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Comment by johnsmth | Hacker News Reader

If you were a red-blooded progressive maker-type of person in 2010, and you read Born to Run and didn't immediately go out and buy a pair of Vibram 5 Fingers, I really have to wonder if we're going to get along.

Never use the shoes anymore but that book has made me a healthier human for sure.

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Same here. Back in 2009-ish or so when I was on a three week vacation to took my shoes off and re-learned how to walk. From then on, I haven't had any cortisone shots in my knees nor the somewhat annual reoccurring throwing my back out. From then on I have been exclusively barefooted, wearing Bedrock sandals or some other minimal shoe.

I get all kinds of comments and snide remarks, but to walk and stand pain free I really don't care.

What a wild take.

Seriously. Hasn't the main thesis of that book (a distinct advantage of human upright evolution is our ability to run long distances) and several key supporting points been mostly disproven scientifically (early humans often hunted by running to exhaustion, for example)?

Seems to me another enticing narrative with little to no sound evidence a la Guns, Germs, and Steel, Sapiens, and the like. The stuff this site loves to gobble up with comment after comment of supporting anecdata.

The insistence HNers have for utterly re-inventing their lives off of a single completely unsubstantiated book astounds me.

You know literally anyone can write literally anything in a book right? There's no vetting, no magical reality check. You can write a book that's nothing but good sounding falsehoods and nobody can stop you. You can even fill it with 10 pages of garbage, low quality citations!

The modern equivalent of a book is a 3 hour Youtube video essay, and most of them have more research behind them!

But nobody would obsess over them like people here obsess over lifestyle books.

Yeah, it's an obsessive personality trait that I've observed in most high achievers. Often not healthy. At least scrutinize your obsessions, people.

> several key supporting points been mostly disproven scientifically (early humans often hunted by running to exhaustion, for example)

This article from 2024 [1] that discusses newly published research seems to refute your claim.

[1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/long-distance-runn...

You forgot about drinking chia fresca before and after every run.

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