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Comment by Raztuf | Hacker News Reader

Don't show this to Christopher McDougall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_to_Run_(McDougall_book)

> He writes, some claim hyperbolically, that "[i]n Tarahumara land, there was no crime, war, or theft. There was no corruption, obesity, drug addiction, greed, wife-beating, child abuse, heart disease, high blood pressure or carbon emissions. They didn’t get diabetes, or depressed, or even old." This and other statements in the book have been criticized by some authors.

"Some claim hyperbolically" - masterfully understated there, Wikipedia.

I visited the Tarahumara and ran the race in his book 4 times. I know Chris personally and he's certainly a storyteller and not a scientist to put it simply. I was similarly bothered by these kind of claims and he wasn't the first to make them. I did some research papers in college on this years ago.

Surprisingly, these claims are more true than false, though in no way completely true. There are some fascinating cultural mechanisms that enable each one. But they were also largely dependent on their society being extremely small and living in remote hillsides and only coming together for certain social events. Not very applicable to modern society.

That's fascinating regardless of the topic! How exciting.

> Surprisingly, these claims are more true than false, though in no way completely true. There are some fascinating cultural mechanisms that enable each one. But they were also largely dependent on their society being extremely small and living in remote hillsides and only coming together for certain social events. Not very applicable to modern society.

Indeed - the Mayans might be worse at culturally-mandated obsidian daggering of people, but at least they don't have microplastics!

He's not wrong though.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5G93ta66xSk

The tribals from the Sierra Madre Mountains in Northern Mexico - called the Tarahumara or the Rarámuri people - are considered to be among the best endurance runners in the world.

Some of the First Nation tribes of the Americas (especially their messengere who ran hundreds of miles to deliver messages) and the traditional African tribals (such as the Maasai tribe) are also among the best endurance runners in the world.

Kenyan athlete Eliud Kipchoge is the first human to run sub-2-hours marathon.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MoxFkJlVZlA

And when we look at exactly how these world's best endurance runners (truly superhumans) run (i.e., their running style), we realise that all the fancy sports shoes we normies tend to run in aren't really conducive for proper running.

The best endurance runners run in such a way that their feet land on the front of their foot during running, but the typical sports shoes cause our feet to land on the heels (ball on the back side of the foot) (which is what causes injuries due to such daily bad way of running).

Humans evolved to be the best long distance endurance runners, compared to any other animal. It is high time modern humans realised what's the right way to run long distance.

I'm sort of in general agreement with you about healthy running practices, but I don't think endurance running - just running for long distances with no eye on time - is a good comparison with performance running - where timing is key, even if you're running log distances. It's to do with the purpose of the running. Eliud Kipchoge only broke 2 hours because of the shoes he was wearing, which are only used for one race, so you're mixing the two aspects a bit there. There are also issues with running on the balls of your feet. I injured my metatarsals by running like that, and they only recovered when I reverted to a slightly flatter running style. The choice isn't just between "ball" and "heel", there's a grey area in-between, and the thing I distrust about alot of the "natural running" stuff is the ideological purity that it often engenders.

> It's to do with the purpose of the running. Eliud Kipchoge only broke 2 hours because of the shoes he was wearing

That’s a vast oversimplification.

OK, let me put it another way. Do you think Kipchoge would have broken two hours if he'd been wearing trainers with technology from five years ago?

Maybe? Like, the shoes are certainly a contribution factor, but you're basically talking about stacking multiple 0.1 percenters at that point, which one tipped things over the line is hard to say, and you obviously have to account for the fact that Kipchoge is a genetic freak (like all top athletes) with a couple decades of consistent training behind him and a team hell-bent on finding all incremental gains they can. That period also saw significant improvements in fuelling strategy, amongst other things.

> The best endurance runners run in such a way that their feet land on the front of their foot during running

This is not really true and the whole fore foot vs heal striker thing is a bit of a red herring. There are elite distance runners that are forefoot, mid-foot (probably the majority) and heal strikers. The main thing is that wherever on their foot hits first, the foot itself is under their center of gravity and not out in front of them.

Yep, over striding is the problem in many cases.

You’re peddling mostly nonsense.

Modern shoes don’t force you to heel strike.

True, but they do make it a lot easier. But the heel strike itself isn't the problem, it's the over striding that modern shoes also encourage

Do you have any evidence that modern shoes encourage over striding?

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