Born to Run

In case you haven’t read it by now, Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run is a brilliant look at the origins of human running and an attempt to get back to our lost ways. In particular, he focuses on American running: how we’ve gotten slower as a nation over the last couple of decades. It used to be Americans were some of the fastest long-distance racers on the planet. Now, we don’t stack up so well. As McDougall writes,

“Sure, plenty of people will throw up excuses about Kenyans having some kind of mutant muscle fiber, but this isn’t about why other people got faster; it’s about why we gotslower. And the fact is, American distance running went into a death spiral precisely when cash entered the equation…

‘There are two goddesses in your heart. 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.”

This is a nod to Fishbird’s BE-DO-HAVE model. Stand for your vision. Put everything into that vision. Everything else will follow.