'baby, you were born to run'

With apologies to Bruce Springsteen.

Two weeks since the toughest race of my running career.  A frequent question I have been asked "Why did you do it?"  The best question "You're a smart guy.  Don't you have a car?"

Yes, I have a car. A couple as a matter of fact.  I was listening to podcasts while I tend to farm and household chores today. Steve Runner's podcast in the evolution of humans as distance runners.  The Runner's Roundtable talking about barefoot running.  There was a recent article on the evolution of humans as runners in the most recent issue of Runner's World.

For the nitty gritty, see work by Dennis Bramble of the University of Utah and Daniel Lieberman  of Harvard. "Endurance running and the evolution of Homo" from the Journal Nature 2004 and "The Evolution of Marathon Running Capabilities in Humans" from Sports Medicine 2007.

The short version.  More than 2 million years ago, global cooling shrank forests where our ape ancestors lived in forests of Africa.  Savannahs and plains opened up a niche for those ancestors.  Walking upright, ancestors such as Australopithecus strode out upon the plains, scavenging mostly, but occassionaly running down game directly.

There are few if any animals that can out distance a running human.  We are remarkably poor sprinters compared to other animals - dogs, cats, horses. But take a hot day, and a really long distance, and a bipedal human with literally run other animals to death. Useful if you are trying to eat said animal.

A remarkable set of features in the human body favor distance running.  The achilles tendon.  Your big rear end.  Ask a chimp why your butt is bigger than his, I dare you.

About 10,000 years ago, humans developed agriculture.  Bummer.  We started sitting around waiting for food to grow, gathered in villages, domesticating animals.  About 50 years ago, we developed modern society (in the West), with cars and a Kum-n-Go on each corner with 64 oz soft drinks on tap.

Our bodies are designed by 2 million years of evolution for distance running.  So I ask this question of those who ask me why I do what I do. I do what the body is designed for.  What are you doing?

-Larry