Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

When Caballo had finished his story concerning the Tarahumara at Leadville, the author pushed him for personal information, but Caballo seemed unwilling to divulge much. He did tell McDougall that following the 1994 race in which he paced Martimano he collected donated coats in Colorado and set out for Mexico to deliver them to the Tarahumara (108). He then built himself a hut and stayed there to run the same trails as the Tarahumara. McDougall asked him to show him one of his trails and how he runs it, so the pair set out for a run the next morning. Caballo also explained how ultrarunning has changed in the 10 years since the Tarahumara’s experience in Leadville. Runners are now completing ultras in even better times that the Tarahumara did in the 1990s, but Caballo wanted to know “what could the Tarahumara do if pushed” (112).

McDougall explains that Caballo had a brainstorm to set up a race the Tarahumara way, on their home turf (113). He thought that it was a great idea, but it was not realistic because no elite runners would come. McDougall argues that “just to get to the starting line, they’d have to slip past bandits, hike through the badlands, keep an eagle eye on every sip of water and every bite of food” and “if they got hurt, they were dead” (113).