Where to Start with Christopher McDougall: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Christopher McDougall — how to approach Born to Run, his essential book about the Tarahumara runners and human endurance. A complete reading guide.
By Priya Anand
Christopher McDougall is an American journalist and author who spent years as a war correspondent for the Associated Press before writing Born to Run (2009) — an account of his search for the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s Copper Canyons and the extraordinary ultramarathon race that resulted. The book became one of the most widely read running books ever published, sold over three million copies, and sparked both the barefoot running movement and a global resurgence of interest in ultramarathon running. Natural Born Heroes (2013) is his follow-on, applying similar evolutionary science themes to resistance fighting in occupied Crete during the Second World War.
Where to Start: Born to Run (2009)
The essential McDougall — and one of the most compulsively readable works of sports journalism in recent decades. The book begins with a personal question: McDougall is a large, injury-prone runner who cannot run fifty miles a week without breaking down, and he wants to understand why. The question takes him to a doctor who advises him to stop running, which is not the answer he wants, and then to a series of researchers and coaches who point him toward a different question: not why certain runners get injured, but why a certain group of runners in northern Mexico seemingly never does.
The Tarahumara — or Rarámuri, as they call themselves — are an indigenous people of the Copper Canyon region who have, for centuries, run extraordinary distances across mountain terrain as a form of cultural practice and celebration, wearing simple sandals cut from tyre rubber and moving with a form radically different from the heel-striking, heavily cushioned style that Western running shoes promote. McDougall’s investigation of their running leads him to the controversial argument that modern running shoes — with their thick, cushioned heels and motion-control technologies — may be causing the injuries they claim to prevent, by inhibiting the natural biomechanics of the barefoot strike.
This scientific investigation is woven through an adventure narrative: the search for a legendary American recluse called Caballo Blanco who lives among the Tarahumara and organises races in the canyons; the cast of eccentric ultramarathon runners McDougall recruits to compete in a race there (including Scott Jurek, Ann Trason, and Jenn Shelton); and the race itself, fifty miles through mountain terrain in brutal heat.
McDougall writes with a journalist’s narrative energy and a genuine enthusiasm for both the science and the human stories. The book converted thousands of readers to running — and not just running but long-distance running, which it presents as the most natural and human of activities, one we evolved for over millions of years and have been systematically discouraged from by an industry with financial incentives to sell expensive equipment.
Reading Christopher McDougall
Begin with Born to Run — it is his most celebrated and most accessible work. Natural Born Heroes (2013) applies similar evolutionary science to a different subject. Both standalone.
For the full Christopher McDougall bibliography, reviews, and biography, visit the Christopher McDougall author page on Editors Reads.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Christopher McDougall?
Born to Run (2009) is McDougall's essential and most widely read book — part adventure story, part science investigation, part love letter to human endurance. The account of his search for the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico's Copper Canyons, legendary for their ability to run hundreds of miles without injury, and the ultramarathon race that resulted. The book that sparked the barefoot running movement.
What is Born to Run about?
Born to Run begins with McDougall's own chronic running injury and a journalist's question: why does my foot hurt? His search leads him to the Tarahumara people of Mexico, who run extraordinary distances in minimal sandals without the injuries that plague Western runners wearing expensive cushioned shoes. The investigation becomes an adventure: finding the reclusive Caballo Blanco, organising an ultramarathon in the Copper Canyons, and along the way uncovering the evolutionary science of human running and the billion-dollar running shoe industry's possible role in causing the injuries it claims to prevent.
Did Born to Run get the science right?
Born to Run popularised research on running form, foot strike, and the potential harms of heavily cushioned running shoes that has been genuinely influential in sports science and the running community. Some specific claims — particularly the strongest versions of the barefoot running argument — have been challenged by subsequent research, and the barefoot/minimalist running movement's promised injury reduction has not been consistently replicated in controlled studies. The evolutionary biology of human running that the book covers (the persistence hunting hypothesis, the role of the Achilles tendon and gluteal muscles) remains well-supported. The book is best read as compelling journalism rather than settled science.
What should I read after Born to Run?
After Born to Run, Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is the literary complement — a novelist's memoir about running as a practice and a philosophy. Scott Jurek's Eat and Run covers ultramarathon running from the perspective of one of the athletes who appears in Born to Run. For the evolutionary science of human movement, Daniel Lieberman's The Story of the Human Body covers the evolutionary biology McDougall draws on in considerable academic depth.
