188 Quotes by Christopher McDougall

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

Running seemed to be the fitness version of drunk driving: you could get away with it for a while, you might even have some fun, but catastrophe was waiting right around the corner.

Know why people run marathons? he told Dr. Bramble. Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles, Starry Night, intravascular surgery; they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human – which means it’s a superpower all humans possess.

As much for his mind as for his body, Erwan likes to run it barefoot.

Humans are built for endurance, not speed. We’re awful sprinters compared to every other animal. We try to run our races as if they were speed races, but they are not. They’re endurance races. Even a marathon, the way it’s run now, it’s not an endurance contest.

If you can run six miles on a summer day then you, my friend, are a lethal weapon in the animal kingdom. We can dump heat on the run, but animals can’t pant while they gallop.

You are fit if you can adapt to the demands of your environment with ease and imagination,” Myers.

Vigil couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but his gut kept telling him that there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love running.

Only recently have we come up with the technology to turn lazing around into a way of life. We’ve taken our sinewy, durable, hunter-gatherer bodies and plunked them into an artificial world of leisure.