The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other... but to be with each other.

For nearly 2 million years, our ancestors survived and thrived and spread across the planet because they could run other mammals into heat exhaustion.

I received the best advice for running I ever heard: 'You're not going to win, so just relax. If it feels like work, you're running too hard.

If you read folklore and mythology, any kind of myths, any kind of tall tales, running is always associated with freedom and vitality and youthfulness and eternal vigor. It's only in our lifetime that running has become associated with fear and pain.

Endurance, after all, is the only reason we even exist. We think of ourselves as nature's deadliest animals, but the truth is, a naked human is the biggest wimp in the wild. We have no fangs, no claws, no strength, and no speed.

We're constantly told that running will ruin our knees and outrage our hearts, but for nearly all of human existence, it was associated with freedom, vitality, and eternal youth.

That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation.