Albert K. Park

Born To Move - Part 1

8 min and 20 sec. Wow! I thought I was in decent shape but my mutant twin side aches, screaming lower back pain, and almost pleasurable light headedness rebutted otherwise. Fair enough, the last time I ran the mile was as a Junior in High School and even then I was only running it in the 6 minute range, sorry coach. Even in college I never had to run a mile for Track & Field, hey I was a thrower stop your hating immediately. I looked down at my thick soled Nike air Max 360’s and cursed them to hell! Sure they looked pretty cool but didn’t do jack sh*t for performance. I will expand on the theory later, oh you bet your ass I will, NIKE!!...

My horrible performance on my timed mile, despite lowering my self esteem and irritating my lower back, did in fact spark a positive. It nudged me towards finally reading “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougal, a book that had been on my “to read list” for a few months now. If I didn’t feel bad enough about my poor running experience, the Super Sick main actors in this block buster of a novel definitely pushed me over the edge while adding a few insults to my overall physical fitness, athletic ability, and overall lifestyle.

What makes the stars of this book, an isolated Mexican Tarahumara Indian tribe, dwarf the athletic ability of all the praised athletes of our world? Well let’s take a quick look at some bullet points.

1.) They participate in a 2 day tribal marathon non stop. Non stop meaning without stopping, no breather breaks. This race covers nearly over 400 miles in canyon and desert terrain. If that wasn’t enough here is the kicker, the night before the race they have a wild Mexican rave like party called a tesguinada where the ingredients for fun include Mexican corn beer, a crazy hallucinogen plant called peyote, moonshine tequila, fights, and adultery in nearby bushes. It definitely puts my 40 ounce and Beer Pong days of college to shame.

2.) Their diet mainly consists of beans, tortillas, wild roots, cactus, and every now and then some meat if they catch it. The Tarahumara have been known to run down deer for nearly twenty miles, chasing them until they collapse in exhaustion. Now that’s savage. You think bench pressing 315 for a few reps jacked up on No Xplode is impressive, try running down a wild deer! Yeah I know, ridiculous.

3.) Here is a little equation to show you my idea of fun. Flat Screen T.V. + Beer + Friends + artery clogging snacks + Beer + watching other guys do the athletic work = a Whole lot of Fun!

After confessing my idea of fun, I am truly embarrassed to even report what the Tarahumara consider fun. Their traditional game of kick ball consists of kicking a wooden ball back and forth as fast as you can between two points over the most horrifying jagged canyon terrain. The distances covered between a match can be up to hundreds of miles at a time. Who needs a flat screen when you have a wooden ball.

4.) Equipped with nothing but sandals on their feet these super athletes have managed to avoid all of our common modern day injuries including all feet, ankle, and knee injuries that have plagues our athletes. For some reason I don’t think the Nike Shox are going to cut it anymore.

5.) So how do they measure up directly to our athletes? In a 100 mile race that took place in the cold and high altitude of Colorado, an environment that reflected the direct antithesis of their everyday life, they still managed to set a new course record and destroy the competition year after year.


After reading all of this I almost didn’t even believe it. These people were like some distant group of super humans, like in Avatar, that were just physically superior. On top of that, their society existed with no crime, promoted peace, and somehow managed to be disease free. I was officially disappointed in myself at this point and when comparing them to our modern American world all I could do is silently shake my head.

Fast food joints have aggressively progressed from peppering the country to eventually moving into a full hostile takeover that would even put the Bush campaign into Iraq look soft. We as a people have evolved into no longer hunting or let alone moving as transportation became more efficient and every product that hit the market was designed to make things easier meaning moving less. Microwaves, video games, television, computers, and even now the shoes with the wheels in them keep kids from actually walking, instead they can glide. I still don’t get it. What ever happened to Super Soakers and Nerf Guns? Without performing the way our bodies were designed to we actually begin to decondition physically and mentally.

The example the book provides is the theory NASA had proposed when first experimenting in space. Without all the physical demands your body would endure on earth, such as moving against gravity, having to move to get food, continually exercise for health, they proposed the idea that our bodies intake would be forced into increased brain support and almost propel the human physical state into a “fountain of youth” idea. The results were alarming in the fact that the exact opposite occurred. The astronauts actually aged decades in the matter of days with symptoms including bones decalcifying, depression, insomnia, acute fatigue, and even their taste buds had decayed. How the hell are you going to live without taste buds?

Right now our world is basically like an altered version of this space age experiment. Everything is designed to help us not do what are bodies were designed for. TO MOVE! We were BORN TO MOVE! Now we face diseases that our ancestors couldn’t even dream about. Diabetes, Heart diseases, Cancer, and Depression just to name a few.

All I wanted to do in this Part 1 is to get you to really think about your current physical state. Have you been a product of our NASA experiment on earth? How many people do you know that have suffered from any one of the diseases listed above? It’s truly mind boggling when you actually sit and think about it.

Have you ever wondered why even if you don’t ever run, you feel compelled and go out for a jog? It’s because that’s what is engraved into your DNA and what your body is designed for. It needs to move to be functional both physically and mentally. Even though I got some freak hybrid of the flu, H1N1, and who knows what else, I can barely lay here watching tv and think I will get better. I think it’s time to bust a move.