Running can save us all in race of life – the beer-loving Rarámuri are proof of that
THE Rarámuri are an indigenous people who live in the mountains of north-western Mexico, in the Sierra Madre.
They didn’t always live there – it is where they fled to when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, and their remote location kept them safe from harm and from many attempts by various agents of ‘civilisation’ to homogenise their culture.
It would appear that it was a wise move as many of their customs and traditions remain intact, such as the tesgüinadas – a sort of beer festival that they hold several times a year. Much of their social activity revolves around the tesgüinadas, which they hold to ask for rain, cures, or a good harvest. They also hold these festivals to mark Sunday gatherings, Holy Week celebrations, and curiously enough, race events.
Despite having a thriving drinking culture, the most notable aspect of the Rarámuri is their ability to run – in fact the word Rarámuri, their own term for themselves, means those who run fast. While they do run fast, it is the distance they can run that is remarkable, as they seem to be naturalborn ultra-marathon runners.
In May last year, a 22-year-old Rarámuri girl, wearing a skirt, homemade flip-flops with an old rubber tyre for the sole, won the Ultra Trail Cerro Rojo, a 50km race through the mountains. María Lorena Ramírez had no special equipment, just a bottle of water, and she beat 500 runners from 12 countries. The year before, the goatherd came second in the 100km category of the Caballo Blanco ultramarathon in Chihuahua.
But the success of the Rarámuri isn’t just about terrain – last November a Rarámuri family were finalists in the Polar Bear Marathon in Manitoba, Canada, where the temperature hit -20C. The Rarámuri are a reminder of the role running has had in human history, how we were able to use it to run from danger, chase down prey, and now, as we slowly eat and drink ourselves to death, it could be what saves us all.
IHATED running, but I loved exercise. I started going to gyms two decades ago, and since then there were very few periods when I did not train at least three times a week.
While most people enjoy the social aspects of team sports, I loved the solitude of the gym, with my headphones on, working through stress and calories at the same time.
But running was torture. About six years ago, I realised that with a young family, the early morning was the best time to exercise, and that I would need to find a way to do it that was timeefficient, and nondependent on gym opening times. I would, I realised, have to start running.
So I would be out pounding the road at about 5am. I never ran more than 5-6km, and if I didn’t feel great, I would run slowly (or walk quickly).
While running may feel like torture when you start, you adapt very quickly, as you feel the athletic abilities hardwired in your DNA kicking in. Running is part of who we are.
There’s an old (scientifically inaccurate) analogy about boiling frogs – that if you put a frog in hot water, it will jump out. But if you put it in cold water and slowly turn up the heat, it will sit there until it cooks. Gradual change doesn’t feel like change at all. And so it has come to my attention that I have put on weight.
Over the last two years, I stopped exercising. A change in work patterns and a slight injury to my hip saw my gym attendance and running both dwindle and eventually stop. Then, the final nail in my oversized coffin, I started driving everywhere. My relationship with food and drink changed, as I sought more comfort in both than I should have.
All this came to a head with me asking my wife if she had been using the tumble dryer more than usual as I thought my jeans might have shrunk. After she had stopped laughing and realised it was a genuine question, she pointed out that I was just getting old, and maybe it was time to get some more elasticated waistbands. Over my flabby body, I thought to myself. So it is that I face into the new year with the same resolution as everyone else – to live a little better, and a little bit more like the Rarámuri.
Christopher McDougall’s book ‘Born To Run’, in which he spends time with the Rarámuri and tries to unlock their secrets, is a good inspiration. We may not all have their innate ability, but we can certainly learn a lot from their attitude to running. They don’t do it to win, they do it because they love it.