out of Derartu Tulu's under-underdog hands,

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suddenly grabs her leg and starts to fall back.

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

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

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and blaze for the finish line.

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Derartu Tulu ruins the script.

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Instead of taking off,

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she falls back, and she grabs Paula Radcliffe,

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

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So Paula Radcliffe, unfortunately, does it.

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She catches up with the lead pack

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and is pushing toward the finish line.

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But then she falls back again.

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And the second time Derartu Tulu grabs her and tries to pull her.

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And Paula Radcliffe at that point says,

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"I'm done. Go."

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

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She loses the check,

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but she goes home with something bigger and more important.

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Except Derartu Tulu ruins the script again --

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instead of losing, she blazes past the lead pack and wins,

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wins the New York City Marathon,

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goes home with a big fat check.

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It's a heartwarming story,

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but if you drill a little bit deeper,

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

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When you have two outliers in one organism,

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it's not a coincidence.

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When you have someone who is more competitive and more compassionate

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

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You show me a creature with webbed feet and gills;

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somehow water's involved.

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

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And the answer to it, I think,

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can be found down in the Copper Canyons of Mexico,

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where there's a tribe, a reclusive tribe,

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called the Tarahumara Indians.

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Now the Tarahumara are remarkable for three things.

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Number one is,

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they have been living essentially unchanged

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for the past 400 years.

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

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

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The Mayans and Aztecs engaged,

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which is why there are very few Mayans and Aztecs.

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The Tarahumara had a different strategy.

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They took off and hid

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in this labyrinthine, networking,

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spiderwebbing system of canyons

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called the Copper Canyons,

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and there they remained since the 1600s --

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essentially the same way they've always been.

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The second thing remarkable about the Tarahumara

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

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these guys aren't running marathons;

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they're running mega-marathons.

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They're not doing 26 miles;

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

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and apparently without injury, without problems.

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The last thing that's remarkable about the Tarahumara

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

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all the things that we're trying to come up with

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using all of our technology and brain power to solve --

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things like heart disease and cholesterol and cancer

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and crime and warfare and violence and clinical depression --

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all this stuff, the Tarahumara don't know what you're talking about.

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They are free

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from all of these modern ailments.

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So what's the connection?

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Again, we're talking about outliers --

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

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Well, there are teams of scientists

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at Harvard and the University of Utah

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that are bending their brains to try to figure out

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what the Tarahumara have known forever.

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

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

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perhaps the key to Derartu Tulu and the Tarahumara

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

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

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because nobody else knows the answer.

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And if you know it, then you are smarter than anybody else on planet Earth.

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Mystery number one is this:

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Two million years ago the human brain exploded in size.

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Australopithecus had a tiny little pea brain.

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Suddenly humans show up -- Homo erectus --

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big, old melon-head.

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To have a brain of that size,

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you need to have a source of condensed caloric energy.

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

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no argument, that's a fact.

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The only problem is,

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

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So, somehow, for nearly two million years,

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we are killing animals without any weapons.

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Now we're not using our strength

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because we are the biggest sissies in the jungle.

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Every other animal is stronger than we are --

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

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We think Usain Bolt is fast. Usain Bolt can get his ass kicked by a squirrel.

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We're not fast.

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That would be an Olympic event: turn a squirrel loose --

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whoever catches the squirrel, you get a gold medal.

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

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how were we killing these animals? Mystery number one.

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Mystery number two:

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

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

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they all suck; they're terrible.

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There's not a fast woman on the planet

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and there never has been.

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

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I could throw a rock and hit a high school boy

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who can run faster than 4:15.

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For some reason you guys are just really slow.

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(Laughter)

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

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you guys have only been allowed to run the marathon for 20 years.

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Because, prior to the 1980s,

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medical science said that if a woman tried to run 26 miles --

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does anyone know what would happen if you tried to run 26 miles,

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

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(Audience Member: Her uterus would be torn.) Her uterus would be torn.

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Yes. You would have torn reproductive organs.

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The uterus would fall out, literally fall out of the body.

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Now I've been to a lot of marathons,

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and I've yet to see any ...

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(Laughter)

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So it's only been 20 years that women have been allowed to run the marathon.

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In that very short learning curve,

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you guys have gone from broken organs

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up to the fact that you're only 10 minutes off

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the male world record.

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Then you go beyond 26 miles,

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

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remember Pheidippides died when he ran 26 miles --

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you get to 50 and 100 miles,

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and suddenly it's a different game.

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

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

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

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I'll give you an example.

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

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called the Hardrock 100,

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

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They give you 48 hours to finish this race.

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Well Emily Baer -- 500 runners --

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she finishes in eighth place, in the top 10,

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even though she stopped at all the aid stations

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to breastfeed her baby during the race --

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and yet, beat 492 other people.

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So why is it that women get stronger

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as distances get longer?

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The third mystery is this:

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At the University of Utah, they started tracking finishing times

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for people running the marathon.

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And what they found

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

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you will get progressively faster, year by year,

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until you reach your peak at age 27.

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And then after that, you succumb

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to the rigors of time.

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And you'll get slower and slower,

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

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So about seven years, eight years to reach your peak,

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and then gradually you fall off your peak,

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until you go back to the starting point.

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

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

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64-year-old men and women

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are running as fast as they were at age 19.

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

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

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where geriatrics are performing

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as well as they did as teenagers.

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So you have these three mysteries.

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Is there one piece in the puzzle

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which might wrap all these things up?

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You've got to be really careful any time

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someone looks back in prehistory and tries to give you some sort of global answer,

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because, it being prehistory,

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you can say whatever the hell you want and get away with it.

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But I'll submit this to you:

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

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suddenly it all starts to form a coherent picture.

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If you wonder, why it is the Tarahumara don't fight

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and don't die of heart disease,

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why a poor Ethiopian woman named Derartu Tulu

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can be the most compassionate and yet the most competitive,

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and why we somehow were able

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to find food without weapons,

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perhaps it's because humans,

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

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actually evolved as nothing more

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than a pack of hunting dogs.

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Maybe we evolved

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as a hunting pack animal.

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Because the one advantage we have in the wilderness --

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

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the only thing we do really, really well is sweat.

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We're really good at being sweaty and smelly.

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

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But the advantage

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of that little bit of social discomfort

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is the fact that, when it comes to running

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under hot heat for long distances,

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

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You take a horse on a hot day,

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

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It's either going to breathe or it's going to cool off,

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but it ain't doing both -- we can.

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So what if we evolved as hunting pack animals?

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What if the only natural advantage we had in the world

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

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

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

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That's all we could do.

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We could run really far on a hot day.

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

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

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

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I guarantee you there's going to be two cadavers out there in the Savannah.

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You need a pack to pull together.

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

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who have been doing this for a long time

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to understand which antelope you're actually trying to catch.

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The herd explodes and it gathers back again.

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Those expert trackers have got to be part of the pack.

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They can't be 10 miles behind.

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You need to have the women and the adolescents there

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

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is when you are a nursing mother and a developing adolescent.

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It makes no sense to have the antelope over there dead

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

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They need to be part of the pack.

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

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ready to drop the kill,

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and you need to have those teenagers there

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who are learning the whole thing all involved.

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The pack stays together.

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

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

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You can't be a pissed-off pack. You can't be bearing grudges,

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like, "I'm not chasing that guy's antelope.

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

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

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be cooperative and pull together.

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What you end up with, in other words,

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is a culture remarkably similar

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to the Tarahumara --

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a tribe that has remained unchanged

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since the Stone Age.

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It's a really compelling argument

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that maybe the Tarahumara are doing

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exactly what all of us had done for two million years,

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

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

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

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But maybe it's something different.

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

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and we spoiled it.

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

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We try to cash in on it.

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

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and sell it to people.

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And what happened was we started creating

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these fancy cushioned things,

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which can make running "better," called running shoes.

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The reason I get personally pissed-off about running shoes

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

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And I think that, if anybody in here runs --

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and I just had a conversation with Carol;

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we talked for two minutes backstage, and she's talking about plantar fasciitis.

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

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the conversation turns to injury.

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

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why are we so bad at it? Why do we keep getting hurt?

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Curious thing about running and running injuries

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is that the running injury is new to our time.

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If you read folklore and mythology,

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any kind of myths, any kind of tall tales,

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running is always associated

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with freedom and vitality and youthfulness and eternal vigor.

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It's only in our lifetime

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that running has become associated with fear and pain.

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Geronimo used to say

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that, "My only friends are my legs. I only trust my legs."

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That's because an Apache triathlon

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used to be you'd run 50 miles across the desert,

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

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and slap leather for home.

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Geronimo was never saying, "Ah, you know something,

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my achilles -- I'm tapering. I got to take this week off,"

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or "I need to cross-train.

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I didn't do yoga. I'm not ready."

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Humans ran and ran all the time.

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We are here today. We have our digital technology.

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All of our science comes from the fact

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that our ancestors were able

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to do something extraordinary every day,

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which was just rely on their naked feet and legs

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to run long distances.

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So how do we get back to that again?

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Well, I would submit to you the first thing is

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

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Get rid of all the stinking running shoes.

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Stop focusing on urban marathons,

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which, if you do four hours, you suck.

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If you do 3:59:59, you're awesome,

347
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because you qualified for another race.

348
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We need to get back to that sense of playfulness and joyfulness

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and, I would say, nakedness,

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that has made the Tarahumara

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one of the healthiest and serene cultures in our time.

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So what's the benefit? So what?

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So you burn off the Haagen-Dazs from the night before?

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But maybe there's another benefit there as well.

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Without getting a little too extreme about this,

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imagine a world

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where everybody could go out their door

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and engage in the kind of exercise

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

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more healthy,

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burn off stress --

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

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where you don't go back home with a lot of stress on top of you again.

364
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Maybe there's something between what we are today

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and what the Tarahumara have always been.

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

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

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but maybe there's somewhere in between.

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And if we find that thing,

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maybe there is a big fat Nobel Prize out there.

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Because if somebody could find a way

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to restore that natural ability

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that we all enjoyed for most of our existence,

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up until the 1970s or so,

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the benefits, social and physical

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and political and mental,

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could be astounding.

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So what I've been seeing today is there is a growing subculture

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of barefoot runners, people who got rid of their shoes.

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And what they have found uniformly is

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

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you get rid of the injuries and the ailments.

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And what you find is something

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the Tarahumara have known for a very long time,

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that this can be a whole lot of fun.

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I've experienced it personally myself.

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

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and my running ailments have gone away too.

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

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And I appreciate you guys listening to this story. Thanks very much.

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(Applause)