OK, I may be late to the party, but I feel I have an important point to make about this book. It's very, very dangerous. It's likely that you're already a runner, if you're interested in reading "Born to Run." So, you're probably already enjoying the rewards as well as the pitfalls of the running lifestyle: the crisp early morning runs, the thrill of race day, and the constant niggling (and maybe not so niggling) injuries that we just accept as a price for our passion. You may come to the book with little more knowledge than the blurbs on the cover or a friend's recommendation that it's an awesome book. So you dive in, and McDougall begins to spin his tale. The book reads like a 4-minute miler, and you find yourself engrossed in a story that just gets better and better as each chapter unfolds. Then, with subtlety and cunning, the author begins planting these notions in your head that maybe, just maybe, what you've thought about running, about YOUR running, has been wrong. That maybe those injuries that you have accepted forever might be your own damn fault, or, more specifically, Nike's damn fault. You begin to wonder, really really wonder, if perhaps this tribe of noble people have something to say directly to you about your own way of meeting the world, sole-wise. And before you know it, you've tossed your running shoes, and starting running in bare feet. Though you've been running for years, you start again, at square one, and learn a new way of running. And it's joyous and light, and you find yourself actually smiling when you run, and your legs tingle for hours afterward, and you decide that you'll never wear shoes on your run again. In short, the book changes your damn life. "Born to Run" is that kind of book. Well-written, passionate, intelligent, and thoroughly enjoyable. I read it twice, back to back, and still return to favorite chapters often. The cast of characters is terrific, the story unfolds at a wonderful pace, and the writing is solid. But I should warn you, and I think the publishers should too: this book will make you look at your running life in a very different way. It will make you want to run freely and with joy, to recapture that feeling that you had as a child when running was a spontaneous reaction to your place in the world, instead of something you endured to stay fit. It is a great celebration of running, and a cogent argument that we were built to be runners, that our place is on our feet, moving forward, and doing so with little to nothing on our feet. I loved this book. You will, too. But be warned: it could change your life. If it does, be sure to send Mr. McDougall your letter of thanks.

Although I'm not an avid runner by any means, nor have I really ever been, I found this book to be a great read. It's an engrossing, entertaining, and well written story about the author's boldly persistent adventures during an unwavering quest for elusive answers to perplexing questions. And, as any great read might do it allowed me to feel connected, however remotely, to interesting peoples; and exotic places I probably wouldn't've ever been able to imagine existed no matter how many more years I might live. More importantly, to me personally; it was what made me aware of: the existence and potential benefits of minimalist footwear; and, the absurdity of the school of thought that would have us believe nature's evolutionary design success with the human foot can be vastly improved by a plethora of modern footwear gimmickry. And lastly, how transitioning back to nature's time-tested, time-proven way (barefoot) might actually reset one's ambulatory infrastructure to where it's meant to be in the first place — the place it took a significant long two million years or so to leisurely perfect on its own. In fact: the wealth of somewhat esoteric information in this book proved to be an unparalleled revelation which provided me with fresh insights fundamental to my particular set of circumstances at that time. The key reason being; that although I've never actually suffered from plantar fasciitis or related knee injuries; as a teenager I was thrown off a galloping horse that stopped abruptly, and I landed on a fallen tree in a mountain wilderness area; sustaining multiple, grievous internal injuries due to the ensuing trauma. One of the worst, besides being diagnosed with hypogycemia and hypoadrenocorticism [aka secondary adrenal insufficiency], was a herniated lumbar disc which I've painfully had to deal with for most of my adult life. Walking, running, and sometimes even just standing at some kind of work-station or another has at times caused me severe and disabling lumbar spasms. The point is, after reading about the Tarahumara and the running-shoe industry; I decided to purchase a pair of zero-drop shoes (aka foot-gloves) and soon started the transition period. Walking for an hour or so each day to start with and slowly increasing the time as quickly as I deemed prudent. After about three months I was up to ten miles a day (on a good day) and felt the physical transition to be mostly complete at that time. It was then I tossed my expensive running shoes into the trash; along with my very expensive shoe orthotic inserts; and have never looked back. It's been about six years now since my last visit to an Osteopath or Chiropractor (yeah, for real!). Astonishingly, other than some recent lower back pain from sleeping on a soft, worn-out mattress my bad disc has mostly been behaving its otherwise typically fickle-self for almost every day of those six years. Nor am I flatfooted by any means either! My arches have remained as healthily high, and every bit as strong (probably much stronger) as they ever were, and this without any arch-support whatsoever thank you very much. Neither am I otherwise suffering from any other sort of chronic foot/knee pain, even though I frequently walk for miles at a time (love walking now more than ever); and even jog a bit on occasion. And although I still prefer my bicycle for serious "endorphin hunting" (the only thing I've ever been hopelessly addicted to in my entire life); walking/jogging now feel decidedly better than they did with typical athletic-type shoes before transitioning. Indeed, this totally sordid business of genuinely needing arch-supports in modern shoes seems like an enormously cruel joke to me now. To be clear: the irony here being that apparently, the exact reasons I perceived requiring their dubious benefits in the first place; were primarily due to the fact (lumbar disc issues aside) that the footwear I've been beguiled into enduring most of my life was indeed the biggest, most pernicious joke of all! To conclude: after delving into Christopher McDougall's Born to Run for the second time this decade, one of my takeaways is that; it's not just a book for runners, elite or otherwise. It's also an entertaining book for the open-minded everyman with an adventurous spirit.