At the beginning of tri training, back in March, one of my running coaches sent out her weekly email discussing our runs for the week and what to expect, but in this one she also included the following quote:
"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or gazelle - when the sun comes up, you'd better be running."
She had just begun reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall and was raving about it. She wanted us to get as inspired as she was. The difference was she was a marathon runner who had already bought into the theory of enjoying to run ages ago, while we were newbies wondering if you could die from running 3 miles. So my first thought was more along the lines of "well if something was chasing me I might actually finish one of these crazy runs!" But extra motivation couldn't hurt so I downloaded the digital version and added it to the library on my e-reader... and there is sat. Life was moving fast between work, masters applications and tri training, so my to-do reading list was not necessarily at the forefront of my mind. Then when I took off on my recent adventure I was looking through my digital library to find something to distract me on my first 13 hour flight, and there it was.
Recently I found my reading juggling back and forth between fiction (ex: The Life of Pi Yann Martel) and fact (ex: The Paradox of Plenty Douglas Boucher). One thing I loved about Born to Run was the balance between science and storyline... I got the best of both worlds! It was like a recipe with a sprig of anthropology, a dash of biology/genetics, a dollop of adventure, and topped off with comedy and life. On top of everything else, it inspired.
Review by Washington Post
No comments:
Post a Comment