Quotes by Christopher McDougall

Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone.~Ken Chlouber, Colorado miner and creator of the Leadville Trail 100 mile race

That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: theyd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankinds first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. 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. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle--behold, the Running Man.Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldnt live to love anything else. And like everyhing else we ove--everything we sentimentally call our passions and desires its really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. Were all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.

If you dont have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you aint getting them.

Perhaps all our troubles - all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and greed we cant overcome - began when we stopped living as Running People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other, uglier way.

Ask nothing from your running, and youll get more than you ever imagined!

Suffering is humbling. It pays to know how to get your butt kicked.

You dont have to be fast. But youd better be fearless.

Maybe the wild ones werent hyperactive; maybe they were misplaced heroes. After all, in another era, the same behavior that is now throttled with Ritalin and disciplinary rap sheets would have been the mark of greatness, the early blooming of a true champion. Riordan played with the idea, imagining the what-ifs. What if strong, assertive children were redirected rather than discouraged? What if there were a place for them, an outdoor training camp that felt like a playground, where they could cut loose with all those natural instincts to run, wrestle, climb, swim, and explore?

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 doesnt matter whether youre the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, youd better be running.

...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 youve got, being patient and forgiving and... undemanding...maybe we shouldnt be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other.

If you dont think you were born to run youre not only denying history. Youre denying who you are.

There are two goddesses in your heart,” he told them. “The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you.” Ask nothing from your running, in other words, and you’ll get more than you ever imagined.

But you cant 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.

But yeah, Ann [Trason] insisted, running was romantic; and no, of course her friends didnt get it because theyd never broken through. For them, running was a miserable two miles motivated solely by size 6 jeans: get on the scale, get depressed, get your headphones on, and get it over with. But you cant 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.

We run when were scared, we run when were ecstatic, we run away from our problems and run around for a good time.

Blaming the running injury epidemic on big, bad Nike seems too easy - but thats okay, because its largely their fault.

-The reason we race isnt so much to beat each other but to be with each other. -The Hopis consider running a form of prayer; they offer every step as a sacrifice to a loved one, and in return ask the Great Spirit to match their strength with some of his own.

Nearly all runners do their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow. Ken Mierke says. So theyre just training their bodies to burn sugar, which is the last thing a distance runner wants. Youve got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last.-The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold--your hard-breathing point--during your endurance runs.

We wouldnt be alive without love we wouldnt have survived without running maybe we shouldnt be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other.

Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldnt live to love anything else. And like everything else we love-everything we sentimentally call our passions and desires-its really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run.