Chris McDougall, the unexpected media sensation who wrote "Born to Run," in which he did his best to convince us that barefoot running is the secret not only to better running, but to better health and a better life, has a new piece on Slate.com in which he does his best to convince us that David Petraeus, the architect of this country's strategy in Iraq and now the Allied Commander in Afghanistan, is a running god.
The 57-year-old Petraeus is known to be extremely fit and tough. He challenges young recruits to contests of physical strength and endurance and always wins. He works out like a demon. He does pushups and chin-ups beyond number. And forgive me if I sound like a beer commercial here, but he might just be the most interesting man in the world. I got no beef with the General. And I really hope he doesn't challenge me to a push-up contest.
But in his article, McDougall repeats a claim that bothers me enough that I'm calling B.S. on him -- McDougall, that is, not Petraeus. McDougall, a former war correspondent, writes that the newly-minted general begins each day with a sunrise five mile run in which each mile is run in under six minutes.
I'm not buying it.
A few minutes with Google and it appears that the source of this claim is an article published a couple of years ago in that bastion of journalism, Runner's World, by a writer named Willy Stern ("The General Motors"). In that article, Stern reveals the following about Petraeus, the runner:
- He was a sub-10:00 2-miler in high school.
- In 1982, he ran the Omaha Marathon in 2:50:53.
- During peak track training season, he runs 8 x 400m in under 75 seconds
I find all of these believable, although that track workout is probably a few years old. Hey, no problem, I'm on board: the guy is a serious runner who trains hard and has kept himself is superb shape over the years. But does he do his morning five mile runs at sub-6:00 pace?
No. Way.
Unlike the other claims, this one doesn't pass the old smelly training shoe sniff test. Maybe there are some D1 athletes out there who run 29:xx for five miles at 6:30 every morning in their New Balance 992s (at 14.3 oz per shoe, nothing like racing shoes, folks...), but I won't accept without proof that a 57-year-old does this. That's race pace, pure and simple, and the VERY FEW national-class veteran runners who can run that pace in a race aren't doing it every morning as a warmup to their gym workout.
It's not the General's fault that reporters get this wrong. And in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter; and yet. I can't help feeling that the writers who let it slip into their articles have revealed something about themselves. To me, repeating this far-fetched claim without first-hand evidence just goes to show that McDougall really doesn't understand or care about competitive running. If he did, he'd question the claim. And if he actually found it to be true, he would point out that Petraeus was, potentially, a champion whose demanding career robbed the sport of one of its great age-group competitors.
But far more likely, those sub-six-minute miles are simply an exaggeration based on a misunderstanding somewhere along the line. Maybe he did it once, on a bet. Maybe the course is only 4.6 miles. Maybe any number of things. I wouldn't expect McDougall to be out there measuring the course with a wheel, but at least he should have had some doubts. But I expect that he is a true believer, and believers don't want to doubt; they want to believe.
Well, he's welcome to his beliefs but I would take his other claims (barefoot running = eternal youth) with a healthy dose of skepticism.
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6 comments:
Didn't read his book, but after listening to him on a radio interview I felt he is full of it. He made some ridiculous claims about his and others' running. Give him cdedit for making a lot of money, but don't take him seriously.
This guy is pretty good, but the most interesting man in the world is Doyle Brunson. He ran 4:12 in the 50's on minimal training and was drafted by the Lakers. Then he badly busted his knee and became the greatest poker player of all time.
do you think he is wearing a full pack and boots for this sunrise run to add to the legend?
maybe they meant klicks and not miles? I'd buy that.
the writer probably exaggerates by hearing 6:55/mile and truncates. I know runners who do that. Or, more so, I know politicians who do that.
OK, 7 min pace at 56 aint bad .... unless it's really 7:55.
I would definitely see him making such a mistake, using someone else's info for an article. He is not a competitive runner. And he is not an expert on running in general.
But I don't think these things would make him ineligible as a journalist to cover a running story (which is what his book is, just a story).
As for what he "discovers" about running in the scientific community as he researches for his story on the Tarahumara's Copper Canyon Ultra, these aren't BS. These studies on the origins of human running, and the differences of running barefoot, are not based on another journalists miscalculation. These are experiments and discussions in the scientific community and available in the public domain.
I keep a healthy skepticism as I see if my body benefits from barefoot running.
One thing I'd like to hear the readers of this blog thoughts on is McDougall's claim that there is no scientific evidence of the benefits of running shoes. In injury prevention, competitive running, or any other domain.
You are right. Five miles at sub-6 pace doesn't pass the smell test. A guy writing an article about running, after having written a book about running, should catch that.
I did enjoy Born to Run, though. Anybody know how McDougall did in the NYC Marathon? There was a bit of a fuss about him running it, but no reports of how he did.
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