Caballo is going to head-butt me for that headline, so please note that i’m risking his wrath to capture your attention. The New York Times looked into famine conditions in the Copper Canyons, and their findings are almost identical to what Caballo told me two weeks ago: the mass suicide tales are bogus, but the hardship is all too real.
One bright moment in the coming weeks is the annual running of Caballo’s Copper Canyon Ultramarathon, the race that’s featured in Born to Run. How Caballo pulls it together every year is an absolute mystery. This year, the race is totally full: hundreds of Tarahumara and 80 runners from outside the canyons (including Barefoot Ted) will be gathering on Sunday, March 4, for 51 miles of bad-ass backcountry trailrunning.
Not only is Caballo giving away hundreds of pounds of corn as prizes, but he’s also digging deep to provide corn to Tarahumara villages in advance of the race. If you’d like to help an honest man who gives every cent directly to the people who need it, check out Caballo’s “Norawas” operation.
Amazing year for Marshall Lewy. One of his projects lost financing at the last sec, but instead of putting his foot (or the investors) through the wall, he bounced back by tearing out a Sundance-worthy script in just 16 days and attracting exactly the star he wanted — Robert Carlyle of “Trainspotting” and “The Full Monty.” Meanwhile, he was also having his first baby and collaborating with Peter Sarsgaard on the Born to Run screenplay. According to Marshall, Sarsgaard is now banging out 60 miles a week.
“I was not aware that Ray Rice eats Chia Pets,” said linebacker Terrell Suggs.
According to today’s Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Ravens’ star rusher Ray Rice has been ditching trendy supplements in favor of the ancient nutritional secret of Tarahumara runners: Chia seeds.
Reports of a drought crisis have been emerging from the Copper Canyons over the past few days. Because it’s sometimes hard to tell what is credible from what has been sensationalized, WIll Harlan is on his way down to directly assist and assess. Will is experienced, knowledgeable, and utterly honest, and yesterday he emailed me this:
“I am personally ensuring that any donations will go directly to seeds and food for the Tarahumara. We’re a federal 501c3 nonprofit, so all donations are 100% tax deductible. I’ll report back to you on the situation once I’m down there; I have not personally witnessed the effects of the drought, but I’ve heard from several sources that hunger is widespread and quite serious, especially on the Batopilas side of the canyons. I share your caution in getting entangled with unfamiliar organizations; in this case, I’ll be down there myself to verify exactly what’s going on and participating personally in the distribution of food and seeds.”
Knowing Will, those are words you can count on. Please join me in chipping in to help.
When I was researching “Born to Run,” I visited the Hopi reservation in Arizona and got to spend time with Hopi elder Bucky Preston and his ultrarunning protege, Dennis Poolheco. It was a wild time, including a freezing moonlit scramble over the mesa while trying to find our way back out of the wilderness and not get too freaked by coyote howls. I learned a lot about the Hopi’s ancient running tradition, but was moved the most by a story I heard from Dennis Poolheco. I’ve now listened to the tape at least a dozen times, and it still gives me chills.
Because of space and coherence I wasn’t able to include the story in Born to Run. I’ve been meaning to write it ever since, but now I’ve got a better idea. “Racing the Rez” only needs about $5000 of financing. That’s all it will take. If a few hundred people kick in ten bucks a piece, this important and dramatic tale of Hopi-Navajo running will emerge from seclusion in Arizona and come to the rest of the world.
Problem is, there’s only one week left to raise the cash.
So: if we pull this off and “Racing the Rez” is completed, I’ll get up and tell the Best Story I’ve Never Told at an exclusive screening for backers of the film. I’ll also film it and put it online. Can’t beat that: two great stories for the price of one. Please contribute before time runs out.
Last year, at our first Naked Tour event (Running: A Musical), I urged Barefoot Ted to perform a semi-magic trick by handcrafting a pair of Tarahumara huaraches while simultaneously condensing his entire quest for the perfect running shoe into 10 minutes. Ted, naturally, had ideas of his own, so his talk ventured into unexplored realms of monkey logic. But yesterday, he circled back and came out with exactly the story I was waiting for. It might be the smartest, best expressed analysis I’ve read about what’s gone wrong, and right, with running shoes.
Tonight at 8pm EST, Scott Jurek faces his most pitiless opponent:
The clock.
Timed races are among the most fiendishly difficult, because figuring out the pacing is a challenge only the most seasoned vets can master. The goal is to calculate the exact razor’s edge of speed you can maintain so you hit absolute breakdown at precisely 24 hours; not a minute sooner, not a minute later. Scott is a ferociously intelligent guy, so I suspect that kind of intense mental challenge is a primary reason he remains fascinated by ultrarunning. It also explains why he keeps changing up his game; as soon as he cracks the code for one kind of event, he’s off to the next. To me, he’s the rarest and most fascinating of athletes, because he doesn’t really care about winning; he cares about solving the crazy equation that has defied every other math genius. Once he conquered the mountains of the Western States 100, he was off to tackle Death Valley, then the Tarahumara, and even Pheidippides’ home course in Greece in the 152-mile Spartathlon.
Now, he’s going after the world record at the Soochow International Ultra-Marathon 24-Hour Track Invitational. Last year, he broke the American 24-hour record by logging 165.7 miles. He’ll have to add over 20 miles to beat the world mark set last year by Yiannis Kouros. Kouros was so shattered by the effort that he immediately announced he would never challenge the 24-hour record again.
From Scott’s facebook page:
Follow me LIVE from Taiwan starting Friday 12/9, 8pm EST, 5pm PST, as I attempt to run a bunch of miles (while trying to avoid getting dizzy!) in the Soochow International Ultra-Marathon 24-Hour Track Invitational. Don’t be afraid of the Mandarin, the distances should be clear. Also, you can follow my Twitter feed @ScottJurek for updates & photos. Twitter hashtag is #SIU24. You do not have to be on Twitter to access my Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/scottjurek
Get past the product pitch and you’ll find Meb’s real message — at age 36, he finally got off his heels and changed his form to a gentler foot strike. The result:
* He was able to get rid of the orthotics he’d been wearing since college
* He ran the fastest marathon of his life
* His performance at the New York City Marathon improved by 2 minutes in the span of one year.
