Quotes from Christopher McDougall

Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain.

He] coluldn't quite put his finger on it, but his gut kept telling him that there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love *running*. The engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you got, being patient and forgiving and undemanding.

Imagine your kid is running into the street and you have to sprint after her in bare feet," Eric told me when I picked up my training with him after my time with Ken. "You'll automatically lock into perfect form--you'll be up on your forefeet, with your back erect, head steady, arms high, elbows driving, and feet touching down quickly on the forefoot and kicking back toward your butt." You can't run uphill powerfully with poor biomechanics," Eric explained.

Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone. —KEN CHLOUBER, Colorado miner and creator of the Leadville Trail 100

to the tarahumara, asking direct questions is a show of force, a demand for a possession inside their head.

Patience and kindness don't show up on demand; they're disciplines that require constant practice, and there is no better boot camp for learning those skills than hitching your survival to your ability to discern—and respect—the needs of another creature

The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other, he understood, but to be with each other.

Because that's the ugly truth about heroism: the tests don't start when you're ready or stop when you're tired.

The heroes of the past are untouchable, protected forever by the fortress door of time - unless some mysterious stranger magically turns up with a key.

Don't fight the trail. Take what it gives you.

Solvitur ambulando: "When in doubt, walk.

If you can run six miles on a summer day, then you, my friend, are a lethal weapon in the animal kingdom.

human urine is both nutrient-rich and an effective tooth whitener

If it feels like work, you're working too hard.

The best runner leaves no tracks. —Tao Te Ching

Everyone is built for running.

Let us live so that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry," Mark Twain

Shoes block pain, not impact! Pain teaches us to run comfortably! From the moment you start going barefoot, you will change the way you run.

For them, running was a miserable two miles motivated soley by size 6 jeans: get on the scale, get depressed, get your headphones on, and get it over with. But you can't muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it, like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it.

Distance running demands a brain-body connection that no other creature is capable of.

The art of the hero wasn't about being brave; it was about being so competent that bravery wasn't an issue.

True heroism, as the ancients understood, isn't about strength, or boldness, or even courage. It's about compassion.

Other runners try to disassociate from fatigue by blasting iPods or imagining the roar of the crowd in Olympic Stadium, but Scott had a simpler method: it's easy to get outside yourself when you're thinking about someone else.

There's a more glaring giveaway that boxing and wrestling are just recreation: girls and old guys aren't good at them. As a rule of thumb, performance aberration in a basic skill is a good way to evaluate whether it's natural to a species. When you spot a giant ability gap between ages and genders, you know you're looking at nurture, not nature.