Born to Run 2 Authors Share Secrets of Happy Running (and More)
– The MOVEMENT Movement with Steven Sashen Episode 150 with Chris McDougall and Eric Orton
Trained as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press, Christopher McDougall covered wars in Rwanda and Angola before writing his international bestseller, Born to Run. His fascination with the limits of human potential led him to his next book, Natural Born Heroes. McDougall also created the Outside magazine web series, “Art of the Hero.”
Eric Orton’s experience with the Raramuri and his study of running, human performance, strength, and conditioning have led him to the cutting edge of the sport and made him a go-to for athletes everywhere. The author of Born to Run 2 and The Cool Impossible, Orton travels the World speaking on running and personally trains athletes from recreational runners to elite ultramarathoners.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Chris McDougall and Eric Orton about their book, Born to Run 2.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How Born to Run kicked off the barefoot running movement in 2009.
– Why it’s important for people to see others running who aren’t fitness models.
– How great athletes can use their athleticism to run long distances.
– Why people should be having fun when they run ultra-marathons.
– How Born to Run 2 is about so much more than just running.
Connect with Chris and Eric:
Guest Contact Info
Twitter
@BornToRunWorld
Instagram
@borntorun_world
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082984016320
Links Mentioned:
borntorun.world
Connect with Steven:
Website
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Steven Sashen:
This entire natural movement, barefoot running, minimalist shoes, et cetera. This whole thing really started in 2009 with the publishing of the book Born to Run, and also an article from Daniel Lieberman from Harvard. But Born to Run was really the thing that kicked it off. And I am thrilled to say that we’re going to be talking with the author of the original and the co-authors of the new Born to Run 2. And you’re going to have a blast on this episode of the Movement Movement podcast. The podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first. And where we break down the propaganda and the mythology and sometimes the flat out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or do yoga, CrossFit or dance or whatever you do on your feet. And to do that enjoyably efficiently, effectively, and… Wait, did I say enjoyably? Trick question, I know I did. Because I always say it. Because look, if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to keep it up. So don’t do it if it ain’t fun.
I’m Steven Sashen from xeroshoes.com, your host of the Movement Movement podcast. And we call it that because we, and that includes you, and I’ll tell you how in a second. It’s really easy, it doesn’t cost anything. We are creating a movement about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do instead of getting in the way with technology that is supposed to improve things that doesn’t often do that. So when you get a chance, go over to our website www.jointhemovementmovement.com. You’ll find all the previous episodes, all the ways you can engage with us, find us on social media, find the podcast wherever you find podcasts, leave comments, give us a thumbs up and a review and a like a bell icon on YouTube to get notified about other episodes. And in short, you know what to do. Just if you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe. When you go to join the movement movement.com by the way, there’s nothing to do to join. There’s no cost. There’s no secret handshake. There’s no mantra, there’s no whatever. It’s just a place that’s the domain. So here we are, Chris McDougall, Eric Orton. It is such a pleasure to have you guys here and I’m being completely sycophantic when I say that.
Eric Orton:
Wow.
Chris McDougall:
Steven, you know my emotion is right now? It is blinding regret that I didn’t come up with the movement movement. Dude, Eric, seriously, should we have called Born to Run 2 the Movement Movement?
Steven Sashen:
It’s not too late.
Eric Orton:
Well if we go by Stevens, I already got the website, Movement Movement 2.
Steven Sashen:
Hey, I will sell you the domain for just a fraction of the multimillion dollars that it’s worth.
Eric Orton:
Right on.
Chris McDougall:
I’m struck by that because everybody wants to be part of a movement. It’s got the play on words that gives you that stutter step for one second where you got to process it, and then when you get it, you get the gratification of having solved a little mini riddle and it catches your attention for that reason. Yeah, I feel like I have to step out of the podcast and just be alone for a little while, while I process some emotions.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, we’ll come back to you, that’s okay. Just take a nap, get a little hot tea, get some chamomile, have a massage, I think you’ll be good.
Chris McDougall:
Wrap myself in a blanket and feel better. Anyway, Steven, thank you.
Steven Sashen:
Whatever it takes.
Chris McDougall:
I also want to lead off for the question. So I’m very curious about this, a lot of times people will either give me credit like, “Oh, you started this thing.” Or they’ll say, “Why do you think Born to Run took off?” And I’m very curious about this. My intuition is that this was out there and it really wasn’t Lieberman because he actually does not mention feet in Born to Run 2004.
Steven Sashen:
No, he didn’t mention feet, but he was… I mean, for people… Was it in science or nature? I can never remember.
Chris McDougall:
Nature.
Steven Sashen:
Nature. So it’s an article in nature and it was just showing what happens when you take runners who are habitually barefoot and put them in shoes, effectively. And it was also just showing what happens with the forces that you apply and how these forces happen if you’re running in shoes versus not in shoes. So I mean that was the gist of that. But it did happen somewhat, not simultaneously, but kind of in that same timeframe as when Born to Run came out.
Chris McDougall:
Yeah. Well, so I guess my question is, were these forces in the non-academic world already building? My intuition is that there had to be a ground swell, a dawning awareness in the general population that we’re getting conned, that something is not right here. And that Born to Run of crystallized a suspicion that was already pretty widespread.
Steven Sashen:
I think, I’m going to take it in a slightly different way, because I don’t think people thought they were getting conned. I thought they were just confused or at the end of their rope about figuring out what they needed to do to be happy, healthy, enjoyable runners because they’ve been having problems. I mean, when we did a survey about what got people into the idea of minimalist footwear at all, the number one topic, it was somewhat broad, but basically pain and injury. It was, “I’ve been having these problems and I can’t solve it.” And the analogy I like to give is that the running shoe world, and it’s not just running shoes, but I’ll use that as an example, it’s sort of like, and the companies that make those shoes, it’s the boy who… Well let’s do it this way. In the Boy who Cried Wolf, the villagers eventually got smart and they stopped running every time the boy cried wolf. In the running shoe world, it’s the running shoe company that cried cushioning or arch support or motion control. And the problem is the villagers never got smart because the companies are really, really good at presenting physics improperly in a way that convinces them that this new thing they’re doing is awesome, even though they’ve never said, “Sorry about that crap we’ve been selling up until now. Here’s the new one, this one’s great.” So I think that was part of it.
Chris McDougall:
You know, it’s amazing too, Eric… I’m sorry Steven, were you –
Steven Sashen:
No, no, go ahead. Go ahead.
Chris McDougall:
So what I love is in almost any interview I’ve ever had over the years, people who want to challenge minimalism will come at me with like, “Well how do you know bare feet? And what’s the proof?” Like, “Wait a minute, when did your natural body part has to justify itself? Well how do you know your liver is really good at screening out your blood?” Maybe, no dude, if you going to add a prosthetic to your body, you have to prove it actually adds a benefit, it doesn’t detract. It’s amazing how the running shoe companies have reversed it to make you justify what your foot naturally does as opposed to make them justify what they’re trying to sell you.
Steven Sashen:
Again, it’s brilliant marketing that caters to a number of natural human tendencies. We like new things. We think that some new thing is always better. For a while we thought big companies were smart. This is a joke that I have at the end of my, I did two videos. One was, shit barefoot runners say, and the other, shit runners say to barefoot runners, part of the shit people say meme. And the end of the second one of what runners say to barefoot runners… Wait, I got to get a prop to do this. I go, “Oh, you’re telling me that big companies do things that knowingly hurt people?” But my half joke about that is, it’s a shame that running shoes don’t kill people. Because then we would have a Philip Morris-like Congressional trial, but they don’t. Now wait, so I got to back up a little bit and do two things. First of all, Chris and Eric. So Eric is often the quiet one and I’m going to do things to make that not be the case as much as I can. But between Chris and I, that’s tough because we are talkers and-
Eric Orton:
I just like to sit here and learn something.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, that’s not going to happen. But do me a favor actually. Because now, I am shocked. Wait, sorry, I got to do this. To your point that there was something in the air, I would say there was a little something in the air. And why I say that is, what did Born to Run sell, like 3 million copies?
Chris McDougall:
Yeah, yeah.
Steven Sashen:
If there was something really in the air, it would’ve been 30 million copies. And a lot of people read it just because they loved the adventure story. They loved your personal story of becoming a happy, healthy runner. It’s shocking to me the number of people who A, have read the book and never did anything with the information they got from it. And that’s where we’re going to talk about with Born to Run 2. But even more shocking, frankly, is the number of people who are customers of ours who I bump into, who are into the whole minimalist footwear idea, who have never heard of the book, which has been stunning to me. Everyone who reads it is like, “Wow, I love it.” People who are not Runners. Great adventure story. The science part is fascinating. I mean it’s just so well done. But it is, it’s an interesting thing about who has and hasn’t read it. Now Chris, or Eric, one of you will jump in, because Chris was the author of that book. But Eric, you were an important part of that book. So do you guys want to talk about that?
Eric Orton:
Yeah.
Chris McDougall:
I do have one thought before, Steve I think we should make this whole thing setting Eric up to talk and then never letting him talk.
Eric Orton:
But the thing is, I’m fine with that.
Steven Sashen:
I know that’s the problem. It’s like a running joke from Jimmy Kimmel where at the end he’s always bumping Matt Damon. But of course Matt Damon was never there. And then one time they bumped Matt Damon and then Matt Damon was there to argue about being bumped. So it was brilliant.
Chris McDougall:
I just want to say one thought, it’s funny because you just triggered a thought that I hadn’t had before. I loved Born to Run, but it was a venture into the unknown. I had never written anything like it. I had never experienced anything like it. And getting my arms around that story was very challenging and I was very happy that I could bring it in for landing. But in some ways I feel like it was an Apollo 13 kind of thing, luckily we had the sock, we got the thing in for a landing. But Born to Run 2, and especially because of the collaboration with Eric, I’ve also never collaborated with anyone before on a book. I feel like Eric, this is our masterpiece. I feel that Born To Run 2 is a superior book to Born to Run in the sense that there’s so much more knowledge and insight and maturity. Whereas Born to Run was, “Hey, here’s a crazy adventure. I think I learned a couple of things along the way.” This I feel like we really have a mastery of the information and mostly because I could bounce everything off of you like, “Here’s what I think.” And you could either say, “Yeah, you’re right,” or, “You’re way off.” So that’s for me, the collaboration with you created a book that was way better than any I’ve ever done before.
Steven Sashen:
Eric, this is your time to say something with that.
Eric Orton:
Yeah, I was going to say-
Chris McDougall:
I just want to add one more thing.
Eric Orton:
… you want me to speak but then you leave me speechless by you saying that. Although, so that’s awesome for you to say that. And I mean I’m still honored to this day to even be considered a part of this collaboration and it was just an amazing experience to work with you. And regardless of what you think, there still has to be a one before there’s a two. So I don’t know. And that goes into why we called it what we did, Born to Run 2, it’s a sequel, it’s a continuation. So in a lot of ways, maybe for us and for me, it’s just all one thing.
Steven Sashen:
So I’m stupid enough that I did not bring the copy of the book that you sent me. Do you guys have one handy? Just hold it up and show human beings. So now note the subtitle, the Ultimate Training Guide. I think that’s really important. And then the top part has Chris and Eric’s name on there. And this is the thing, I think that had you tried to do this one first, and of course you couldn’t have because we all learned so much in the last 13 years. But had you even tried, it would’ve been just another one of those books that was ostensibly a “barefoot running book” that would’ve gotten some attention but not the kind of attention that I think this one’s going to get because it is coming in on the heels, 13 years later, of the original book. And so I’m really interested in seeing what happens. For people who haven’t seen the book, when you do, first of all, it is gorgeous, just all the pictures in there. I mean it is a really beautiful book. You’re going to see it and go, it’s a paperback and it’s costing whatever the hell it’s costing, worth every penny just for the production value. Too bad Chris is leaving to go to the bathroom right now, I think that’s, I don’t know where he’s going.
Chris McDougall:
I went to get the full color copy.
Steven Sashen:
Ooh, two covers. Oh, there we go. Back it up.
Chris McDougall:
The ACUK cover.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, back it up, back it up.
Chris McDougall:
But little things like these kind of pictures. So-
Steven Sashen:
And it’s not just for the sake of having pretty pictures because the way the book is, well I want to talk about so many things, but here, why don’t you talk about the way the book is organized, the way it relates to the app. And then we’re going to come back… Oh look at that. Then we’re going to come back to, I want to talk more about, you and Eric and how you guys connected and what that’s turned into. But just, while we’re here, let’s talk about how this book is structured and what people are going to get from it and how the app plays into that.
Chris McDougall:
I’d sort of address the point that you brought first, why it looks the way it does. And this is a concept we had from the beginning before we even actually had a manuscript, was I think Eric and I both shared this idea of like, wow, we thought 13 years ago when Born to Run came out, it would kind of send this message that running is for everybody. Because what’s cool about the people that were down for that Born to Run race, it was a really weird collection that none of us had anything in common. And I’m pretty sure not even same genome at all. I’m not even a hundred percent sure we’re all mammals. You got Barefoot Ted, you got Scott Jurek, you got Eric and Lewis and Caballo Blanco, a weird collection.
And I always felt like the message of that book is, this is just a fun activity dude, to get out and have an adventure. And yet since then running has again reverted back to its sort of marketing mean of skinny blonde people striving to go as fast as they can. And so we had this idea like, “Man, we want this book to smack people in the face with a visual image that is colorful, it’s alive and it involves everybody.” And so we wanted gender fluid people and people with prosthetics and people of various ages and body types and complexions and colors on every single page. I wanted to pound this message through and it’s true, every single page, no matter who you look at, is somebody who looks more like your neighbor or your friend than somebody who’s posing for a Lululemon ad.
Steven Sashen:
And-
Chris McDougall:
And so we wanted to get-
Steven Sashen:
Well, so, but I want to address one other thing. While this is very much about running, is it, I’ll just ask it this way so you can say yes or no. Is this only for people who want to become runners or get better at running?
Chris McDougall:
Well, I’ll answer that by telling you why I’m so annoyed that I didn’t think of calling it the movement movement.
Steven Sashen:
You’re not going to let that go.
Chris McDougall:
Because… It’s bugging me man, it’s really good and I promise I will lateral the ball to Eric after this. But Eric’s point from the beginning is that running is athleticism. What caught his imagination about this is, these aren’t great runners. These are great athletes who can use their athleticism to run long distances, but the athleticism allows them to be multi-movement, multi-directional people who can do squats and jump and crawl and climb. And that all around mobility is what allows them to then flow across the landscape. But that’s been Erics message to me from the beginning, “Dude, I’m not going to make you into a good runner, I’m going to make you into a good athlete. And what you do with it after that is your own business.” Pick it up dude.
Eric Orton:
All right, so to answer your question Steven, I got a call from an 84 year old woman in New York to say, “I can’t wait to start trying these recipes.” So to answer your question, regardless that it was my mother.
Steven Sashen:
That’s surprising because normally mothers are-
Eric Orton:
It’s got some great recipes in. So hopefully the person who maybe is not the runner who wants to try all the great recipes ultimately reads the book and wants to become a runner.
Steven Sashen:
And I want to highlight that that’s the way the book is structured is with these, this is not just informational, this is basically every chapter is a little something that you can do, a little nibble of that recipe where you can experiment and see what your body does and see how it responds. And if you don’t think you ever want to run, that’s fine. You might find some things in there that you like doing anyway, but there’s a high probability at one point you’re going to go, “Oh, let’s see what happens if I run based on all this.” And if you are a runner, you might think some of these things are basic and I would argue that you’re probably wrong, or you might be right. But there’s always, there’s definitely going to be things that you find where you go, “Oh, let me try that and see what that does.” And that’s the part that’s really interesting. And there is an app that goes with it, please fill in the blank.
Eric Orton:
So the app is just, in this world that we live in now, is just a digital support system for the book itself. So once you get the book, you have a QR code to give you the instructions to download the app and you can put it on your phone and you can have the 90 day program with all the support videos to go along with it, along with you every day.
Steven Sashen:
And it’s very, very cool. So you’re going to like that too. So I want to back up now in a couple different ways. So I’m going to give this one to Eric for you to start the conversation. So again, you were not a co-author of Born to Run, but you were notably featured in there. Say more about that and how you guys can, basically tell people who the hell you are because you’re the one coming from behind the curtain, out of the shadows and now getting visible in a way that I think you should have ages ago. But say something more about who you are, what you do, and then how you connected with the other guy over there.
Eric Orton:
Yeah, so I live in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, but I actually spent 11 years in Denver and quite a bit of time up your way when I… All through the nineties I competed in triathlons and mountain races. So I was riding up left hand Canyon Road in Boulder and up the ward and all around the places that you can’t bike anymore because of the sprawl. So then I was dabbling in coaching while I was director of fitness at the University of Colorado Health Science Center. And that kind of just piqued my interest about maybe, possibly making this a career. And at that point I was one of a handful of guys and gals that were spearheading the online coaching world. Where back in the late nineties, we were the first to have coaching websites and to really kind of give permission for the everyday athlete that having an online coach was an okay thing.
And that really kind of got me thinking about, “Hey, this could be a career.” My wife and I decided to move to Jackson Hole and that’s when I went full-time coaching and that was 2001. And I’ve been coaching, operating my online business ever since full time. And then in 2005, Chris and I crossed paths. He was commissioned to do an article for me for Men’s Journal on my coaching and training up here in Jackson. And we actually had to meet in Denver because we needed a non-snowy scene for a summer issue, but it was in February, I think maybe it was March. But anyway, that was right when he got back from the Copper Canyon the first time. And so we met in Denver to do this two day kind of training piece for this magazine. And all we wanted to do was talk about his experience meeting the Tamar Indians and going down to the Copper Canyon. And after day one of that two days, it was quite apparent to me that, here’s a guy who really wants to run and can’t. So I ripped up the script for day two and we spent all that Sunday in Denver City Park working on Chris’s running. And then that eventually led to the idea of, “Hey, maybe he could go down to the Copper Canyon again and do the 50 mile race.” And they say that’s how it all kind of got rolling.
Steven Sashen:
The meeting story from all couples is different no matter who you talk to. So let’s turn to the other side of the couple and hear your version of that.
Chris McDougall:
I think the only thing that I would add to it is my extreme skepticism and doubt and surrender. I was over the running thing, I tried it and I was getting hurt a lot and nobody enjoys being looked in the face and eyed up and down by a doctor and told, “You don’t have the body to do something.” And I heard this all the time, and I was seeing top guys, I was seeing top sports therapists. Because Philadelphia, where I was living, has a lot of pro sports teams. So a lot of sports medicine doctors and I would go see them say, “Oh listen, I’m having this pain in my heel.” And they’re like, “Yeah, why are you running? You’re 240 pounds, you’re 6’5″, buy a bike, get in a pool.” And so, I don’t think you realize what that kind of message sets into your subconscious. It tells you that you’re not good enough to do this.
And so I didn’t want it, I didn’t want the pain and I didn’t want the embarrassment, so I just stopped. I gave up on it. So I’m having this conversation with him and for me it’s coming at him from a perspective of, “You can say whatever you want, I’m not doing this and if I do it’s not going to work.” But he did one thing that day was we were in city park and he said, “Hey, let’s just do this right? Take your shoes off, let’s just jog around the grassy area a little bit.” I’m like, “Whatever. Okay, I’ll do this.” And then he goes, “Hey, just sprint for 30 seconds.” And I didn’t even know how to process that because I had not sprinted, sprinting is a movement that I had not done in maybe 15 years. Who sprints out of high school? You don’t sprint for any reason.
So exactly, right. And look at you, you’re not the example of holding up to the general population. I mean like this guy. So I had to sprint and I flamed out. I couldn’t sprint for 30 seconds because I couldn’t pace it. After 20 seconds I’m sucking air, but the next time I did, oh hey, I timed it so I could actually sprint for 30 seconds and I didn’t pull a hamstring. That little bit of playful movement was so invigorating and somehow in my mind I’m thinking to myself, A, this dude might be on something and B, whatever we just did, I would like to do it again. He didn’t have to tell me, he didn’t have to set out a schedule. It was such a glow through my system that I didn’t have to feel like I have to do it because I ate too much food or I ought do it for any reason. There was no have to or should. It was like, I want to do this again.
Steven Sashen:
It’s funny, and not haha funny, funny strange that I remember during the pandemic, there was one high school track out on the east side of town that the neighborhood is predominantly Hispanic. And so I’d go to the track to work out and it was all families hanging out. So all the guys of every age were playing soccer, all the moms were making food and all the little kids were running around the track and they all, A, had perfect form. Sometimes they were wearing shoes, most of the time they weren’t. And they had this look on their face that, I think psychologists call it smiling. They were just happy, they ran until they were done laughing and then they’d sit down, then they’d get back up a minute later and do it again. And it was just for fun, often holding hands with each other as they did it. I mean, it was just flat out play.
And that’s the thing that I think people have forgotten. Not only that that’s possible when you’re running, but that that’s a guidepost. That’s the thing to aspire to. And there’s no reason you can’t do that. I know I told you actually, when I teach people to run, we’ll go out into a park, take off their shoes, and I go, “Just watch how really little kids, toddlers when they’re just learning to, they’ve just gotten past walking and they’re starting to figure out running.” Their heads are ginormous. And so they kind of lean their head and that sets their balance off. And then they have to try to catch up to their head, which they can never do. And then they try and their head goes the other way. And I go, “Just let your arms kind of flail, don’t worry about your arms. And just let your head lead and just pick it in different directions and do it until you don’t care that somebody might be watching.” Because FYI, no one’s watching.
And if they are, they don’t know who you are. And if they do know who you are, they’re going to want to join anyway. So get over the self-consciousness and then just do it till you’re having fun. And it only takes a few minutes till people just start having fun and they don’t care about what’s happening around them. And then you can kind of take that weird thing of, let your head lead and just don’t let it lead quite so much or let it lead in one direction and slowly another instead of just careening you from one side to the other. And then suddenly people are running and having a good time. And somewhere they just forgot that that’s doable. And just that invitation is can be the door that opens to allow so many other things.
Chris McDougall:
That’s been something that was so instrumental in the exercises that Eric came up with because they trick people into having fun before they realize it. But you’re right though, if you tell somebody, “Hey, just run until your arms flop around,” they can’t do that because there has to be a right way and you’re self conscious. But Eric does a couple things, just a simple one of pogoing, just pogoing and bouncing in place. And when you tell someone to do it, they’re going to be wonder if they’re doing it right, they’ll be asking you a million questions and he’ll just say, “Just bounce dude. Just bounce and you’ll figure it out.” And what you see is this self concern and self doubt just start to fade from their faces and then the smile creeps in and they’re having fun and then they’re bouncing from side to side. When we do this rock lobster drill where we tell people run in place barefoot to the song of Rock Lobster, they resist, they resist, then they start to do it and there’s a freaking dance party within two minutes. But that’s the beauty of it. Once you get people to stop thinking about how they ought to do it and just shake it out, then suddenly that funs back.
Steven Sashen:
I’ve got to give you a totally semi-unrelated tangential story, I’ll abbreviate it dramatically. I was at a workshopy thing that there was a lot of middle aged women who happened to be there. And at the end of the day, sometimes we have a little dance party and they’d play whatever, and I put on Baby’s Got Back. And so if you don’t know it’s like, “I like big butts on a cannot lie.” Anyway-
Chris McDougall:
But I cannot lie.
Steven Sashen:
… the song starts and these women are aghast and within another 30 seconds they are shaking it. So sometimes you got to trick people to get them in.
Eric Orton:
Yep.
Chris McDougall:
Eric, check out the beats per minute on that one.
Steven Sashen:
Oh yeah.
Eric Orton:
I will, I will.
Steven Sashen:
That’d be a good one.
Chris McDougall:
You got to find out whether that’s a running and play song. That would be perfect.
Steven Sashen:
That would be really, really fun. So I want to dive into some, I was going to ask some things about Born to Run, actually, I want to ask a couple questions about the original book and then yeah, whatever. So when did it actually come out?
Chris McDougall:
2009.
Steven Sashen:
Beginning of?
Chris McDougall:
May, May 2009.
Eric Orton:
May 5th.
Steven Sashen:
When did it really start to take off
Chris McDougall:
End of that summer. So it came out in May. It was pretty much universally ignored, or so I thought, it was not reviewed, it was not publicized, it was not on TV or anything, but it started to gain a little traction. I was going around doing personal appearances. I would show up at 10Ks or at running clubs or running shoe stores, and say, “Hey, I got this book and if I can just talk to you for five minutes.” So I was basically selling out of the back of my car for a few months, but it started to get a little bit of word of mouth. And then the big sort of skyrocket was when out of the blue, got invited on the Daily Show back when, what’s the name of the host of the Daily Show? His name slipped my mind.
Eric Orton:
John.
Steven Sashen:
Well, it was John Stewart back then.
Chris McDougall:
John Stewart. And then at that moment, pow, it took off. But even still, even after, it had a glow. But again, it was never getting publicity. To this day, I’ve never been on a major NPR program or barely on any kind of television programs. It never gets mainstream publicity, but the word of mouth and kind of networking among runners and other people has kept it alive for a long time.
Steven Sashen:
And so I got three related questions. So what was the part, since the book came out, what’s been the most happy making, most gratifying thing that’s happened from your perspective? And you can both answer this if you like.
Chris McDougall:
Why don’t you start, Eric, I got to think about this.
Eric Orton:
Yeah, that’s super easy. It’s getting all the emails that essentially look at Chris and saying, “Hey, I’m just like Chris, thanks for the giving us hope and the confidence that we can all be runners in how we want to become.” And that’s what I really like about Born To Run 2 of how Chris opened Born to Run 2, of this came full circle for him is that so many people were inspired by Chris. And here’s someone who came in last in the race and he inspired millions. I think that’s the coolest thing in the world.
Steven Sashen:
Chris?
Chris McDougall:
I think there’s two things. One is a very personal one, now that our friend Micah True has passed, he was a very problematic guy to be friends with because he’s unfriendly. But I look back and so much of what he said and lived, was it, like exactly what I’m trying to say. Well, that guy was doing it in every aspect of his life. And to have been able to capture that story of a guy who really should have been invisible, he should have been down there in the canyon unnoticed until the day he drew his last breath-
Steven Sashen:
And he would’ve been thrilled at that.
Chris McDougall:
… his story never.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Chris McDougall:
Pretty much. There’s something out there. He knew he was on something, he kind of wanted to spread the word yet he didn’t want to talk to anybody long enough to actually tell them the story. Eric and I went to Leadville once, when I was training for the Leadville Trail 100 and we invite, “Hey Micah, do you want to come train with us at Leadville?” And we actually had a ball with him. So me, Eric, and Micah were out running trails all day. He was so fun, so upbeat. He was like a golden retriever off the leash. And yet we come back into town and we go out for pizza and someone come up him, “Hey, are you Micah?” He’d give this look like, “Yeah.” “I heard you got a race.” “Yeah, yeah, you can find it online.” I’m like, “Dude, you’re the worst self promoter. You’re so fucking rude.” So on a certain individual basis, he was adorable, but in a group, in a public setting, he was just miserable. So I think he would’ve liked for his story to be out there, but he did not want to be the vehicle. And so the fact that we were able to get that, like wow, we got that story and now the world knows it, it was something I think really special.
Steven Sashen:
Well, this is a related question perhaps, and if you don’t have a different answer for this, I will understand, but what’s been the most surprising thing since the original book? I have one in my head.
Eric Orton:
That it’s taken 13 years to have a freaking movie or TV show made about it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, that’s a good one. Wait, we’re going to come back to that. And Chris, your answer first.
Chris McDougall:
Well, my big surprise was it ever turned into the Barefoot Running book. I think I’ve told you, Steven, that was the chapter I was going to take out the book. I was very-
Steven Sashen:
I forgot about that.
Chris McDougall:
Have I not told you that?
Steven Sashen:
No, you did. I just totally forgot.
Chris McDougall:
I was so on the fence. I’m like, “I don’t know.” And I literally would have a manuscript draft and I would take the chapter out and I’d read it and put it back, in and out, like packing socks in a suitcase. And finally in the end, and the reason why, there are two reasons why I was going to take it out. Number one was stylistically it is the only chapter that is not narrative, it’s not storytelling, it is essayish. And I really felt hesitant about breaking the flow of the adventure like, “Hey, let’s all stop and look at the whiteboard for a minute.” But the second reason why was because once you start to do that research and you start to talk to people about minimalism, to me the evidence was so overwhelming. This is so fucking obvious, why am I putting? And right after you spent two years working on a book, after two years of being immersed in that world, I thought everybody must know this by now. I just assume that the word is already spread outside of my knowledge. And so I thought it’s too obvious and it disrupts the flow. And then I thought the last minute I’m like, “Maybe just in case I should leave this in.” So that was a surprise that it became really the identifying brand of the book.
Steven Sashen:
It is kind of funny that people really think of it as a book about barefoot running, which it’s far from. But I would contend, I mean I’m glad you got that chapter in because I thought my experience of that was, it was kind of a good break at that time. What I love about the book is because there’s your personal story, there’s the Tarahumara story, there’s the race story. I mean there’s like all these things that kind of weave in, it was just a nice little respite where you get to go, “Huh,” and think about it in a slightly different way. So it’s a good rhythmical change. I’m going to answer the question for me, the biggest thing that surprised me is I think that book was really catalytic in creating the whole ultra running community and the ultra running world and the interest in doing marathon and beyond because of, I don’t think most people knew about the Leadville 100. I don’t think people, clearly, many people didn’t know about the Tarahumara as well. So it just opened people’s minds and it made it a thing.
Now to that point, I’m actually going to use this to lead into the next question. The next question, but don’t answer it yet, is what’s the most disappointing thing since the book? And for me, the most disappointing thing is that it turned ultras into the thing that you need to be able to do and made that this whole competitive something thing instead of the communal fun, whatever way people used to approach that before. Where it just didn’t have that, it took what was for people a personal challenge into a marathon and then gave them yet another thing where they’re often pushing themselves way beyond the point of having fun. So that’s my disappointing thing. And that’s not just coming because I’m a sprinter, but it’s just like when I see the way people are approaching ultras, it’s with a certain kind of, “I’ve got to do it,” that definitely looks like they’re not enjoying the process, knowing that running a 50 mile or 50K or 100 mile or 24 hour, any of those things, it’s going to suck at certain points regardless. But there’s different ways of approaching that. There’s different ways of handling the suck factor.
Eric Orton:
Yeah, for me, I think in one hand it was the barefoot thing because I’ve encountered so many people that created a mindset in their mind, of what Born to Run was. And they thought it was all about barefoot because I have, all the time people come up to me and say, “Oh, I finally read Born to Run and it was a great book.” And I’m like, “Duh.” And so they completely had this image of what it was about because it became such a barefoot conversation that it’s just so much more than that obviously. And even though the Barefoot was a good thing, I think it was also a detriment to maybe having it go even further.
Steven Sashen:
Mr. McDougall.
Chris McDougall:
See this? See this?
Steven Sashen:
Yes, that is a bottle with water in it, with vodka.
Chris McDougall:
It’s half full.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, hold on, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Wait. I’m assuming it’s water, could be vodka.
Chris McDougall:
That’s right. That’s why this things coming more and more animated every minute. I got to say that I am still so stunned by the happy reaction to the book and all the good ripples in every direction that I can’t say there’s anything disappointing. And if I do, I got to check myself and remind myself, “Hey, a lot of good…” Here, let me give you a for instance. So Micah’s dream was to create this buffer zone down the Copper Canyons where the Tarahumara would get the attention and respect they would deserve as true curators of this amazing ability, plus these gentle people who sort of solve a lot of life’s problems, that they have outstanding health and healthy diet and they’re nonviolent. But then a couple years later, cartel violence sort of intruded around Urique and the race had to be canceled.
But yet since then, that Urique race has spread and grown. And now there’s a second race on another part of the Copper Canyons. And so I can say, “Hey, I’m disappointed that Caballo never saw his vision of a UN buffer zone around the community. On the other hand, it is still spreading. It’s a work in progress. So I would like to see things happen faster, but the fact that they’re happening, to me, is a good sign. So I got to say I’m still thrilled beyond belief that this weird story, when you work on the book, you sit by yourself with an idea and you don’t know if any sentence makes sense. You don’t know if you sound ridiculous, you don’t know if anyone’s going to read this thing. And to be now 13 years later and have people still picking up for the first time, that’s a supercharge man.
Steven Sashen:
It’s pretty cool. It’s a good one. Have you ever, there’s a writer that I-
Chris McDougall:
I’ll say, cheers to that. Back to the gin and tonic.
Steven Sashen:
Gin and tonic. There’s a writer that I know who, he said his fantasy, he’ll know he’s famous if he’s sitting on an airplane and someone who doesn’t know who he is pulls out one of his books and starts reading it. He said, “Instead, one time I’m on an airplane, I’m in the middle seat and there’s someone reading the pro OJ book on one side and the anti OJ book on the other side.” He goes, “That’s the closest I’ve come and that had nothing to do with me but it was too brilliant.” But it actually reminds me, one of the other things that sort of disappoints me personally and professionally and intellectually since the book came out, is that whenever people bring up the conversation about natural movement, about barefoot running, about minimalist footwear, et cetera, anytime there’s a mainstream article or even in bunch of podcasts, they try to present the information as if both “sides” of the argument are somehow equal.
And there’s a variation on that, early on, maybe early 2010, I was at a panel discussion here in Boulder, a bunch of physical therapists and running coaches and whatnot, a few hundred people in the audience. And what I could tell is most of the people on the panel had clearly never taken off their shoes, they were just making up stories about what was going on. And finally I just said, “Can anyone here just raise your hand if you’ve run at least a mile on pavement?” And I was the only hand that went up and I’m a sprinter, I don’t even running a mile. So I said, “If you haven’t done that, you don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’re presenting information as if your info, which is totally coming out of opinions, is equivalent to people who had experience and who’ve done these things that you say other normal humans can’t do. It’s going to take years till you could do it. You got to have the right body type.”
I mean all the stuff that we had demonstrably seen was completely false. And that still goes on to this day. So there’ll be some article featuring our various research friends and they’ll have someone on the other side who’s just got an opinion that’s not based on anything. Recently, I did a pitch for investors and I said, “Look, before I can tell you what makes Xero Shoes life changing, I got to show you what’s wrong with modern athletic shoes. And some of you are going to disagree with what I’m going to say, but you got to understand two things. One, I’m one of the leading experts on the planet about this stuff. And the other is, where’d you get that belief?” Because if you track it back to the person who told you then who told them and go back far enough, it’s going to be a running shoe company that taught some kid at a store what to say and you believed it because they had a great misuse of physics in their little experiment about what it is or misuse of how cognitive psychology works.
But there’s no proof for what they do. In fact, every part of the modern athletic shoe, when I show it to you and talk about it and talk about the problems, you’re going to go, “Oh, that makes sense.” And you’re going to see that there’s not one thing in that shoe that makes sense. And yet some of you are still going to want to believe that that’s the better option. And that blows my, I mean, I understand it. I was a cognitive psych major, I get how minds work in this regard, but it still just blows me away that what’s so screamingly obvious is still being presented. Somebody said to me once, they said, “You’re going to, you barefoot guys, you think that if someone gets injured when they’re running barefoot, it’s just because they have bad form.” And I went, “Yeah.”
Chris McDougall:
And your point is? Hey, while you guys are talking, I want to go get a little visual aid, so hang on.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, visual aid. Okay then Eric, wait, then you start talking about, to the extent that you have the info, and we’ll fill in Chris in a bit, there have been a lot of movements, if we can do it that way, for turning the original book into a TV show or a movie. Do you want to talk about that? I mean, each of you can talk about what did or didn’t happen with that and where that may be going, if you want to tease that.
Eric Orton:
Yeah, I’ll start with the past history. So I think it was 2010, we got wind of a possible movie that was going to be directed by Peter Sarsgaard his… I can see if I can get this right, his brother-in-law is Jake Gyllenhaal. And so long story short, all of a sudden Chris and I are in Leadville with Jake and Peter learning how to film a race and running all around the mountains of Leadville with those guys for a couple days and hit it off and had a great time and was like, “Wow, this is going to be pretty epic.” Met Peter in Brooklyn and just kind of this cool little circle of what was eventually going to be this movie. Well, Chris could take it from here, but it all fell apart. And Chris, where are we at?
Chris McDougall:
Well, it’s kind of interesting to see how the Hollywood sausage making takes place because what would happen is, three or four different screenwriters would be commissioned to do a script. And what they kept doing was taking the story of Born to Run and transforming it into their own story of middle-aged insecurity and mid-age crisis. And so the story kept turning into basically a 90 minute shouting match between me and Micah, with a race at the end. It was not entertaining and it was unfilmable, that happened again and again. But anyway, luckily one of the unexpected benefits was someone who read Born to Run, a guy named Chris Bender, a producer who’s done films like The Hangover and Mulan and a bunch of other things. He became a client of Eric’s. So I guess he was up at one of your training camps, Eric right? In Jackson Hole.
Eric Orton:
Yeah.
Chris McDougall:
And he said, “Hey, by the way, what’s going on with Born to Run?” And Eric’s like, “Yeah, go on a call Chris.” And he calls me out of the blue and it turns out the rights had just reverted back to me. So it was a rare opportunity to actually put the book in the hands of someone who’s influential who gets it. And so that’s where it is right now. So the idea is they are hoping to turn it into an eight part television series, a limited series. And literally today, at this moment it is out to studios for thumbs up, thumbs down. They got to at six different studios.
Steven Sashen:
Fingers crossed. And look, if it doesn’t pan out, we can talk about the Born to Run project, which I think is a perfect TV show concept as well. So if this doesn’t pan out, you got something in your back pocket that I would argue might even be even better. But I want to see if you can confirm a story that I heard. So when you’re up at Leadville, the story that I heard, I’ll start it and you can finish it if you know what I’m talking about, is that Jake and Peter, in particular Jake, were sort of happy that they were in a community that was so into what they were doing, that these Hollywood celebrities weren’t being noticed and recognized. Am I on to the beginning of this?
Eric Orton:
Yes.
Chris McDougall:
You are. And it was a really, yeah, it was a great moment. So we’re up there for three or four days and they were actually camping out. I had a little cabin down by the turnaround point of the race force, but these guys were camped out in the woods, but this hurricane blew through. And so they’re sort of huddled in the rain miserably. And they would show up at race events and Jake had a big old beard on and sunglasses and a hat and they were just coming out the woods and it looked like they just came out the woods. Nobody noticed them, nobody cared. And after a day or two, you can just start to see the, well the hat comes off, the sunglasses come off, he’s no longer ducking his head down, his head’s up. Nobody knows, nobody cares.
And at one point, actually during the race, Jake and I are standing at the 40 mile part and he’s standing out in the sun and he actually got his shirt off, enjoying the sunshine and he goes, “Ah man, it is so nice to be here. Nobody’s paying any attention. I can just be myself. I don’t have to worry about cameras.” At that moment we see these two people do a double take and look at it some point and they’re digging in their bags for something and they pull out a camera and they come hustling over. And Jake just kind of sighs, he’s like, “Well, I spoke to the soon.” And they come up to us and they hand the camera to Jake and they say, “Would you take a picture of us with Chris McDougall?” I said, “Dude, only in this town on this day am I a bigger draw than you.” But he loved it. He’s just like, “Hey,” he took like 75 frames. He’s like reposing us and repositioning us.
Steven Sashen:
Oh man.
Chris McDougall:
Yeah. Hey, I got to show you my visual aid. Oh, here we go. So you’re talking about the sports shoe market, right? And how it’s bigger, bigger, bigger. The most valuable professional athlete during his era was Kobe Bryant. And Kobe Bryant insisted, against a lot of opposition from Nike, “I want to lower shoe, I want to lower shoe.” And he got the shoe he wanted by right around the manifestation of the Kobe 7, Kobe 8 or so. He was getting pretty low to the ground, by the Kobe 11, it is the lowest slung, most minimal basketball shoe on the planet. This is a pair of Kobe 11. Stephen, you got to say that is not too far from something you would have on your own shelf, right?
Steven Sashen:
No. Well here, in fact, I saw the videos where he was being interviewed and talking about what he thought a great basketball show would be, and he was describing that except the one problem, hold it up this way so people can see this part. That’s the only thing that’s still completely screwed up is, I mean, here’s the joke. There are a lot of basketball players who have feet that are shaped like that pointy toe box because they’ve been shoving their feet into pointy toe boxes. But that’s not the way it’s supposed to be.
But otherwise, yeah, I mean Irene Davis has a great line, she always says to, whenever we’re on panel discussions or whatnot, and there’s some guy from Adidas and Brooks, and yes, I said Adidas to be pretentious because I’m in the shoe business and that’s the way you say it. Or if you’re really pretentious, and people you can use this at dinner parties, just refer to it as Adi. That’s the way people in the industry do it. So anyway, point being is that, what was the point? Oh, Irene will say to these guys from big shoe companies, “So in the seventies, we were playing basketball in Chuck Taylors, and people weren’t getting the kind of injuries, the severity of injuries, the number of injuries that we’re getting now. So what problem were you trying to solve and why didn’t it work?” And there’s dead silence in response. So yeah, that’s not too far off.
Chris McDougall:
So I’ll show you, this is my personal pair. They are a size 14 because I am an abnormally large human being. I have to tell you, the toe box, which looks narrow, is actually extraordinarily forgiving. So I have a pretty wide foot and this really does not feel binding.
Steven Sashen:
So you’re showing my favorite thing, which is when people say, “Well, is this shoe wide enough for me?” I say, “How the hell am I supposed to know?” They go, “Well, I’m a two double E, I’m a three,” whatever the hell they say, I go, “No, you’re missing the point.” Footwear sizing in the toe, there’s two things about that. One is it’s a three dimensional thing. Three dimensional shoes, three dimensional foot. If your foot is wide but low, you might stretch it out sideways. If your foot is narrow but high, you might stretch it out vertically. Either of those could work. So you can’t take a two dimensional measurement and apply it to a three dimensional thing. But I would still argue, even though it’s stretching in that point where you’re showing around the ball of your foot, the pointy thing that happens after that is still, I would argue problematic just because of-
Chris McDougall:
Yeah, although I’ll say being a user not a professional, I find this an extraordinarily comfortable shoe, to the point of, look at this.
Steven Sashen:
Oh yeah.
Chris McDougall:
I’ve now blown these things out playing on hard top outdoor surfaces. I’m 60 years old, play basketball twice a week to the point where I’ve now destroyed these things. If the technology that’s supposed to save me worked, these would not work for me. I am a 60 year old dude with a gigantic body and hopefully already, you can see where they’re actually worn out too. Down here, all here. So even on a basketball court, when I can’t focus on my running form, it’s still locked in.
Steven Sashen:
Well I’ll say something. So we got a call from, first of all, we’re doing a bunch of stuff with the NBA right now and hopefully we’ll have something fun to play with. But we got a call years ago from a WNBA player who said, “I’ve been wearing your shoes and sandals off the court and my feet and ankles had become indestructible, I wish you had a basketball shoe.” Well, we had taken our first hiking boot and someone said, “This is just like a basketball shoe, it’s like an old Chuck Taylor.” And so Dennis, our chief product officer who used to work at Converse, kind of stripped it down and made a basketball shoe… Hold that thought.
And so we had made something and we sent it to her and it wasn’t quite the right size. So she said, “I can’t wear it because it’s not quite the right size. Doesn’t work for me except I couldn’t sprain my ankle on these if you paid me to.” And the one thing she commented on though, and it may come to your point of when you showed that there was wear on the heel as well as under that first met head is that she said, I like not having padding in general, but I’m coming down from a rebound, I don’t have that much control and I need something to take care of me if I’m coming down from a rebound on some weird ass part of my foot.” And so this is a project that we are very actively engaged in and which will be super, super fun. And so we’re working that problem. We’ll talk, I know a guy who knows a guy, he’ll hook you up.
Chris McDougall:
But I think it’s really important though because this idea, people say, “Well it’s hard to learn running form, or you got to concentrate on it,” once you get it, like I said, in the middle of the game, I’m still landing the way I want to. I’m still running down a basketball court at full blast in traffic the same way I would if I was out running on a trail. I do have a question though. Could this be resoled with a Xero sole?
Steven Sashen:
Oh, blewy.
Chris McDougall:
This is blown out now.
Steven Sashen:
Maybe.
Chris McDougall:
Is it possible, like sort of-
Steven Sashen:
Maybe, I don’t know. We’d have to take a look at it. We’ll have to see. I can see some-
Chris McDougall:
I’m just wondering.
Steven Sashen:
Maybe, maybe.
Chris McDougall:
If I could turn this into a Frankenshoe with a Kobe upper and a Xero sole. Because I hate to throw these, I’m not going to throw these away-
Steven Sashen:
Oh, don’t throw them out.
Chris McDougall:
… but obviously I’m not going to play in them anymore. Yeah. So anyway, a project there.
Steven Sashen:
A couple of options. Next time you’re out here, bring it out. We’ll take a look with our product guys. So moving on. So movie things. Oh, so let’s talk about, what, is it now officially the Born to Run project?
Chris McDougall:
I mean, Operation Rerun, that one?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, Alexa told me-
Chris McDougall:
Or the webinar series?
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s, we’re doing that. Oh, no, no. Let’s leave that for… Okay, well here, we’ll tease that. So there’s a couple things going on. So first things first, I got to back up to the very beginning. Born to Run 2 is coming out in the US on December 6th. So if you’re listening to this after that, go find it in your local bookstore or you’ll be able to find it at xeroshoes.com and maybe xeroshoes.eu. I’m not sure. But along with that, we are, all three of us, doing a webinar series that’s the Born to Run project. Is that what that’s being called? I can’t keep these things in my head. What are we calling that?
Chris McDougall:
Well, we’re looking at either the Born to Run Reboot or the Born to Run Method.
Steven Sashen:
Ooh. I like-
Chris McDougall:
What do you think?
Steven Sashen:
I’ll tell why I like Reboot. This is the same argument that I had with… Come on. Man, I hate it when my brain just turns off, with Nick Romanoff, who’s got Pose Method. And I said to Nick, the problem with calling it Pose Method is it makes people think, “Oh, I have to learn something to do, but why would I need to learn a thing? I know how to run, I’ve got legs.” So if you call it Method, then you’re setting yourself up against other people in a way and against people’s own brain. So this is my advice, do what the hell you want with it. But I’d go for, I like reboot. I think that’s a fun one. And there’s a fun pun in there too. So let’s talk… Well here, you can talk about that and then we’ll talk about Operation Rerun.
Chris McDougall:
Okay, Eric, you were right. Reboot is the way to go.
Steven Sashen:
High five, Mr. Orton.
Chris McDougall:
I suggested, I’m like, yeah, but this is always the way. Let me play with it. And then I’m like, “I should’ve just left it alone from the beginning.”
Steven Sashen:
So now you’re two for two for losing on good names.
Chris McDougall:
Oh, I could have been three for three, because I didn’t want to name the book Born to Run. I was against that title.
Steven Sashen:
What were you going to call it?
Chris McDougall:
Didn’t like it at all. Oh, dude, you don’t even want to know.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, I totally want to know.
Chris McDougall:
I put Born to Run in there as a placeholder. So when I wrote a proposal and we’re going to take it out to publishers and my book agent’s wife said, “Hey, why don’t you just call it Born and Run?” I’m like, “Well, whatever. I got to know other title. Let’s just stick Born and Run on there as a placeholder while we put it out there to publishers as a proposal.” And then the book was contracted and I spent two years working on it. And then I turned it in with a whole list of alternate titles, which are very long and complicated. And my editors like, “What’s this? You have a title.” I go, “No, no, no, no. It’s too obvious. It’s too boring.” He’s like, “Boring’s good. Memorables good. Three words are good. It’s Born to Run idiot, shut up.” So I never liked it and I rebelled against it, but I get the logic of it now. I’m glad I went 0 for 3 on titles.
Steven Sashen:
All right. You know, you got to know where your strengths are.
Chris McDougall:
Yeah, it ain’t that.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, so let’s do the Born to Run Reboot first, then we’ll do Operation Rerun. Eric, you start.
Eric Orton:
Yeah. So Born to Run Reboot is going to be, I don’t think we’ve condensed it or know how many episodes yet, but it’s going to be a webinar, a Xero Shoe webinar, that the first episode will be bringing people in from Born to Run and how Born to Run 2 came about, what Born to Run 2 is all about, in a general sense. And then episode two then will begin with really attacking the part of the Free Seven in the book. The Free Seven are the pillars of the ultimate training guide in the book. And so the first of those we’re going to mesh food and footwear together and how similar they actually are.
Steven Sashen:
So yeah, the point that we don’t know how long this is going to go, it’s going to be, are we doing it weekly? Are we doing it monthly? I can’t remember what the-
Eric Orton:
Monthly.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, so it’s going to be a monthly webinar series. Not going to cost anything, but it’s going to, and part of it’s going to be interactive, so you’ll be able to talk to Chris and Eric and get questions answered, et cetera. But we just want to give people an opportunity to experience this, either before they’ve gotten the book, to inspire them to go grab it and play with it or afterwards to really look at how things are getting implemented. Which brings me to the implementation part, brings me to operation reboot. By the way, this is the part that I think would make a killer television show.
Eric Orton:
Yeah. Operation Rerun.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, rerun. Sorry, sorry.
Eric Orton:
Yeah. So I mean the whole idea behind Operation Rerun is really looking at taking some select runners who maybe need a reboot, similar to Chris for Born to Run, or just haven’t been able to put their running together. And we kind of just take them as a project. And really that’s where the project rerun comes from of really taking a 30 day condensed period of time to get them back on the runway where they can take their running in any direction they want to take it.
Steven Sashen:
When I talk to people about this idea, I say, “If this were a TV show, it’s like The Biggest Loser Goes Running.” And I think what I love about that idea, and this is why I’m going to keep pushing you guys to do it, is that it brings this whole idea of natural movement of going out and having fun of doing it in a way that fits the way you work, down to a level where, again, it just makes it really accessible for anybody. I mean, one of the things about running, and we haven’t talked about this at all, is that… Or I’ll say it this way, my favorite thing about track and field, as a track and field athlete, is that you discover that not everyone’s the same. And I know that sounds really stupid, but the sprinters are a whole different world than the milers and a whole different world than the 5K guys and a whole different world than the 10K guys, and I mean, it really is an opportunity to find your own thing because you got to compete in a specific race at a specific distance or a field event.
And I think a lot of people don’t give themself the opportunity to find that thing that’s the way it works for them when they’re not in that kind of confined or contained ecosystem where different races have different lengths. And one of the things that I like about the whole of Operation Rerun is it does give people, in addition to just taking someone from wherever they are to 30 years later, getting them as good as they can be, it has the opportunity to get people to realize, there’s a way in for everybody if you want to take it. And again, it’s not onerous, it’s not yet another self-improvement project. It’s not a thing to beat yourself up with. It’s a thing you do as just sort of an expression of being a living human being that can be enjoyable in the way you want it.
Now that said, for me, one of the reasons that I love competitive sprinting is I like competing. So there’s not a whole lot of reason to train as a sprinter unless you’re going to enter a race. Because it’s really hard, especially at 60. But when there’s a race, I find that fun. When there’s some big muscley guy next to me, because everyone’s bigger and musclier than I am, at the beginning of a race and they go, “Hey, good luck. Have a good race.” And they’re all intense. And I go, “Hey dude, there’s no prize money, there’s no sponsorship. I hope you make it to the end without getting injured and you have a good time. Oh and by the way, I totally want to kick your ass.” And so it’s fun just to be old enough to be that honest with each other. It’s like having a secret handshake. You’re working this hard to not slow down too. We’re all morons who are all stupidly competitive, so let’s go have a good time.
Chris McDougall:
But you zeroed in on the… Ah, how about that? You zeroed in.
Steven Sashen:
Ooh, yeah.
Chris McDougall:
Zeroing in.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, we played with that.
Chris McDougall:
Okay, there’s something there.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, there’s something there. I don’t know what to do with it yet.
Chris McDougall:
Yeah, neither but you’re zeroing in what the whole point is about, Steven, is it’s the joy in the activity for the sake of the activity. And that’s really what Operation Reruns all about. Almost always when there’s something about, talking about the Biggest Loser, it’s actually a sort of a downward spiral. It comes from a position you’re doing something wrong, there’s something wrong with you, you’re eating things wrong, it’s wrong, wrong, wrong. And what Eric does in Operation Rerun is that, “Hey, it’s right, right, right.” Everything becomes the experience that I had in the park. Like, “Hey, just do it. You don’t need a lot of instruction. Run around this field barefoot, oh it feels right.” Sprint a little bit, “Oh it feels right.” It’s on an upward spiral of feeling good, feeling good. And the biggest lesson of all is you only need 30 days. And in the 30 days you’re good to go, dude. You’re on your own glide path. And that’s what we like about it. It’s letting people out of the cage to go. And I think what makes this operation unique is the fact that people will feel joyful not feeling like they’re being disciplined or scolded. They’re going to feel like they’re being supported and rewarded and each thing makes the next thing feel even better and better and better.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I mean it’s true. The Biggest Loser is very restrictive and annoying. So this is kind of the biggest winner goes running. But that’s a different story. But I want to comment, I mean you came up with Xero In, but in that last comment you came up with another great slogan that I think we can use. I think, what did you say? Just do it. I think I’m going to write that one down. I think it hits.
Chris McDougall:
Hey, you know what though, too pretty on top of this little mark here too. Why don’t you combine those two things?
Eric Orton:
What is that curve thing?
Steven Sashen:
That’s weird, it’s like a-
Chris McDougall:
That’s a winner. I don’t know, it looks kind of weird-
Steven Sashen:
It’s like a weird, it’s like a fish hook. Is it a fish hook?
Chris McDougall:
… swoosh or something, maybe a fish hook.
Eric Orton:
There you go. There you go.
Steven Sashen:
I think that’s what it is.
Chris McDougall:
Just do it. Fish hook.
Steven Sashen:
Well hey, so that’s a good segue for the following now, because let’s talk footwear. And I got to say this as a prelude to this next section, in the early Born to Run days, in the early days of Xero Shoes, basically 2010, because we started the end of 2009, we got… Holy crap dude, we have our 13th anniversary coming up in just a couple days, which I just realized… Thank you. I’ve got to figure out what the, I don’t know what date it is. I got, all right. Okay, four days. Ah crap. It’s not going to be on a day where I can just bring champagne into the office, but I’ll do it next Monday instead. Anyway, we used to joke that you were our unofficial marketing department because anytime you would go and do a book signing, we’d see a bump in traffic, we’d see a bump in sales.
And I told you one of the things that I did is a little guerilla marketing technique is I just made little business cards basically that every time I’d go buy a bookstore, I’d walk in and I’d put a couple in every copy of Born to Run and then I made 50,000 bookmarks and sent those out to customers who then did the same thing all around the country. So a thank you for that. And of course this was the days where we were selling a do it yourself barefoot running sandal kit. So basically how to make your own sandals. We still sell these, they sell a lot. How to make your own sandals based on this 10,000 year old design idea. So those were the way back when. But you have been quite, I’m going to suggest, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, deliberately footwear agnostic for the last 13 years. And Eric, I know you were trying to do something stupid, like get into the footwear business, which we were warned against at the seven month market. There you go. So talk about your experiences and relationships with footwear over the last 13 years.
Chris McDougall:
Let me start, if you don’t mind, Eric, because I think the reason I kept myself out of it was because number one, I wrote Born to Run from a position of like, I’m not sure about this stuff. I’m showing you what I’ve seen. The only barefoot runner I knew at that point was Barefoot Ted. And I was not going to put my hand on a Bible and swear to anything that was coming out of this guy’s mouth at that point. And so I think what I was doing was like, “Hey look, here’s what I’m saying. It seems to work. There seems to be a long lineage. That’s the best I can say.” Which I think was actually a good position because it was a non-threatening, non-preachy position.
Steven Sashen:
Agreed.
Chris McDougall:
It let people decide for themselves. And on top of that, I come from a hard news journalism reporting background where you never ever are supposed to show any kind of a bias for a position. And the first way to discredit a journalist is by suggesting that they’re getting paid to say something. And so I want to make it very clear it was, “Hey man, nobody is putting me on a payroll to say this stuff.” And so I was not going to take a position on that at all. Even with, so Vibram FiveFingers saw its real sort of skyrocketing growth at that period. And I personally was wearing them, but I never promoted them. I never had any kind of business deals with them and I wanted to maintain that position until I was willing to put all the cards on the table and say, “This is what I know, this is what I believe and this is what I’m willing to hang my reputation on.” So it took me until now. So literally, I would say within the past couple months before I was willing to do that.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, you may as well tell people where you landed because we’ve been maybe hinting but haven’t said it out loud.
Chris McDougall:
Yeah. So Born To Run, there will be a Born to Run model of shoes coming out from Xero Shoes. And I will say this with all conviction, this is the first time I have ever wanted to do it. And it actually happened backwards. It was because when Eric was first, guess seeing some reviews. Eric, what was your experience with the actual shoe line of your shoes?
Eric Orton:
I forget which models, I had a few of them and just really, really enjoyed them. And when we were discussing that chapter in Born to Run 2, it had been a while since I tried them and I said, “Well maybe this is an opportunity to see, I’ll reach out to Steven and see if we can just try some on for our recommendations in the book.” And they completely blew us away. So then we scrapped some of our suggestions because this was right at the deadline and snuck them in based on our quick trying of them. And I was just talking with Steven before we jumped on. I just tried the new Forza Road Runner Xero shoe. I mean it’s unbelievable. I mean, I know what’s coming down the road too and I’m really excited about everything that’s going on and it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for personally, just from an interest in shoes. But it’s just, everybody should be really excited.
Steven Sashen:
Well, we are, so first of all-
Chris McDougall:
Oh shoot, I just-
Steven Sashen:
Go ahead.
Chris McDougall:
I’m going to say shoot. Because I just, Alexa, your colleague offered me a pair of Forzas. I’m like, “Honestly, I’ve got enough shoes. I can’t wear them out. I’m trying to destroy these Zelens, they won’t die. My freaking Kobes have worn out fashion in my Zelens. But now I’m like, “Oh, shit. Maybe I want a pair of those Forzas after all, they sound pretty damn good.”
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I know a guy who you can buy them from. I mean, I know a-
Chris McDougall:
A reasonable price.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, well no, totally unreasonable. So just to let people know, the two shoes that we’re making Born to Run versions of, one is the Zelen, which is our road running shoe. The other is a version of the Mesa Trail, our trail running shoe. And there’s a number of things that we’re really excited about with these. One is they’re going to be co-branded. They have special colorways just for what we’re doing together. It’s going to have Born to Run on there and Xero on there. The other is that we’re taking a percentage, not a percentage, a dollar amount from what we charge people to buy these shoes. And that’s going to be donated to the Tarahumara through an, well we think it’s going to be through… Well anyway, we’re deciding on how it’s going to get down to them, is the best thing I can say because we really are all obviously so inspired by the Tarahumara, they’re having many, many problems where getting some capital down there can be really helpful.
There’s also going to be some other special things tossed into your box, some little things, gifts from the Tarahumara, for example. There’ll be an opportunity to get a copy, a signed copy of Born to Run, probably is a little bundle. So that’s all, we don’t have a specific date for that right now. This all happened really, really fast. And making things, especially shoes takes a while. So it’s going to be in the spring, until then you can get those shoes. And we’re going to use your link to tell people about doing that in the show notes. But I’ll say it now that if you go to xeroshoes.com/go/btr, Born to Run, you can get any of those shoes. And that’s also going to be helpful for Chris and for Eric. And we’re going to be doing some things for Tarahumara. So just FYI, just there’s some time in advance, or depending on when you’re listening to this, maybe this is already happening, but be on the lookout for that.
And we couldn’t be happier obviously to now make it official that you’re part of our marketing department. So instead of just tag-teaming and trying to do guerilla things to jump in there. But I also want emphasize something that we’ve kind of been talking about a lot and want to highlight. We couldn’t be, yet again, happier about your involvement and all the things that we’re going to be developing and releasing in 2023 and 2024. But again, this is about two things. This is about form, not footwear, just so happens that different footwear informs the form differently, and it’s about having a good time. So keep those two things in mind because that’s why we’re doing this together and why we’re already having fun doing that. It’s really important. We don’t want to just have people have this idea that footwear is just a panacea or footwear is the instant correction to all whatever you might have going on. This is a process of returning to, restoring, rebooting what it is to have a good time, to let your body be something that you enjoy and go running as one expression of that. Did I get it wrong?
Chris McDougall:
It’s really good. And something that it was slow to dawn on me, Steven, is that putting something on your feet is essential pleasure. It’s enjoying a good meal. And it took me a while to process that, because why do I have seven different models of shoes? I only need one or two. Why do I have seven? Because each one is a different meal and your foot senses it. And when I first got the Zelens, so Eric said, “Hey man, you should check out these Xero Shoes, I got some from Steven. They’re pretty goddamn good.” Then I went online, sniffed around, and the reviews were very heartfelt. People who were reviewing were super exciting, “Okay, these are experienced trail runners and they’re really jazzed.” So then you guys sent me out a box of shoes and the thing about it was, they might have been seven or eight different models and after two weeks I’d only gotten to the top layer. I put on the Zelens and never took them off.
So I was running on roads, I thought, “I wonder how these things are on trails.” They’re great on trails, “Hey, I wonder if I can run through the creek in these things?” They’re great water. I was running across a basketball court squeaking like a goddamn basketball shoe. This is an all purpose shoe. And I would get home and this was the test, I would forget they were on. I’d be walking around the kitchen two hours later, “Oh, they’re still on my feet.” So I started to realize, one thing about a shoe is if it makes you feel like joyful, if your foot feels good, like it wants to do things, just the way when you take a first bite of a meal, like, “Oh, I want more.” This is essential joy. And that’s what started to catch my interest. And then I tried to Mesa Trails, the same thing like, goddamn, it’s got a good log, everything feels good about it. And that’s when the wheels started spinning. Shoes should not be the thing that I need to put on so I won’t get hurt. Shoes should be the thing I’ve put on because, “Boy, this feels good and I’m going to feel better the more I do in them.” And that’s what really got me interested.
Steven Sashen:
Thanks. And this is the thing, it’s like the example I get, people ask me two of our sandals, one’s called the Z-Trek, one’s the Z-Trail. The Z-Trek is literally just six millimeters of rubber strapped onto your foot. The Z-Trail has a slightly griper tread, has a layer of what we call trail foam in the middle to ease out the bumps and a layer of bare foam on the top for the footbed. So it’s a little extra protection, a little extra comfort. And I said, so when people are asking me for advice about which one to get, I go, “When I’ve been wearing the Trek for a while, the one that’s closer to barefoot and then I put on the Trail, it’s like, ooh, now I got a little vacation.” I mean, I’m still feeling the ground, I’m still responding, but it’s just not as much sensation, which sometimes can be a little overwhelming to one’s brain.
And then after I wear the Trail for a while, I put on the Trek again. It’s like, “Oh my God, I can feel things. Oh, I missed feeling things.” And it’s the same thing with the shoes. So I don’t wear as many as my wife does. I think Lena maybe owned five pairs of shoes when we got together. Now she has at least three of everything we make. And I have like three pairs of shoes. So I just go from the speed force, the HFS or the Zelen… Or now it’s just, to your point, it’s like, it’s another expression of, “What do I want to do that’s fun today and what’s the right shoe for that?” And we’ve got one for all of those. So it’s been, it’s kind of ridiculous what our shoe closet looks like.
Chris McDougall:
You know what’s kind of funny? So we were in New York for a few days and we were at Rome 149, which has those virtual reality treadmills, which were a blast. And so I’ve been running around in the Z-Trek the whole time I was in New York, Z-Trek. But that day we were going to do a long run all the way across the city and across the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn. I’d been running on asphalt about three or four days at that point. And then I saw a pair of the Z-Trail, I was like, “Ooh, can I take these? Are they in my size?” “They are in your size.” “Can I take them?” In that moment, just like upgrading a little bit of sink beneath my foot felt like a real pleasure run across the Manhattan Bridge. But I did the exact same thing, took it off their wall, put it on my feet, put the Treks into my backpack, and then ran in the Treks all day. It just felt like perfect for those conditions.
Steven Sashen:
What’s funny about that shoe, about the Z-Trail is the amount of, when you step on it, the amount that the foam compresses is a really tiny amount, like a millimeter. And yet we experience, that people report, it’s like, “Oh my God, this is so comfortable.” And I can only imagine that from an evolutionary perspective. There was a time where that little amount of give was telling us something good’s about to happen. There’s either food nearby or water nearby or something. I don’t know what else, but something, because it doesn’t make sense that tiny, tiny amount of cushioning registers as that big of a change, that much comfort. And I don’t talked to, Lieberman would be a perfect person to talk to since he’s an anthropologist about this. But it’s just a theory that I’ve been batting around for a number of years.
Chris McDougall:
You know who’s had actually the greatest insight in that? Was Barefoot Ken Bob from the trial of the Barefoot Dude, but Barefoot Ken Bob pointed out that your foot absorbs in an inordinate amount of pain for what it does. You stub your toe, you’re ruined for an hour, you can’t do anything. The tiniest bit of sensation in your foot. And his whole point was, we’re shutting down this sensory diagnostic panel in our feet. But there’s probably a reason why we sense so much in our feet because it is our first warning sign of like, “Hey, the ground’s too hot, or it’s too cold, or it’s too rough, or it’s too abrasive.” It’s an early warning sign that we might be heading into trouble or heading towards something good. So maybe you’ve got this mentality figured out that there are so many nerve clusters sending these impossible to ignore signal up from your feet. And the benefit is that when things feel good, your feet are encouraging you, “Hey, move on, this is a good sensation.” And so the problem with the cushioning is it deadens all that, you don’t feel any of it.
Steven Sashen:
It’s one of the things that I make when I show, here’s all the things that are bad about modern athletic shoes. You’ve got all those nerve for a reason. You put a bunch of cushioning under that and suddenly you’ve made your feet numb and dumb. How does that make any sense? And people go, “That makes sense.” What are you doing wearing house? That’s a whole other story. So ay, yai, yai. I’m trying to think if there’s anything that I left out from my brain. And since I can’t think of anything at the moment, anything that we didn’t cover that you guys want to share with the humans and the world and et cetera?
Chris McDougall:
He has some more for sure.
Eric Orton:
I mean I think we could have 10 of these.
Steven Sashen:
Well that’s true. Look, we could do this all day long, especially me and the bald guy. And I only say that because I’ve got my hair pulled back and you can’t see. I was having a killer hair day yesterday and today, not so much. It’s one of those things. No, we definitely could and we definitely will. So in lieu of anything else, just a reminder, A, well here I’ll do the easy thing. People want to find out more about Born to Run 2 and everything that’s going on. Tell them where to go and what to do.
Eric Orton:
So our big platform is Born to Run World. So really any handle on, we’re basically prominent on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Born to Run World. And then Chris and I both have our own individual accounts. I’ve got my YouTube, which is kind of my biggest platform that has Born to Run 2 supporting content as well as Born to Run World on YouTube. And then same with Instagram-
Steven Sashen:
Pause there. So first of all, so Born to Run World on the social channels, the website, borntorun.world, and your YouTube channel is what?
Eric Orton:
It’s Born to Run Coach.
Steven Sashen:
There you go. And anywhere else that people are going to find you?
Eric Orton:
Instagram and TikTok. We’re trying to get our TikTok going, so come visit us on TikTok.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, it is, I can’t tell you how much it saddens me that over the last 13 years you guys have been relatively social media invisible because it would’ve been really helpful for getting this book out there, but we’re making up for it now. All right, so that’s borntorun.world and then Born to Run Coach on YouTube and et cetera. And Chris?
Chris McDougall:
Yeah, Chris McDougall Author is usually where you’ll find me, whatever the platform is, Instagram, Twitter, that kind of thing.
Steven Sashen:
Wherever people @ or /. So, all right, well then let’s wrap this one up for now. Again, a reminder, be on the lookout if you’re not part of the Xero Shoes newsletter, go to xeroshoes.com/newsletter. So you’ll hear about when we’re doing the… I got to Remember them now, the Born to Run reboot. You’ll hear more about everything that’s coming out with the Born to Run shoes with the book that you’ll be able to get on our site. What else? About Operation Rerun, I mean, pretty much everything that Chris and Eric are able to do, we’re going to be promoting that and talking about that. So that’s one place you can find it, in addition to subscribing at borntorun.world and on all of Chris’s and Eric’s channel. So definitely do that.
Another reminder, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com, the site with the name that Chris wishes he thought of. You’ll find all of our previous episodes, you’ll find the ways you can interact with us on social media, et cetera. And if you have any questions or comments or feedback or ideas, just drop me an email, [email protected]. Yeah, I’ll tell you, here’s the one I’m requesting, if you can find someone who thinks that everything we just said is completely showing that we have a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome, then send them my way because there’s nothing that I would love more than to talk to someone who thinks that we’re completely nuts and just hash it out and see where it goes. I’m more than happy to be proven wrong, highly unlikely, but there’s nothing I like more than when someone highlights that there’s some error in the way that I’m thinking.
My best friend called me, this is a quick story, called me 20 years ago and says, “You know what your biggest problem is?” I went, “Ooh, this’ll be good.” He says, “You just like it when people tell you that you’ve done something incorrect or your thinking is out of whack. And then you do it to other people. So you’ll tell them when they’re in a cognitive bias or have some fallacious thought or they’ve got some thing where they’re a little misguided or they’re just wrong and you think they’re going to respond the same way you do and be thankful, they think you’re a complete asshole.” And I said, “Oh my God, I’ve never put that together.” And he goes, “See, you just did it.” So you just, anyway. So let’s see if we can have some of these conversations and help more people have more fun. Speaking of which, that’s the most important thing. Again, thanks to Chris and Eric, thanks to all of you for being here. So now go out and have fun and live life feet first.