I have just finished the superb book, Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall, which has become a cult classic for most anyone who loves to run.
There was near-unanimous consent in the scientific community over the years that man was fundamentally a walking being. This seemed rather obvious when comparing man with the multitude of animals that can easily outrun him. In the past decade or two, this consensus has been challenged and perhaps even dethroned. In terms of anatomy, man is separated from the most similar species (i.e., monkeys) by elements specifically geared for running--from the achilles tendon to a particular muscles that balances the head over the body to the upright position which allow man to gain two breaths for every stride, compared to every other animal's one.
We were made to run--more than that, we were made to marathon. As some of the last remaining endurance hunters show us (the bushmen of sub-Saharan Africa), man for a portion of his history was forced to rely upon chasing much faster animals down over long periods of time in order to feed himself and his family and survive. How was this possible? Man, using his rational faculty, gathered with other men (and women and children), and would give chase to the faster animal, knowing that it would eventually tire out. Every time the sprinting animal would come to rest, another man from the hunting pack would give chase again. After a couple of hours, said animal collapses. No animal was made to marathon. Man was made to marathon, and that physically set him apart.
Why don't all men, then, love to run and do so for dozens, if not hundreds, of miles a week? Ultimately, man unique physical ability comes into conflict with his unique intellectual ability. As man was made to marathon, as opposed to sprint, his mind is constantly geared toward efficiency, looking to save energy for when it is most needed. In a post-industrial society, not much energy need be exerted in order to survive, so the the mind keeps the body off its feet.
But this mental faculty was meant to give a perpetually worked body a bit of rest, not enable a sedentary lifestyle. And by remaining sedentary, we cause our bodies much more harm than if we had a lifestyle involving running. In cultures that are still running cultures (few and far between), the incidents of cancer and other terminal and degenerative illnesses are vastly reduced. You want to live longer--run (or jog). As one elderly distance runner once said, getting old doesn't keep him running, running keeps him from getting old.
More and more, the science that said running is bad for your body is being debunked. Injuries are not as much a result of running, as they are a result of sedentary people trying to run. People run too hard. They run with very poor form. They wear expensive, padded shoes which take perhaps the most complex and sensitive part of our body (the foot) and numb them to correct landing, taking off, and pain thresholds. Our feet tell us how to run well. Our shoes often muzzle them. (Many recent studies have shown that the more you spend on a pair of shoes, the more likely you are to get injured.)
Of course, I make a boring, more mundane case for a particular lifestyle when the book I just read is really more about the greatest ultramarathon race of all time, between some of America's greatest runners and a dying breed of ultramarathoning super-warriors from the canyons of Mexico. The story presents a riveting narrative, with occasional sidebars like those mentioned above, that makes the reader want to close the book and go run barefoot in the grass without a care in the world.
The one true weakness in a truly fabulous book is its simplistic and forced evolutionary explanations for mankind's running ability. Instead of simply providing the anthropological (study of man--anthropos) and biological (study of life--bios) facts, it parrots a common cosmological (study of world--cosmos) explanation for these facts. If you assume that man adapted in accordance to a "survival of the fittest" principle, then he developed all of these innate running abilities in order to survive. Yet that assumption need not be made. If God made man to subdue the earth, and part of exerting mastery over every creature involved being able to outrun it as well as outwit it, then it shows the creative genius of God in making man with an achilles tendon.
God gave man the biological tools he needed to be a steward of this world as an image-bearing representative of God. Since the fall of man, man's task have become more difficult as he now must toil through thorns and thistles. Thus, an unruly creation sometimes subdues man.
But there will be a day when Christ puts all things under His feet. The lion will sleep alongside the lamb and the trees of the fields will clap their hands. On that day, we will begin to reign forever and ever with Christ over a subdue and bounteous creation, unhindered by the Fall. And on that day, I rejoice that my uniquely human anatomy, with the biological capability to run all day, will do so unfettered by injury or age in the eternal Garden of the Lord.
