Born to Run

by Christopher McDougall

This book was fantastic! Well thought out, thoroughly interesting, this book balanced research with personal experience. McDougall has a website which shows his TED talk (which is 20 minutes long) if you want a brief intro to the reasons behind barefoot running.

I agree with many, many things McDougall reports in his book. Mainly: running should be enjoyable. If you're not enjoying it, you're doing it wrong. In high school I had direct experience with this; when I was playing soccer I could run for miles. I enjoyed playing soccer so much that the running part of it wasn't a problem.

Did you know 8 out of ever 10 runners is hurt every year? For something that should come naturally to us (and did for thousands of years) it is one of the highest injury prone sports out there. Running shoes did not come to fruition until the late 1800's, early 1900's. And if I keep talking I'm going to tell you everything the book does. Go read it!

Stats:
There are several swear words, when McDougall is quoting others. There are a couple of what I would call "gross" scenes, but nothing that I feel personally effected my emotions.

It's just under 300 pages, and was easy to pick up (the research wasn't overwhelming or hard to follow).