Chris MacDougall’s book Born to Run has taken the running world by storm. In its pages he describes a theory of human evolution that suggests this race survived and prospered because it was able to run long distances. 

 

Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to knowingly run a four-minute mile, has been attributed with the following quotation:

 

 

On the Savannah in Africa, when the human race lived there, running was important, to cover the large distances and to be able to capture animals.

 

Dan Lieberman, Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, suggests that humans have a very different anatomical make-up than most animals, even those we are closely related to.

 

Moreover, this anatomy allows us to run longer than animals we may wish to capture. For instance, a trained human can run for hours at 6 meters per second, whilst an animal such as a horse can run at 7.7 metres per second for about 10 minutes. After that, they drop to 5.8 metres per second. Therefore, to capture a horse, all you need to do is chase it for 10 minutes and then its yours.

 

This possibility, combined with the physical environment enabled the human race to prosper. You can prosper too and have a Zen life if you desire to go running!

 

More details are available in Chris MacDougall’s Born to Run.