A few weeks after watching the 2012 Ironman World Championships in Hawaii, a punishing race in which amateur athletes complete a 2.4-mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bike ride and then a 26.2-mile run, the Harvard human evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman flew to a remote part of Mexico to research the Tarahumara Native Americans, a people renowned for their long-distance running.
During ceremonial races the Tarahumara can run up to 80 miles while kicking an orange-sized wooden ball. When Lieberman arrived, with lingering memories of brutal Ironman training regimens, something struck him as odd. Apart from during their famous races, he never saw anyone running. The Tarahumara would laugh at Lieberman, a marathon runner, when he went out on jogs. He would ask them how they trained for their races. “Why,” one man replied, “would anyone run when they didn’t have to?”
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