Eating like the Tarahumara

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Marie had called the other day to tell me how proud she was of the pinole she had made. For those of you who have not read ‘Born to Run’ the hottest book in the running community, pinole is the food given so much credit for the amazing running feats of the Tarahumara Indians…the running people.

The Tarahumara live in Barranca del Cobre – Copper Canyon – with walls that rise 8,000 feet above sea level. The canyon is deeper than, and three times the size of, its more famous cousin to the north – the Grand Canyon.

This unusual society lives in a rugged environment where travel by foot is the most expeditious and thus have built their culture around running. From an early age, they run for fun and to survive. They are a semi-nomadic people, running to different parts of the canyon to care for fields and, where possible, to hunt. They are known to run deer, wild turkey, and rabbits to exhaustion and then kill them by throwing stones. They have even been hired by ranchers to chase down wild horses.

They particularly like to race and place great status on being the fastest…which is to say the person who can run fast for very long periods. They play a game with two teams of 3-10 men kicking a wooden, baseball-shaped ball over rugged terrain…for between 100-150 miles at a time. The ball is moved and passed like a soccer ball. The women play a similar game, but pass inter-connected hoops while they run.

On several occasions, they have ventured from their home to race in ultra-marathon events and with tremendous success – as the book ‘Born to Run’ outlines. Runs of 300-400 miles in length are not unknown to some of the elite runners on footwear made from pieces of rubber cut from tires and fashioned into sandals. Much has been made of both their incredible stamina and the nutrition that sustains it and it is the food they eat while running that Marie had made and about which she was so excited.

“We can take it on the trip to the Adirondacks. It’s better than Clif bars. I think you’re gonna like it,” she said and, which remains to be seen…or tasted.

I had a terrible day running. I just can’t seem to get my energy back and I’m continuing to think it is the never-ending heat wave. When we had the 2-3 day reprieve a last week, I promptly put together two days of pr-like running. Since then, it’s nothing but dead legs. I try not to let it psyche me out before starting, as I know it can, and I think I’m running pretty normally for the first 20 minutes, but then it hits and I feel like I’m crawling over the remainder of the course. I keep running Clear Creek and dunking myself at the end. I must admit, just the thought of this pleasant finish keeps me going over the last 20 minutes of the run. The forecast is ‘sweat your ass off for another week’ so I guess I will.

Run duration: 60 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 140.
Calories burned during workout: 1020.