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I'm going to talk about
reinventing running.

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You know, 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
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
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
that no one has ever seen before.

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An Ethiopian woman named Derartu Tulu
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 had 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
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 -- I mean,
she's not even an underdog;

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she's, like, 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,
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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from 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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and 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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The second time, Derartu Tulu
grabs her and tries to pull her.

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And Paula Radcliffe, at that point,
says, "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, can be found

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down in the Copper Canyons of Mexico,

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where there's a reclusive tribe,
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 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,
spider-webbing system of canyons

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called the Copper Canyons.

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And there they've 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 is:

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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 is:

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

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

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and brain power to solve --

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things like heart disease
and cholesterol and cancer;

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

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

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They are free 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.

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

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that are bending their brains
and trying 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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If you know it, you're smarter
than anybody 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, 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.

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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:

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

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(Laughter)

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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
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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But --

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

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because prior to the 1980s,
medical science said

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

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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.

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Christopher McDougall:
Her uterus would be torn, yes.

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Torn reproductive organs.

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The uterus would literally
fall out of the body.

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(Laughter)

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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

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that women have been allowed
to run the marathon.

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

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

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Then you go beyond 26 miles,
into the distance

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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,
and suddenly, it's a different game.

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

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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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(Laughter)

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And yet, she beat 492 other people.

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The last mystery:

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Why is it that women get stronger
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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What they found is that if you start
running the marathon at age 19,

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you'll 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 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, 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'd 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's actually hard --

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(Laughter)

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where geriatrics are performing
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
which might wrap all these things up?

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

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and tries to give you
a global answer because,

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

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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're wondering
why the Tarahumara don't fight

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and don't die of heart disease,

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00:09:02,054 --> 00:09:04,814
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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00:09:07,691 --> 00:09:11,514
and why we somehow were able
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
than a pack of hunting dogs.

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Maybe we evolved 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,
our claws or our speed --

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the only thing we do 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 of that little bit
of social discomfort

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

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we're superb -- 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 savanna,
pick out an antelope,

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

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That's all we could do.

238
00:10:15,696 --> 00:10:17,673
We could run really far on a hot day.

239
00:10:17,697 --> 00:10:20,897
Well, if that's true, a couple
other things had to be true as well.

240
00:10:20,921 --> 00:10:23,750
The key to being part
of a hunting pack is the word "pack."

241
00:10:23,774 --> 00:10:26,382
If you go out by yourself
and try to chase an antelope,

242
00:10:26,406 --> 00:10:29,263
I guarantee there will be two cadavers
out in the savanna.

243
00:10:29,287 --> 00:10:30,930
You need a pack to pull together.

244
00:10:30,954 --> 00:10:33,182
You need to have
those 64- and 65-year-olds

245
00:10:33,206 --> 00:10:35,185
who have been doing this for a long time

246
00:10:35,209 --> 00:10:37,701
to understand which antelope
you're trying to catch.

247
00:10:37,725 --> 00:10:39,826
The herd explodes
and it gathers back again.

248
00:10:39,850 --> 00:10:42,218
Those expert trackers
have to be part of the pack.

249
00:10:42,242 --> 00:10:43,706
They can't be 10 miles behind.

250
00:10:43,730 --> 00:10:45,914
You need the women
and the adolescents there,

251
00:10:45,938 --> 00:10:49,330
because the two times in your life
you most benefit from animal protein

252
00:10:49,354 --> 00:10:52,225
is when you're a nursing mother
and a developing adolescent.

253
00:10:52,249 --> 00:10:54,899
It makes no sense to have
the antelope over there, dead,

254
00:10:54,923 --> 00:10:57,176
and the people who want
to eat it 50 miles away.

255
00:10:57,200 --> 00:10:58,783
They need to be part of the pack.

256
00:10:58,807 --> 00:11:01,644
You need those 27-year-old studs
at the peak of their powers

257
00:11:01,668 --> 00:11:02,824
ready to drop the kill,

258
00:11:02,848 --> 00:11:06,279
and you need those teenagers
who are learning the whole thing involved.

259
00:11:06,303 --> 00:11:07,459
The pack stays together.

260
00:11:07,483 --> 00:11:10,839
Another thing that has to be true:
this pack cannot be materialistic.

261
00:11:10,863 --> 00:11:14,292
You can't be hauling all your crap around,
trying to chase the antelope.

262
00:11:14,316 --> 00:11:15,802
You can't be a pissed-off pack.

263
00:11:15,826 --> 00:11:19,265
You can't be bearing grudges, like,
"I'm not chasing that guy's antelope.

264
00:11:19,289 --> 00:11:21,811
He pissed me off.
Let him go chase his own antelope."

265
00:11:21,835 --> 00:11:24,458
The pack has got to be able
to swallow its ego,

266
00:11:24,600 --> 00:11:26,378
be cooperative, and pull together.

267
00:11:27,119 --> 00:11:29,747
What you end up with, in other words,

268
00:11:29,771 --> 00:11:33,544
is a culture remarkably similar
to the Tarahumara,

269
00:11:33,568 --> 00:11:37,147
a tribe that has remained
unchanged since the Stone Age.

270
00:11:37,784 --> 00:11:39,411
It's a really compelling argument

271
00:11:39,435 --> 00:11:43,083
that maybe the Tarahumara are doing
exactly what all of us had done

272
00:11:43,107 --> 00:11:44,265
for two million years,

273
00:11:44,289 --> 00:11:47,333
that it's us in modern times
who have sort of gone off the path.

274
00:11:47,357 --> 00:11:50,638
You know, we look at running
as this kind of alien, foreign thing,

275
00:11:50,662 --> 00:11:54,131
this punishment you've got to do
because you ate pizza the night before.

276
00:11:54,155 --> 00:11:55,847
But maybe it's something different.

277
00:11:55,871 --> 00:11:58,968
Maybe we're the ones who have taken
this natural advantage we had

278
00:11:58,992 --> 00:12:00,320
and we spoiled it.

279
00:12:00,904 --> 00:12:03,448
How do we spoil it?
Well, how do we spoil anything?

280
00:12:03,472 --> 00:12:05,036
We try to cash in on it. Right?

281
00:12:05,060 --> 00:12:07,826
We try to can it and package it
and make it "better"

282
00:12:07,850 --> 00:12:09,239
and then sell it to people.

283
00:12:09,263 --> 00:12:11,757
And then what happened was,
we started creating

284
00:12:11,781 --> 00:12:15,215
these fancy cushioned things
which can make running "better,"

285
00:12:15,239 --> 00:12:16,655
called running shoes.

286
00:12:16,679 --> 00:12:19,611
The reason I get personally
pissed-off about running shoes

287
00:12:19,635 --> 00:12:22,612
is because I bought a million of them
and I kept getting hurt.

288
00:12:22,636 --> 00:12:24,613
And I think if anybody in here runs --

289
00:12:24,637 --> 00:12:26,417
I just had a conversation with Carol.

290
00:12:26,441 --> 00:12:30,072
We talked for two minutes backstage,
and she talked about plantar fasciitis.

291
00:12:30,096 --> 00:12:32,647
You talk to a runner,
I guarantee within 30 seconds,

292
00:12:32,671 --> 00:12:34,300
the conversation turns to injury.

293
00:12:34,324 --> 00:12:37,611
So if humans evolved as runners,
if that's our one natural advantage,

294
00:12:37,635 --> 00:12:39,108
then why are we so bad at it?

295
00:12:39,132 --> 00:12:40,743
Why do we keep getting hurt?

296
00:12:40,767 --> 00:12:43,139
A curious thing about running
and running injuries

297
00:12:43,163 --> 00:12:45,651
is that the running injury
is new to our time.

298
00:12:45,675 --> 00:12:47,499
If you read folklore and mythology,

299
00:12:47,523 --> 00:12:49,524
any kind of myths, any kind of tall tales,

300
00:12:49,548 --> 00:12:53,156
running is always associated
with freedom and vitality

301
00:12:53,180 --> 00:12:54,976
and youthfulness and eternal vigor.

302
00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:57,894
It's only in our lifetime
that running has become associated

303
00:12:57,918 --> 00:12:59,073
with fear and pain.

304
00:12:59,097 --> 00:13:03,208
Geronimo used to say, "My only friends
are my legs. I only trust my legs."

305
00:13:03,232 --> 00:13:06,851
That's because an Apache triathlon
used to be you'd run 50 miles

306
00:13:06,875 --> 00:13:08,026
across the desert,

307
00:13:08,050 --> 00:13:10,662
engage in hand-to-hand combat,
steal a bunch of horses,

308
00:13:10,686 --> 00:13:12,016
and slap leather for home.

309
00:13:12,040 --> 00:13:15,765
Geronimo was never saying, "You know
something, my Achilles -- I'm tapering.

310
00:13:15,789 --> 00:13:17,349
I've got to take this week off."

311
00:13:17,373 --> 00:13:20,390
Or, "I need to cross-train.
I didn't do yoga. I'm not ready."

312
00:13:20,414 --> 00:13:21,817
(Laughter)

313
00:13:21,841 --> 00:13:23,666
Humans ran and ran all the time.

314
00:13:23,690 --> 00:13:26,187
We are here today.
We have our digital technology.

315
00:13:26,211 --> 00:13:28,122
All of our science comes from the fact

316
00:13:28,146 --> 00:13:31,976
that our ancestors were able to do
something extraordinary every day,

317
00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:34,429
which was just rely
on their naked feet and legs

318
00:13:34,453 --> 00:13:35,899
to run long distances.

319
00:13:35,923 --> 00:13:37,722
So how do we get back to that again?

320
00:13:37,746 --> 00:13:39,958
Well, I would submit
to you the first thing is:

321
00:13:39,982 --> 00:13:42,807
get rid of all packaging,
all the sales, all the marketing.

322
00:13:42,831 --> 00:13:44,903
Get rid of all the stinking running shoes.

323
00:13:44,927 --> 00:13:46,880
Stop focusing on urban marathons,

324
00:13:46,904 --> 00:13:49,700
which, if you do four hours, you suck,

325
00:13:49,724 --> 00:13:51,677
and if you do 3:59:59, you're awesome,

326
00:13:51,701 --> 00:13:53,880
because you qualified for another race.

327
00:13:54,000 --> 00:13:57,000
We need to get back to that sense
of playfulness and joyfulness

328
00:13:57,024 --> 00:13:59,894
and, I would say, nakedness,

329
00:13:59,918 --> 00:14:01,820
that has made the Tarahumara

330
00:14:01,844 --> 00:14:04,423
one of the healthiest and serene
cultures in our time.

331
00:14:05,224 --> 00:14:06,845
So what's the benefit? So what?

332
00:14:06,869 --> 00:14:09,738
So you burn off the Häagen-Dazs
from the night before.

333
00:14:09,762 --> 00:14:12,184
But maybe there's another
benefit there as well.

334
00:14:12,208 --> 00:14:15,341
Without getting too extreme about this,

335
00:14:15,365 --> 00:14:19,976
imagine a world where everybody
could go out the door

336
00:14:20,000 --> 00:14:21,976
and engage in the kind of exercise

337
00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:24,976
that's going to make them
more relaxed, more serene,

338
00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:26,305
more healthy,

339
00:14:26,329 --> 00:14:27,641
burn off stress --

340
00:14:27,665 --> 00:14:30,854
where you don't come back into your office
a raging maniac anymore,

341
00:14:30,878 --> 00:14:33,362
or go home with a lot of stress
on top of you again.

342
00:14:33,386 --> 00:14:35,717
Maybe there's something
between what we are today

343
00:14:35,741 --> 00:14:38,249
and what the Tarahumara have always been.

344
00:14:38,273 --> 00:14:40,502
I don't say let's go back
to the Copper Canyons

345
00:14:40,526 --> 00:14:45,331
and live on corn and maize,
which is the Tarahumara's preferred diet,

346
00:14:45,635 --> 00:14:47,715
but maybe there's somewhere in between.

347
00:14:47,739 --> 00:14:49,406
And if we find that thing,

348
00:14:49,430 --> 00:14:52,010
maybe there is a big fat
Nobel Prize out there.

349
00:14:52,034 --> 00:14:56,921
Because if somebody could find a way
to restore that natural ability

350
00:14:56,945 --> 00:14:59,117
that we all enjoyed
for most of our existence

351
00:14:59,141 --> 00:15:00,712
up until the 1970s or so,

352
00:15:00,736 --> 00:15:06,127
the benefits -- social and physical
and political and mental --

353
00:15:06,151 --> 00:15:07,424
could be astounding.

354
00:15:07,448 --> 00:15:11,517
What I've been seeing today
is there is a growing subculture

355
00:15:11,541 --> 00:15:14,460
of barefoot runners,
people who've gotten rid of their shoes.

356
00:15:14,484 --> 00:15:16,370
And what they have found uniformly is,

357
00:15:16,394 --> 00:15:18,921
you get rid of the shoes,
you get rid of the stress,

358
00:15:18,945 --> 00:15:21,413
you get rid of the injuries
and the ailments.

359
00:15:21,437 --> 00:15:24,227
And what you find is something
the Tarahumara have known

360
00:15:24,251 --> 00:15:25,416
for a very long time:

361
00:15:25,440 --> 00:15:27,202
that this can be a whole lot of fun.

362
00:15:29,226 --> 00:15:31,053
I've experienced it personally myself.

363
00:15:31,077 --> 00:15:34,433
I was injured all my life; then
in my early 40s, I got rid of my shoes

364
00:15:34,457 --> 00:15:36,676
and my running ailments
have gone away, too.

365
00:15:36,700 --> 00:15:39,258
So hopefully it's something
we can all benefit from.

366
00:15:39,282 --> 00:15:41,324
I appreciate your listening to this story.

367
00:15:41,348 --> 00:15:42,499
Thanks very much.

368
00:15:42,523 --> 00:15:44,514
(Applause)