For those of you following along, I read Born to Run a few weeks ago. This book was awesome and continues to have a strong influence on my running life as of late. Much of the book is about these ultra-marathoners who run this insane, 100 mile race through the Rocky Mountains in Leadville, Colorado. One of the runners featured in this story had the bright idea to do his training for the race on the actual course itself. And what do you know – he ended up setting a new course record that year.
Do you know what I think of that?
1. I failed to remember to charge my Garmin before bed last night, thus I ran today with my old school (now seemingly very little in comparison) digital watch that doesn’t tell me anything fun or exciting.
2. My left arm felt amazingly light with no 3 lb garmin strapped to it. So light in fact that it kept creeping up toward the sky and I had to hold it down with my other hand lest every person I ran past wonder if they were supposed to call on me to answer a question.
Barely 24 hours after publishing my review on Born to Run and remarking on the theory that the more expensive your running shoe, the more likely you are to incur an injury – a theory I think is right on the money no less – I ran out and spent $80 on running “shoes”. Vibram Five Finger Sprints!
Hypocrisy thy name is Alison.
But CHECK THEM OUT!
And I Love. Them.
This week I finished reading a book that has earned itself the well-deserved honor as my new favorite:
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.
Born to Run is one of those books that has left me feeling sad that it’s over. It’s also one of those books that is going to prevent me from picking up any new book for quite some time here. I am going to need a little time to recover from its awesomeness and allow a little space between now and whatever I pick up to read next. Any new book right now is quite simply going to suck in comparison.
At the end of last year I saw this hippie barefoot runner dude in the November issue of Runner’s World in their “What it Takes…” column.
More Mama’s Weeds
