Born to run

I finished reading this book recently. It is an awesome read. It talks about the author's (Christopher McDougall) quest to find out all about the secrets of running; how the best runners in the world (the Tarahumaras) run insane distances wearing DIY sandals; how most modern running shoes are actually causing more injuries than we think; what motivated different people to push their boundaries to run not just incredibly long distances, but to run steep uneven and treacherous terrains at high altitudes. There are the ultra runners who run because of the adrenaline and the competition and there are the hippies who run because they enjoy it, it builds camaraderie and they can drink themselves silly at the after race parties.

In the book, Chris McDougall also wrote about his discovery (from three maverick scientists) that man was possibly designed to run long distances. One design of the human body that allows us to run long distances, is the fact that we have millions of sweat glands that provides the best cooling system. Although the cheetah is the fastest animal on land, it can only puff out heat from its mouth (which isn't very efficient) and once its temperature hits 105 degrees it would stop running; whereas for humans, we can keep running as long as we keep sweating. Based on that and a few other traits, men were able to hunt down an antelope simply by chasing after it. It's called persistence hunting.

A persistence hunt usually includes a group of four to five hunters. Once the group spots an antelope, they start chasing it. They recognise the tracks of that particular antelope so that if it joins a herd, they can still identify which antelope they were chasing down and chase it out of the group. When the antelope goes into an acacia grove, one of the hunters will break from the group and drive it back into the sun. The objective is to chase the antelope till it goes into hyperthermia and collapse. A typical persistence hunt could last for three to five hours. That's roughly how long it takes to run a marathon!

The same scientists also published an article titled "Endurance running and the evolution of Homo" which further emphasised the point that the human body is designed for long distance running. But there's also the part about evolution.. and that part doesn't really convince me.

(link to article here: http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/krigbaum/proseminar/Bramble_Leib_2004_nature.pdf)

I haven't read much about evolution but I do know that one of the main case for evolution is natural selection 'through which traits that aid survival and reproduction become more common, while traits that hinder survival and reproduction become more rare' ( found on wikipedia). Another commonly known term is 'survival of the fittest' - where the strong will succeed and the weak will fail and be weeded out.

But according to the scriptures, God is committed to caring for the weak and defenseless, including the poor, the alien, the fatherless and the widow (Psalm 145:7-9). I believe that when God created the world, He made everything good but when sin entered the picture, men became self-centered and that probably brought about the concept of 'survival of the fittest'. God then sent Jesus to show us what really mattered and once again in James 1:27, it was written: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.