The Art of Manliness - You Were Born to Run

00:00:00.000 We're at McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast.

00:00:11.240 For decades, some researchers have argued that the notable human capacity for endurance

00:00:15.700 evolved from the hunting practices of our ancestors, which produced physiological adaptations

00:00:20.580 that make us uniquely well suited for running. But this theory has always had its detractors.

00:00:25.620 As my guest explains, a new study addresses these longstanding criticisms and adds evidence

00:00:30.820 that indeed, we were all born to run. Alex Hutchinson is a journalist who covers the

00:00:36.560 science of endurance and fitness. And today on the show, he explains what those criticisms

00:00:40.640 were and how this new research counters them. We talk about the role running held amongst

00:00:44.860 peoples of the past, how running is not only primal, but cultural and even spiritual, and

00:00:50.080 why we continue to run today, even though we're not hunting for food. And we discuss how, even

00:00:55.040 if we are born to run, that doesn't mean everyone will always enjoy running all the

00:00:58.920 time and how to get into running. If you're someone who doesn't feel an innate desire for

00:01:03.100 it. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash born to run.

00:01:17.160 All right, Alex Hutchinson, welcome back to the show.

00:01:20.040 Thanks a lot, Brad. It's great to be here.

00:01:21.240 So you are a sports science writer. You write over there at Outside Online. And you recently

00:01:26.660 written about a study that's come out on why humans run. So we're talking jogging, but

00:01:34.660 also just running in general. Before we get into the study, let's just talk about human

00:01:38.660 running. What makes human running different from how other animals run, besides the fact

00:01:44.000 that we're bipedal?

00:01:46.080 Yeah, I think the most obvious thing is that we do it when nobody's chasing us, and also

00:01:50.820 when we're not chasing anybody else. So I think that's the sort of starting point, is

00:01:54.520 that we run for the fun of it. And I mean, as I say that, I'm already thinking, okay, no,

00:01:59.360 that's not quite true, because other animals do play. But we run for long distances just for

00:02:03.860 the heck of it. And so that's the fundamental riddle that we want to understand. Why do humans

00:02:07.660 do this? And if we look at, well, what is it about the way humans run? We see all sorts of

00:02:12.860 differences in terms of the way we're able to cool ourselves, the way we breathe, the

00:02:17.440 way our bodies are structured, that suggests that running is something that we are actually

00:02:21.100 surprisingly good at.

00:02:22.460 Yeah, we were kind of born for it. So tell us about this. What is it about our cooling

00:02:26.640 system and our breathing that allows us to be such great runners?

00:02:30.840 Yeah, I mean, so the two key things are that we cool ourselves by sweating. And if you think

00:02:35.340 about a dog, dogs are much more typical of the mammal world that they cool themselves by

00:02:39.660 panting. And so there's only so much you can pant, especially when you start running,

00:02:44.300 where you're also needing to use your breath to get oxygen in. So, you know, dogs have to stop and

00:02:49.760 pant, and so do a lot of other animals. And we're also, we're the hairless ape. So if you're going to

00:02:55.440 cool yourself by sweating, it helps not to be wearing a fur coat at all times. So we're able to lose heat

00:03:01.680 much more efficiently as we run. And then also running on two feet. One of the things that enables us to do

00:03:08.260 is breathe as hard as we want, independent of how fast we're running. We don't have to time our breaths

00:03:13.860 to our footstrokes. And that's one of the things where if you're trying to outrun a deer, they can either

00:03:19.800 trot or they can, you know, sprint. But as soon as they sprint, the breathing gets much more constrained

00:03:25.540 by their leg motion. So there's all these things that conspire to make it harder for other animals to both

00:03:32.040 stay cool and get enough oxygen in. Yeah. The sweating aspect. I know horses sweat, but they

00:03:38.320 don't sweat as much as us humans do. Yeah. And they've got, yeah, sorry, I should clarify. It's

00:03:44.320 not that no other animals sweat, but we can dump a lot of heat because, you know, we are the naked ape,

00:03:49.520 right? Like it would be very different if you're trying to cool yourselves and you were covered

00:03:52.780 completely by a layer of fur. And then also humans are muscles. We've got lots of efficient

00:03:59.900 and fatigue resistant, slow twitch muscles in our legs. Yeah. And, you know, and obviously everyone's

00:04:07.240 different, but by and large as a species, crucially in the leg, the big muscles of the legs that are

00:04:12.640 involved in running, we are unusual in the extent, to the extent that we have a, even, even the sprinters

00:04:18.420 among us have a lot of slow twitch fibers that allow them to sustain the running for a longer period

00:04:23.920 of time. And I think another thing you mentioned too about our anatomy that makes us great runners is

00:04:29.280 our long Achilles tendon. What does that have to do with it? Yeah. And, you know, just to back up a

00:04:36.080 second, so there's a famous paper that came out in 2004 that sort of goes through all the different

00:04:41.140 parts of our anatomy that are fine-tuned, that when you look at it carefully, you're like, oh, if I was

00:04:46.600 designing a runner, this is what I would do. And some of them are very obscure things. It's like we have a

00:04:51.240 ligament that helps keep our head steady so we can be bouncing around running and still be able to view,

00:04:57.360 see the horizon, you know, keep it level. So there's, there's a lot of very subtle morphological

00:05:02.560 things about our bodies. And one of them is the Achilles tendon. This is basically what connects

00:05:06.440 your heel to your lower leg muscles. It's a spring with every step that you take, you are loading that

00:05:14.020 spring. And then as you take the next step, it springs back and estimates vary, but by some estimates

00:05:20.500 about half the energy you need to take a step is stored and returned from the previous step.

00:05:25.800 So we're kind of bouncing along with this energy return system and other animals have Achilles

00:05:31.680 tendons, but ours is particularly long and springy and well-suited to be able to conserve energy as we

00:05:37.940 run. Okay. So we can cool ourselves off easily. We've got tendons and ligaments that allow for

00:05:44.340 better running. We can breathe more efficiently when we run. Have scientists like pitted human beings 0.85

00:05:51.260 against animals in running. And when that, if they have, what are the results of that?

00:05:57.140 That's a good question. I don't think they've actually had official races, although there are

00:06:01.340 a number of man versus horse races around the world. In fact, there's one in, uh, I think it's

00:06:06.960 in Wales that's been going on for at least 30 years. And the, the, the deal is it's like the prize

00:06:12.160 money each year is a thousand pounds. And it's a 20, 25 mile race across really rough terrain.

00:06:17.780 And if a horse wins, nobody gets the money, but if, and the, and it just accumulates from year to

00:06:22.400 year until a human wins. And a guy I used to train with 30 years ago, eventually won the race after

00:06:28.160 25 years of, of no humans winning. So he got 25,000 pounds for beating the horses in this 25 mile race.

00:06:33.840 And it looked like the conditions make a difference. It's like on a hot day, the humans do better. And

00:06:38.400 there's other like Western, the Western States, a hundred mile race, one of the most famous long

00:06:42.340 distance races in the Western United States started out as a horse race. And then someone wanted to run

00:06:47.340 it and they realized, Oh, this should be fun. We should have humans do this. Okay. So it seems like

00:06:51.800 we're evolved for running. When did, was there a period when scientists started actually trying to

00:06:57.720 figure out like why humans run? Because on the surface, it seems kind of like, why, why do we run?

00:07:02.720 It seems like it expends a lot of energy. So why would we do this? So when did scientists first

00:07:08.160 start exploring human running? Yeah. I mean, I think the, the sort of pop psychology or pop

00:07:13.920 science version of this idea has been out there for a long time, but the major, the first paper

00:07:17.980 that people usually talk about was in 1984, a guy named David Carrier, who was a PhD student at the

00:07:22.560 university of Utah came out with this paper, arguing that, Hey, we are quote unquote born to run.

00:07:27.740 We have this evolutionary incentive to be able to run down other animals and for hunting purposes.

00:07:34.120 And that's why that's shaped the way, you know, both our bodies and our culture that was 1984,

00:07:39.880 but it didn't get a ton of attention. It kind of lingered the paper. People didn't read it. People

00:07:45.320 didn't pay attention to it. Then there was this 2004 paper in nature by another guy, Dennis Bramble at

00:07:51.900 University of Utah and Dan Lieberman of Harvard. And that one got a lot of attention. It was on the

00:07:57.240 cover of nature and, you know, maybe the running culture was more mature at that point. People,

00:08:02.860 the readers of runner's world for which I wrote for many years, were eager to hear this message

00:08:06.700 that we were born to run. So that really took off. And then 2009, Chris McDougall wrote his book

00:08:12.220 born to run, which made that, that story a central part of the book. And from then on, it's been sort

00:08:18.220 of bubbling at the surface of pop culture, almost it kind of left the scientists behind and the

00:08:22.700 scientists maybe still had some doubts about this, but in popular culture, the idea that we're born

00:08:26.580 to run caught on. Well, the idea is that we evolved to run to aid in hunting, correct? Is that what it

00:08:33.060 is? Exactly. So the idea is if I try and chase an antelope, I got, I have no hope. Antelopes can blow

00:08:40.880 me away over the short distance. But if I'm patient and persistent, if I can track the antelope and just

00:08:47.180 keep it a little bit, you know, the tortoise and the hare, if slow and steady wins the race,

00:08:52.900 if I just keep running, the antelope sprints away from me, but every time he sprints away from me,

00:08:57.120 he's getting more tired. And if I just keep on coming by the end of the day, by three hours or

00:09:02.940 six hours or eight hours, that antelope is going to be so tired. He's just going to lie down and I

00:09:07.780 can walk right up to him and stab him in the neck and bring him back home for food. And so that idea 1.00

00:09:13.020 of persistence hunting is not the only rationale because you could also say, well, maybe if you can

00:09:17.700 run, you see buzzards in the sky, you know, in the distance, 20 miles away or 10 miles away, you can

00:09:24.020 run and get to the carcass of an animal that's just died before all the other scavengers, strip it clean.

00:09:28.800 So there's been various versions of the theory, but the fundamental one is you run the deer or the

00:09:33.640 antelope or whatever the animal is in that location to exhaustion.

00:09:37.120 Okay. And because we can sweat and cool ourselves off and we have these slow twitch muscles,

00:09:41.460 we can outlast other animals. That's the idea.

00:09:43.920 Yeah. Even once that, and one of the reasons this thesis took so long to catch on is that it just

00:09:48.120 seems so ludicrous on the surface that every animal you see when you're out in the woods is faster than

00:09:54.060 you. And so the idea that we could outrun a deer of all things or an antelope, it's just crazy,

00:09:59.920 but it's all about setting the parameters, right? It's not in the hundred meter dash and it's not in

00:10:04.320 the 400 meter dash and it's not in the mile. It's on a hot, sunny day or, you know, or,

00:10:09.660 or some other circumstances that allow us to leverage our advantages and to leverage our

00:10:14.660 intelligence, our ability to track. So there's cognitive elements to this too. You have to be

00:10:19.500 able to figure out where, you know, put yourself in the animal's mind and say, all right, I see he

00:10:24.380 went here into the water here. Which way did this animal go? So the tracking element is essential too,

00:10:29.880 because you can't keep up with the animal in the short term. So there's a lot of stuff that goes into

00:10:33.840 it. Yeah. It's interesting. There's been a lot of research done by evolutionary scientists about how

00:10:39.620 hunting made humans humans in a lot of ways. So, I mean, I guess you say running, the reason why we

00:10:46.620 run is you say, track it back to hunting. Other things, our ability to throw, you know, like other

00:10:51.960 primates, they can't throw things like we do because like their shoulder anatomy is different than ours.

00:10:57.360 But the idea is that throwing spears or rocks led to that development in our shoulder anatomy.

00:11:04.080 Just like our ability to cooperate, humans are very good cooperators. They trace it back to

00:11:10.380 hunting because typically you'd hunt in a group. Communication, even talking, speaking might've been

00:11:16.500 influenced by hunting. So there's a whole book, I think it's called The Hunting Hypothesis by this guy

00:11:21.460 named Robert Audrey. It's interesting. He kind of talks about all these different ideas of how

00:11:26.360 hunting drove human evolution. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And the running hypothesis,

00:11:32.320 I think, fits right into that. It's maybe a subset of that.

00:11:36.400 Yeah. And I think, oh, the other thing too they say is that starting to eat meat

00:11:39.480 helped our brains get bigger, maybe. So that's interesting. Okay. So there's this theory that

00:11:45.700 persistence hunting led to us evolving attributes that allowed us to be better at

00:11:51.140 long distance running. But there were criticisms of this theory for a long time. So what were

00:11:56.300 the key criticisms of this persistence hunting theory of running?

00:12:01.480 Yeah. I mean, the big problem is that running burns calories. It's just an extremely inefficient

00:12:08.760 way to cover distance. And so if you're thinking like in the crucible of evolution, where the small

00:12:16.880 edges determine who's going to pass on more genes to their offspring or whatever, or have more

00:12:22.200 offspring that survive, you don't want to waste energy. So it's a neat trick if you can run down

00:12:27.420 an antelope, but think of how many calories that burns compared to maybe if you just hide behind this

00:12:33.040 bush and sit there for eight hours, eventually an antelope is going to wander by, you're going to

00:12:37.840 conk it on the head and you're going to get just as many calories. So the number one objection was,

00:12:42.700 it's just too energetically costly. And the number two objection is, if this is what made us human,

00:12:48.440 how come there's only like six people in the Kalahari and a few people in the canyons of Mexico

00:12:53.280 who've ever been documented to do this, right? Like it can't be the crucial thing that made us human

00:12:58.900 if it only happened in Southern Africa and in, you know, the Southwest of the United States or in

00:13:06.040 Mexico. Okay. So it expended too many calories. The observation was it wasn't very widespread,

00:13:11.920 but then recently a paper came out and this is the paper you wrote about in your article

00:13:17.080 from these two guys, Morin and Winterhadler. And this study seems to validate the persistence

00:13:24.420 hunting theory of runnings. Walk us through the study. Yeah. So this is, this guy's Eugene Morin

00:13:31.740 and Bruce Winterhadler from Trent University and UC Davis. They published a new analysis that I think

00:13:37.980 does a pretty effective job of, of countering those two particular objections. So the first one is it

00:13:44.020 burns too many calories. Well, the way they came to this study is that they, they've been doing these

00:13:49.640 analyses, basically return on investment calculations for different ways of getting food, including

00:13:55.840 different types of hunting. So they use big data sets to make estimates of like, okay, let's say you

00:14:02.300 want to go do a persistent hunt. Like how long does it take? How many calories do you burn? How often do

00:14:08.760 you get, do you succeed? And if you do succeed, what, how big is the animal you get? How many calories can

00:14:14.100 you use? How many can you carry back? And so you can come up with this calculation that you spend this

00:14:19.880 many calories, you receive this many calories. So you have a return on investment of whatever, 20% or

00:14:26.280 something. And you can do the same for other types of hunting. And they look at different things like

00:14:30.460 community hunts and encounter hunts. So it's like, okay, you go out into the forest, you're going to

00:14:35.140 try and just carefully, quietly, slowly track an animal or track a group of animals until you can 0.87

00:14:39.920 shoot one. How long does that take? How many calories? How often are you successful? What 0.79

00:14:43.600 kinds of animals do you get? Or if you do it with a bunch of people trying to, you know, run the

00:14:47.240 buffaloes off a cliff or whatever, how long does that take? Et cetera, et cetera. And the surprising

00:14:51.600 finding they come out with is that persistence hunting is actually pretty similar or in some contexts

00:14:58.680 better in terms of its return on investment. And they look at, you know, various persistence

00:15:04.040 hunting scenarios. It's like, well, what happens if you go a little faster or a little slower,

00:15:09.400 if it takes two hours or four hours or six hours? And what they find is for sure running takes way

00:15:14.960 more calories than walking, but you're able to end the hunt much more quickly and have a higher success

00:15:22.520 rate. And so it ends up actually in some ways, the faster you go, the more energetically efficient it is

00:15:28.200 because the sooner you end the hunt. So I guess the caveat I would throw in there is that the

00:15:33.520 numbers all have a lot of estimates and assumptions in terms of, well, you know, based on their reading

00:15:38.200 of the ethnographic literature or whatever, they're like, well, this is how often a persistence

00:15:41.700 succeeds or whatever. But by their estimate, at the very least, it's not worse than the other ways

00:15:47.680 of hunting and might even be better. So that's the calorie one.

00:15:52.200 Right. Okay. And then they also, there's paper also countered that other criticism that, well,

00:15:57.800 persistence hunting is not widespread.

00:16:00.120 Yeah. And this is actually pretty cool. They use like machine learning to analyze a big, so this is

00:16:06.800 one of those things where it's like, if you look back at, you know, ethnographic records, people who've

00:16:11.480 tried to study groups around the world, you find that there are records of persistent hunts. And so in

00:16:19.000 hindsight, you're like, well, why didn't someone come up with this theory ages ago? Because yeah,

00:16:23.740 we knew a hundred years ago that people, the terra humara in Mexico sometimes rent, you know,

00:16:28.320 were able to run down deer. It's like, but it's different people looking at different manuscripts.

00:16:32.600 And so the person who's studying some obscure diary from, you know, a trader who visited a group

00:16:38.080 in Borneo in 1750, they may not care about persistence hunting. They may not have noticed that or

00:16:44.560 realize that that's significant. So in this case, the researchers basically uploaded all the memoirs

00:16:50.800 and travelogues and missionary accounts and stuff that they could find into a big electronic database.

00:16:56.960 I think they found 8,000 of these documents. And then they used content analysis software,

00:17:02.300 not just like word search, but like they were doing things like, okay, anywhere, you know,

00:17:07.560 is there a passage where a word like rundown or tiring or animal, they appear somewhere in the

00:17:15.920 same paragraph. And so this was able to come up with a stunning number of descriptions of

00:17:21.320 persistence hunting between the 1500s and the 1900s. They had 391 different observations coming from

00:17:28.860 every continent except Antarctica, huge variety in the, in the environments and societies. So not just in

00:17:35.060 hot deserts, but also in like Newfoundland in the snow, the people that were able to run down deer

00:17:41.220 and particularly not just when it's especially hot, but when there were certain types of snow

00:17:46.360 conditions, if there was a crust on the snow that made it really hard for the deer to run. And so they

00:17:51.860 were able to run them down more easily or really tiring for the deer to run. And the hunters had

00:17:56.640 snowshoes so they could follow more effectively. You know, they found examples from Hawaii chasing wild

00:18:03.220 goats to exhaustion, uh, people in Borneo catching deer to exhaustion. So basically everywhere. And so

00:18:10.120 there's, it's, it's, it's this completely revised view that this wasn't just something that a few

00:18:16.040 groups in, in Africa and Mexico did, but this is something that happened basically everywhere. The one

00:18:21.520 gap is in basically Europe, the main part of Europe. And that's probably because Europe in the

00:18:28.380 Middle East is where agriculture first got widely established. And so the persistence hunts probably 0.95

00:18:34.840 ended before anybody was writing down ethnographic accounts. So that's why there aren't any firsthand

00:18:40.020 observations of that. Okay. So this paper, it shows that persistence hunting, hunting by running

00:18:46.280 can be calorically efficient. And then two, persistence hunting is more widespread than we previously

00:18:53.160 thought. Uh, have you seen how the, how's this paper been received by the scientific community so

00:18:58.640 far? Yeah. You know, I haven't seen any like strong pushback to it. And, you know, in general, if I write

00:19:04.480 about an article that other people disagree with, I'll tend to get some messages saying, you idiot, how 1.00

00:19:10.220 could you write about this study? Don't you realize that, you know, X, Y, and Z? So I haven't heard any 1.00

00:19:14.700 pushback. You know, we'll, we'll see as sometimes the scientific publishing world moves quite slowly. So maybe

00:19:21.060 there'll be a response in months to come. I think I don't see any like big factual disagreements. So

00:19:28.380 at a certain point it becomes less about did persistence hunting happen in many places around

00:19:34.280 the world. And the fact that it happens in many places around the world, I think also supports the

00:19:38.280 idea that it's calorically reasonable, that people aren't doing these things just to waste calories.

00:19:43.220 Right. So I think that part of the story is, is getting quite solid. The question is, what do you do

00:19:49.080 with that information? Does this mean that we're all born to run? Or does it just mean that, oh,

00:19:53.520 this is a waste people sometimes got food sometimes and it's, but it's not that fundamental to our

00:19:57.100 existence. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:20:03.300 And now back to the show. Well, another question it raises is why do we keep running even though

00:20:11.000 we don't hunt by running anymore? Like, cause I mean, it's interesting. You see across cultures,

00:20:16.740 humans, like even when they gave up persistence hunting, they continued to run. Maybe it might've

00:20:23.200 been for sport. It might've been for religious ritual. Have you seen anything about that? Like

00:20:28.660 why humans continue to run even though we don't have to?

00:20:33.520 Yeah. I mean, this is a question I ask myself every morning before I go for my run. Like,

00:20:37.900 why am I doing this? Why do we do this? And there's a lot of discussion about it. You know,

00:20:41.620 there's a biologist named Bert Heinrich who wrote a book called why we run about 20 years ago. That's

00:20:47.220 been very influential. And he, he has this idea or that's raised, you know, chasing the antelope that

00:20:52.460 on some level we're sort of recapitulating some evolutionary imperative. So there's, I think

00:20:58.620 there's a lot of effort to understand this. And this goes from like biology to anthropology.

00:21:04.500 And in fact, you know, on that note, I just finished reading an advanced copy of a new book

00:21:09.720 by an anthropologist named Michael Crawley called the meaning of endurance from, I think it's from

00:21:14.260 Mexico to the Himalayas or something like that as the subtitle. And he, he did his PhD by spending a

00:21:20.220 year and a half living with elite Ethiopian runners, trying to understand, trying to go beyond the cliche

00:21:24.660 of these guys are just born to run and it's easy. And that's why they're so good to try and

00:21:28.740 understand what motivates them to run. And so for this, this new book, he went around the world and,

00:21:34.000 and visited groups in Nepal. He visited the Tara Humara. He talked to people in Sub-Saharan Africa

00:21:41.060 in the Kalahari, trying to understand these questions. Why do we run? And I can't sum it

00:21:45.900 up in 10 words, but I think to your point, what started out as something that was a way to get

00:21:50.620 calories evolves into something that has meaning for the society, evolves into a ritual that has

00:21:56.520 greater meaning that we still seek. So one of the things that he sees is that in running,

00:22:02.920 you can recapitulate or you can get a feeling of connection to the natural world and even

00:22:09.060 particularly to the animal that you're hunting. So this goes back to what we were talking about

00:22:12.620 earlier to hunt. Well, you have to be able to track, you have to get in the mind of the animal.

00:22:16.000 And so for a lot of people, there's this sense of connection by moving to exhaustion,

00:22:21.600 you are ritualizing the chase. And so the Tara Humara, who are the running people in Mexico who

00:22:27.820 were written about in Born to Run, when he visits them, what he finds is that it's not really about

00:22:33.300 running for them. And it's certainly no longer about persistence hunting, that they actually also

00:22:36.840 do these kind of dance marathons that last for a day or two and people go nearly to exhaustion.

00:22:41.620 And that serves very much the same role for them. And it's become a ritual in their society. So

00:22:47.060 how does that connect to me going for a run in the morning? I'm not sure, but I think there is

00:22:53.000 some sense of not of trying to catch an antelope or not that I have to do it, but that there's some

00:22:59.160 feeling of connection to the world around me that I get out of it. Yeah. If listeners are looking for

00:23:04.120 a great anthropology of running, I just finished a book called Indian Running by this guy. This book was

00:23:11.340 published in 1981. He was, I think, an anthropologist of Native Americans. And basically, he tracks

00:23:19.500 running culture in the American Southwest. So we're talking Navajos, Hopis, the Zunis. And it's just,

00:23:27.840 it's incredibly fascinating how these tribes ritualized running. In fact, they called them

00:23:33.580 action prayers. So as they were running, they would pray. And to your point about you're trying to

00:23:38.420 harness the animal, maybe that you're hunting. Some of these tribes, they would put on different 1.00

00:23:43.160 totems to help them run faster. So if they wanted to run faster, they might like have a deer tail on

00:23:48.860 them. They might have an eagle feather in their hair so they can have keen eyesight so they can see the

00:23:53.900 trail and see the animals. I think one of the more interesting parts was this idea of the Navajo.

00:24:00.480 They had this like ritual of the morning run. I thought that was really interesting. So once you reach a

00:24:06.020 certain age, the elders in the tribe would wake you up before dawn and you'd have to go out for

00:24:12.160 these early runs. And the idea was that when you went out in the morning, the talking God was out

00:24:17.820 there. So it was like the head God for the Navajo. And this guy named Rexley Jim, he was a Navajo 0.98

00:24:23.300 runner. He said, my grandfather told me that talking God comes around in the morning, knocks on the door

00:24:29.120 and says, get up my grandchildren. It's time to run, run for health and wealth. And so, yeah,

00:24:34.460 they do this like running prayer. And I mean, it's so interesting. Actually, this book and sort of how

00:24:40.780 this guy explained the spirituality of running, it almost got me into running regularly just for,

00:24:47.340 because it made it sound so cool. Almost is almost there. But I think what I would say is,

00:24:54.120 so these sort of culturally defined sources of meaning are created by society. So it's no longer

00:25:01.900 specific to the action of running. It's not that we were born to have that cultural experience. So

00:25:07.200 there are lots of ways to obtain meaning. And some people get that from lifting weights or climbing

00:25:13.640 rocks or whatever the case may be. But for some people, for many people, running is, or for everyone,

00:25:21.900 running is one way that we can try to find meaning within our larger society and connect with something

00:25:29.340 that I think it's not just about, oh, you know, my sweat glands are so good at this. I need to do

00:25:35.360 this. I think for most of us today, the meaning is cultural more than evolutionary, but our body is

00:25:43.300 well-equipped to then step into this task that when we do it, all of a sudden there's certain brain

00:25:50.040 chemicals that are produced that are probably a legacy of this born to run idea, you know, the running

00:25:55.860 high kind of stuff, which is, so that's an interesting, I guess we haven't talked about

00:26:00.180 that. It's like, if you look at when you go for a run or when you do any exercise, your brain produces

00:26:06.400 endocannabinoids, which is the brain's internal version of cannabis. And it makes people feel good,

00:26:12.240 but it's the specific production of these endocannabinoids tends to peak at a sort of

00:26:18.040 moderate sustained intensity. You don't get a ton. If you're just like walking, you don't get a ton.

00:26:22.720 If you're sprinting, but if you're at this sort of persistence hunting pace, then there's this

00:26:28.260 feeling of wellbeing that you may get. And animals that are also well-adapted to run long distances

00:26:34.340 like dogs, they also get these endocannabinoids. Whereas other animals, like in one of the studies,

00:26:39.540 it was ferrets that aren't good at running long distances. They don't get this endocannabinoid

00:26:43.800 basis. So there are these holdovers from our evolutionary past that conspire to make

00:26:50.860 running and activities like it feel good because we've evolved to have that cue to tell us you're

00:26:56.820 doing the right thing. Yeah. And I, you can make the case that in the West and non-Native American 1.00

00:27:03.140 culture, we've ritualized running, but it's in our own way. Instead of putting on eagle feathers,

00:27:09.020 we put on our hokas or whatever. And future anthropologists will have a field day with it,

00:27:15.320 right? Like the colorful garb of the spandex clad modern runner. It is very ritualized for

00:27:22.100 sure. Though maybe not as ritualized as cycling. And I imagine you're a runner. Like when you try

00:27:27.500 to explain to people why you run, I think most sort of modern people say, well, I run because

00:27:32.860 it's for my health. And I'm sure that's probably why you got into running, but I'm sure what keeps

00:27:38.560 you running is more than just your health. You're probably not even thinking about your aerobic

00:27:42.460 capacity when you go out on a morning run. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a helpful motivator

00:27:47.940 because, you know, I think an important point to make is that to say that we're born to run or that

00:27:54.080 we're sort of evolutionary equipped to do it is not to say that it's easy or that, uh, you know,

00:28:01.260 it's just a bundle of smiles that, you know, for people who don't run, who might think, man,

00:28:06.260 this does not apply to me. I find running hard. The thing is, even people who run every day

00:28:11.080 generally find it hard and wake up in the morning and think, oh man, it's too hot or it's too cold

00:28:15.300 or I'm too tired. So it's, it's not that it's not hard. It's just that there are enough benefits to

00:28:21.040 overwhelm this feeling of hardness. And the fact that it's good for your health is one of them.

00:28:24.600 But as you said, after a while, if you've been running for a long time, it's often more than

00:28:28.780 that. It's, it's more that just in some hard to articulate way, you feel better about the world

00:28:34.200 and about yourself and about your day after you've done that run.

00:28:37.080 Another point, this guy makes an Indian running is that we might've started running for hunting,

00:28:43.220 but humans have this tendency to take these things, these evolved capacities and turn into

00:28:48.440 something else. So we might ritualize something. So, you know, you see these Southwestern tribes in

00:28:54.420 the United States ritualizing running. Another thing he saw that the tribes use this evolved capacity

00:29:01.720 to run for was communication. And so a lot of these Southwestern tribes, they developed these

00:29:07.520 elaborate networks of trails so that they could communicate long distances in just a day.

00:29:15.500 And so they would just run, like they would just run to share messages. There would actually like

00:29:18.980 be people called in a tribe to be the messenger guy. And that was his job just to run. And they would,

00:29:25.280 some of the stuff, they were like doing ultra marathons. Like this one account,

00:29:28.620 a guy ran 156 miles in less than 24 hours, which is crazy. And like, no, no shoes,

00:29:35.840 just barefoot. And he knocked it out in less than a day.

00:29:39.860 You know, it's, it's interesting you mentioned that because another book I recently read is by

00:29:43.700 Roger Robinson, who's a longtime running writer and, but also a historian. And he has a book called

00:29:50.120 Running Throughout Time, The Greatest Running Stories Ever Told, which kind of traces some of the

00:29:54.140 stories of running and tells them in a different way. So, I mean, he starts with,

00:29:57.740 the Atalanta, who's like this, a Greek legend, which he casts as the sort of foundation of,

00:30:03.440 of women's running, but he has a whole chapter on running messengers. And I knew about Native 0.92

00:30:09.260 American messengers and I knew about Pheidippides, who's the, the ancient Greek messenger who's

00:30:14.560 supposedly ran from Marathon to Athens to say, you know, we won and then died. It turns out that

00:30:20.160 this idea of running messengers was, it was like a profession around the world. And so there's these,

00:30:24.920 you know, famous stories about like 300 years ago, there was a legendary Welsh messenger named

00:30:31.520 Griffith Morgan, who, who performed all these feats and was a hero in his time. And so all these

00:30:36.580 societies around the world had like a professionalized group of ultra long distance

00:30:42.880 runners who served as messengers. They were more efficient, more knowledgeable, more able to

00:30:48.500 navigate different circumstances than a horse would have been or whatever. And so it's exactly that.

00:30:53.560 It's take, we didn't evolve to be messengers, but we, we took advantage of the way we were

00:30:59.240 constructed. And it's fascinating reading the stories of, of things that, you know, naively I

00:31:05.060 would have thought it's like nobody was running 150 miles until, you know, the 1970s when people

00:31:10.980 were trying to figure out, you know, the meaning of life. But it's like, no, they were doing that

00:31:14.820 2000 years ago. They were doing it 1000 years ago. They were doing it 500 years ago and they were

00:31:18.280 getting it remarkably quickly. Yeah. And, uh, Indian runny talks about the Spanish when they came

00:31:24.220 to the Western hemisphere, they finally realized that they could probably just hire the indigenous 0.97

00:31:31.020 people to get messages faster. So they said there's like this one trip from Lima to Cusco,

00:31:37.900 this is in Peru. If they use their horse mail service, it would take 12 to 13 days to get a message.

00:31:44.300 But if they use the runners, they can cover it in just three days.

00:31:49.220 There you go. There's the race we were looking for a man versus man versus animal. We win.

00:31:53.580 We win. Okay. So it sounds like we were, I mean, that book born to run, there's something to it.

00:31:59.760 So if we're born to run, why, I mean, I think we kind of talked about this earlier, but like,

00:32:04.560 why do so few people like to run? Yeah. So like I said, I mean, I think that

00:32:10.120 the first thing to acknowledge is that the in the moment experience of running is difficult and

00:32:14.980 that's true, not just for let's say me, but it's true for, you know, the Ethiopian or Kenyan runners

00:32:21.620 who win the Olympics. It's true for the Tara Humara who were sort of lionized in the born to run book. 0.98

00:32:29.260 And actually there was a scientific paper that came out maybe two years ago, which was a kind of

00:32:33.900 re-examination of the Tara Humara in Mexico fighting against what they called the myth of the athletic

00:32:39.040 savage. This idea that, you know, these people who are closer to our evolutionary origins,

00:32:44.380 they just sort of are born to run. They wake up, they float long distances. And it's like, no,

00:32:48.940 the Tara Humara are capable of many of the Tara Humara are capable of, you know, impressive feats 0.83

00:32:54.200 of running, but there are some who are terrible at running. And even the ones who do run after they

00:32:59.660 do one of these ultra marathons, they're often like unable to walk for two weeks because it's so hard

00:33:05.240 and so unpleasant and they, they struggle with it in the same way that all of us do. So being born to

00:33:10.180 run doesn't mean that running is easy. So then it just becomes a question of, are the rewards of

00:33:16.080 running in, in, you know, in the broadest sense of the word, do they overcome the challenges of

00:33:22.140 running, not just in a global sense, but, or not just over time, but at that moment where you're

00:33:27.820 sitting at the door or standing at the front door with your running shoes on deciding whether you want

00:33:32.160 to go for a run? Because it's one thing to say, you know, we all are familiar with this idea of like

00:33:36.660 doing, of things that we know we'll be glad we did once we've done them, but we don't want to do

00:33:40.840 them anyway. So I'm rambling a little bit here, but just one other point to make is Dan Lieberman,

00:33:45.460 the Harvard anthropologist who coauthored the 2004 paper born to run. He wrote a book, I don't know,

00:33:52.400 four or five years ago or something called exercised. And the basic message of that book was

00:33:57.920 just being born to do something doesn't mean we're going to want to do it. And that it's

00:34:02.340 totally natural for us not to want to go for a run or do other kinds of exercise because we're

00:34:07.440 also evolved to save energy, to be as stingy with wasted energy as we possibly can. So it's natural

00:34:14.860 that we have a big barrier urging us to be as lazy as possible. And we shouldn't feel bad about that.

00:34:19.900 We just have to think carefully about how we want to live, what we want to do in the context of

00:34:24.160 wanting to be healthy and happy and trying to engineer our living conditions so that it's easy

00:34:29.960 to take the route that we will be happiest we took. So that it's not every morning you wake up

00:34:36.800 and decide. For me, for someone who runs on a regular basis, the key thing is I don't leave it

00:34:42.900 to myself to make the decision every morning. I decide and then I make it as easy as possible to

00:34:47.320 follow up with that decision. Any advice on how to make it easy so you can get over that inertia

00:34:52.280 to start running? Help me out. I read Indian running. I'm like, man, I should become a runner.

00:34:57.400 But there's still a part of me like, I don't know. So help me out. How can I become a runner?

00:35:02.460 Yeah, yeah. I mean, the best tricks and tips are different for each person. But one thing that

00:35:06.160 helps me a lot is, let's say I want to go for an hour run. That's a really daunting thing. And so

00:35:12.400 there'll be times when, because of the weather, because of how I feel, that sounds awful. And so I never

00:35:18.080 sort of impose a minimum distance on my run or a minimum speed. Very often I will wake up and I'll

00:35:26.680 be like, and I have stuff going on and, you know, I got to get my kids to school and I have deadlines

00:35:30.980 and I'm stressed out. I don't have time to run. Well, I do have 10 minutes. I'm going to put on

00:35:35.960 my clothes and I'm going to go out the door and I'm going to jog out for five minutes. And then if I'm

00:35:40.600 tired and still feeling overwhelmed, I'm going to turn around and I'm going to get back and then I'll

00:35:43.940 jog for 10 minutes. Almost always, once I get out there, I'm like, well, I can do 20 minutes

00:35:48.420 or, well, now that I'm out here, the marginal cost of an extra five minutes is nothing. And I'm

00:35:53.540 actually starting to enjoy myself because the first 10 minutes of the run are often the hardest and the

00:35:57.280 most sluggish for me. But I'm absolutely willing to go out, spend, you know, seven minutes running

00:36:02.340 and come back in if I just have too much going on. So, because getting out the door is the hard

00:36:07.880 part. So you want to, if getting out the door involves agreeing to go for an hour, then that makes it

00:36:13.080 harder. So I lower the barrier and I just, I also, this is totally personal, but for me,

00:36:20.420 if I wait till the end of the day, life fills up, I've got too much other stuff going on. So I get up

00:36:25.940 and I just go before breakfast for as long or as little time as I have. So I get it out of the way.

00:36:30.200 First thing, other people find that intolerable. They hate morning runs and they do it at the end of

00:36:34.760 the day. And that's, that's cool too, but figuring out when it fits in your day and won't get

00:36:38.480 overwhelmed, I think is important. I like that idea of setting your expectations incredibly low.

00:36:44.600 Cause I think a lot of people, when they think about, I got, I want to take up running. They

00:36:47.660 think, well, I got to run a 5k. I got to do, you know, a race. No, just run just, even if it's just

00:36:54.460 for 10 minutes. I think I can do that. Cause I lately I've been waking up really early for some

00:36:58.660 reason. I think it's like middle age. My body's like, Hey, you're going to wake up at 530 now.

00:37:02.500 Yeah. So I've been going for two mile walks early in the morning. Cause I got nothing else to do.

00:37:07.840 Maybe I can just start running. I can start jogging a little bit of that.

00:37:10.980 Yeah. Like, look, I, you know, I'm a very serious runner. I've been running my whole life. I've

00:37:15.780 competed at a very high level. I make my living writing about running. I do lots of, not lots of,

00:37:20.660 but I definitely do some like 14 minute runs and some 16 minute runs and stuff like that.

00:37:25.020 It's like, and it's, you know, it's still something. It's still gets my blood flowing and it's good.

00:37:29.860 But by being open to that, that gets me out there most days. And then often I end up running longer

00:37:35.520 and just, yeah, exactly. Don't. And, and as a more general thing, just as a, like the standard

00:37:41.300 running advice thing, because the other thing people run into is injuries, right. And things

00:37:45.440 like that. Be patient. Like just because your friend runs five Ks, if you haven't been running

00:37:52.340 regularly for a long time, that doesn't mean you should go out and run five K right away. And so

00:37:56.580 the programs that start with like a minute of jogging and a minute of walking and stuff,

00:38:00.500 those are great. And your goal should not be, I'm going to run a five K or much worse. I'm going to

00:38:04.800 run a half marathon in three months. Your goal should be in two years. I want to still be running

00:38:09.400 and building up and enjoying it. And I imagine if you start with these sort of like low expectations,

00:38:15.400 you'll eventually, maybe you'll eventually learn to like, Oh, I like this. This is something I really

00:38:20.020 enjoy. And then maybe you start getting more serious about it.

00:38:22.380 Maybe you do. I think a lot of people that that happens, maybe you don't, but you know what,

00:38:26.820 if you establish a habit of going for a 15 minute run three times a week, I guarantee that is

00:38:31.120 dramatically improving your overall fitness and possibly your mental health and happiness.

00:38:35.760 Oh, for sure. Well, Alex, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more

00:38:39.200 about your work? Thanks, Brett. I, uh, yeah, I write basically roughly once a week for outside

00:38:44.160 magazine. So outside online.com is a good place to, to look for my articles. I also, my website is

00:38:50.040 alexhutchinson.net or my, uh, social media accounts are at sweat science.

00:38:56.740 Fantastic. Well, Alex Hutchinson, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:38:59.420 Thanks, Lepret. 0.92

00:39:01.400 My guest here is Alex Hutchinson. He's a journalist who specializes in exercise science.

00:39:05.420 You can find more information about his work at his website, alexhutchinson.net.

00:39:09.120 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash born to run.

00:39:12.460 We find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

00:39:20.040 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

00:39:25.920 at artofmanly.com where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles

00:39:29.800 that we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you haven't

00:39:33.020 done so already, I'd appreciate it. If you take one minute to give us a video on the podcast

00:39:35.860 or Spotify, it helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider

00:39:39.700 sharing the show with a friend or family member. You would think you'd get something out of it.

00:39:42.780 As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay.

00:39:46.200 Remind you to all the listening to AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:39:50.040 AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - September 11, 2024

You Were Born to Run

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript