I feel this this real gratitude that there is this culture, this tribe of runners out there that are out there in the wilderness, you know, living their lives and that they do things that we're all interested in and I get the lucky chance to tell their stories.

All right. Are we ready? Yeah. Yeah, thank you, Don. You know, I mean, I didn't know what it was going to be like. You sound like a nice guy on this podcast, but uh, but I know it's on the upper edge and you guys have won a couple of awards and I've never prepped for a podcast ever.

Oh, that's what you're doing. What are you balancing your checkbook over there? What's going on? Yeah. Yeah. You're recording this. Aren't you free, but everything. All right. Are we ready? Yeah. Welcome to another edition of Trail Reternation. My name is Don Freeman. And I'm Scott war and, you know, we've been doing some reflections in the last few podcasts. I'm kind of reflecting on our nine years doing podcasts and over 500 episodes and we're inviting guests on that have been on before.

And we're super excited about this guest. Back in 2009, he wrote a small book that uh, that was kind of a niche book, uh, if I recall right, it didn't get a lot of purchases back then. It's called Born to Run. I'm trying to be sarcastic, Don. You're scratching your head. Yeah. I thought you were. This isn't at all how we plan the intro's got to bash our guest.

But we decided we would get Christopher McDougal back on. Chris, you're, you're back with us. We, we are super excited to have you here. I think the best introduction for me would have just have been to hang up at that point. Just click off.

We would have totally understood that. But we were thinking back to this book, Born to Run. And, and as Don and I were on a run this morning, we started thinking, okay, how many of us bought chia seeds because of that book? I did. How many?

How many of us bought Warachi sandals because of that book? I did. How many of us bought Vibram five fingers because of that book? I did. You know, there are so many things that came out of that. I'm going to add a couple. I want to add a couple of Scott. How many of us believed and truly believed. And it's true that we're natural born runners that we're able to get out there and do some incredible things are ancestors had done it. And Chris brought in some studies and scientists that have been saying these things.

And they became household names. So we, we learned that our powerful glute muscles and hamstrings and our ability to sweat and lose perspiration and heat allowed us to survive and allow our brains to grow big because of the protein. All of these things were introduced in a great story by Christopher and Google in Born to Run. I'm sure most people have read it. But if you haven't read it, it's amazing. And, and we thought we're going to get the chance to sit down with Chris for one hour.

What are we going to talk about? And my first question for Chris is Chris, you wrote this book in 2009. And if you look at the the running surge, it kind of kind of mirrored when that book came out, do you think that the Born to Run book actually caused people to believe that they could run?

Chris, are you the reason I can't get into Western states again?

Honestly, yes to be as a question. Yeah, well, you know, it's a weird thing to be honest. It's kind of hard to figure out chicken and egg stuff because honestly, you know, listen, I would love to pat myself on the back. And you guys are actually doing a great job of it. I fully endorse everything you just said.

But I can't really distinguish like what was going on anymore. My best recollection is this stuff was all happening like the reason why Born to Run sold well is because all this stuff was brewing like the clouds were gathering.

In particular, let's look at like barefoot running, you know, at the time, this is kind of niche is kind of weird. You know, you guys like barefoot Ken Bob and barefoot Ted out there in the wilderness doing their thing.

No one was paying much attention, but at the same time like their numbers were growing like people believed it and they had performance and science on their side.

So after Born to Run, you know, barefoot running, minimalist running really took off. But honestly, I think what was what happened was like the wave was building and I happened to be paddling at just the right time, just the right place.

Did you see that coming Chris? Did you say, Oh, there's the wave I'm going to catch it or were you just out there drifting and coming up with this idea for this book and all of a sudden you're swept up in the momentum.

Yeah, I think what was happening was that a lot of people were on the same trajectory I was on. A lot of people are having the same questions I was on and there just hadn't been a unifying narrative yet to bring it all together.

So I mean, I think we all have the common experience to this day. You're told over and over again, you know, replace your running shoes after 300 miles, 300 miles you got.

These remember runners world would tell you to take a sharpie and right on the midsole like the date you bought them or number of miles or something like that.

And then you're supposed to check them and then buy a new pair of shoes. Then you walk into the running shoe store and you look at this freaking wall of shoes like what?

You know, first of all, the pair I just bought three months ago is now gone. Never have you seen again. And the replacement doesn't look anything like it.

So you buy the Pegasus in 2021. It looks nothing like the Pegasus in 2020. And so why is it got the same name?

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