I’m leaving for Washington, DC tomorrow and will run the Marine Corps Marathon on Sunday. Trying to dismiss the hamstring pain that seems to now be creeping around my hip, I thought I would re-read a favorite book, “Born to Run”, to get psyched up and forget my soreness for a while. I should have remembered the kind of emotion the book evoked from me the last time I read it, but just like that time, I got sucked into the way Christopher McDougall tells a story. If you haven’t read his book , I highly recommend it, whether you consider yourself a runner or not.

This time, though, I realized that one of the reasons I enjoyed reading his book so much was the intriguing people he wrote about. They are not like most of us, who, while we all may be a little nuts, are definitely more sane than crazy. The characters (real in every way) in McDougalls’s book are definitely not afraid of pushing themselves and living on the edge…the closer to it the better. These are people who run for long distances (way longer than 26.2 miles) for the fun of it…literally. FOR THE FUN OF IT! I guess we can all live a little vicariously through these wild runners who seem to throw caution to the wind.
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