State of Place

Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run has been getting a lot of attention this year (here’s [what I think is] the original article that led to the book ).

I haven’t read the book nor gone shoeless (yet), but McDougall’s original article and the media swirl around his book have helped me develop a new view of running. No longer mere exercise, I see it as the opportunity to cover some ground.

Whereas 30 minutes used to be a good workout, now I’ll go out and ramble for an hour, an hour and a half. No idea of the mileage. Up the mountain, into the woods, looping, looping back, stopping to have a staring contest with a deer, walking whenever. This sustainable lope goes beyond mimicking “the behavior of the persistence hunter” for the end of physical fitness: It creates a direct psychological link to the antelope hunter and mammoth spearer within.

From the perspective of place, this returns us (in thought, at least) to our ancestral hunting grounds, the root homestead. In a dispersed world, that’s probably not the same ground covered on a Saturday jog. By running with this mindset, you might be surprised how far you’ll travel both mentally and physically.

And if you live and run where you’ve been all along, what’s that like?

Photo by Casey Morris via Flickr

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