Born Runners?

DAYTON - I let Trent Hafen catch his breath after he ran the 800 meters during the season's last Middle School track meet Thursday in Dayton.

He pretty much blew everybody out of the field. But that's to be expected for an eighth grader who ranks as 13th in the nation for his age group in the 1,500 meters.

I asked him how he did it. Having been a runner myself since I was 18, I had a hunch what he was going to say.

"It's hard to explain," he said. "It feels natural to me. It feels like I have the body for it."

Other runners in our midst, such as cross country and track stars Seth Deal, Nick Carpenter and Isabela Benito, or more experienced distance runners like Joanna Lanning or Maria Garcia, might say the same thing.

Why it is such a joy to pound trails or pavement for many miles, often in the hot sun, and with little to gaze at but the horizon and the never-ending landscape, is hard for runners to put their finger on. I often wondered that myself, having run as far as a half marathon when I was in my 30s and training for longer distances once again now that I'm in my early 50s.

"I get into the zone," Hafen said, taking the words out of my mouth. "After three miles, it isn't tiring anymore and I just keep going at a good pace."

Yeah, okay, I get that too, but why?

Why does it feel natural to many people, men or women, young or old, to run? Why is it one of those "deep" feelings like sitting next to the orange flames of a camp fire at night or letting yourself bob on the waves in the ocean?

I struggled with the answer to that question until I picked up a book at the airport for an upcoming plane ride recently and couldn't put it down.

"Born To Run" by Christopher McDougall, a contributing editor for Men's Health magazine, has a very logical explanation for the reason why runners like us are driven to connect with these seemingly primordial genes. It's because it's in our genes.

A good read even if running isn't your favorite subject, McDougall's book explores life in the native homeland of the Mexican running tribe the Tarahumara, follows modern-day ultra marathon runners and, most importantly, cites scientific data that points to his conclusion: Homo Sapiens evolved from his/her primate origins to become a runner and succeeded where Neanderthals, a parallel species, failed.

Well, okay, but walking upright makes one a pretty lousy runner compared to, say, a horse or a cheetah. However, we're not talking about speed here. In that department, many species have us beat, hands down, so to speak.

It's much more about endurance. Why can I run and run and run on a hot day, while my dog, who normally bounds alongside me for all of my runs and then some, shuts down after a mile or so?

Checking with a number of morphologists, paleontologists, evolutionary anthropologists and biologists who were conducting research on this very question, Mc- Dougall discovered humans developed some physical characteristics unique to running.

These scientists argue that modern man stood up and expanded his rib cage to suck in air better, developed an Achilles tendon for the singular purpose of running, acquired arched feet to absorb the impact of running on the body, generated a nuchal ligament to stabilize the head while moving fast and appears to be the only mammal that loses its heat by sweating. Our closest cousins, the primates with whom we share 95 percent DNA, don't have any of these features. They're walkers, not runners.

We even have advantages over other running species.

Pelt-covered creatures like dogs cool primarily through breathing, but humans have numerous sweat glands allowing them to be "air-cooled," which in turns keep us from shutting down on long-distance runs.

So why did we develop that running endurance as part of our survival-of-the-fittest evolution? We went hundreds of thousands of years before inventing weapons to hunt prey? According to Mc- Dougall and the scientists he interviewed, we outran them, simply wearing them down.

A top galloping speed for horses is 7.7 meters per second, a speed they can keep for about 10 minutes before they have to slow to 5.8 meters per second. Top marathon runners can jog for hours at 6 meters per second and can eventually close the gap, particularly on a hot day and with a little help from other runners in your tribe.

So the theory goes that we tracked and pursued the antelopes of the day, then worked in teams to corner and capture them.

Whether this speculation about running's ancient ancestral origin is true or not, the activity does run in Hafen's family. His mom, Paula Kelly, was a distance runner at Walla Walla High School.

Of course runners like Hafen still have to train to develop and hone their natural running ability.

He runs almost every day with Deal and Carpenter, keeps to a runner-friendly diet and sets inspiring goals for himself.

"I'd like to carry on in high school and college, then do trials for the Olympics," he said.