A few days ago I got my nerd on and watched an awesome Smithsonian Channel documentary called The Perfect Runner. It’s the story of why humans have evolved to be the best distance runners on Earth and how persistence hunting gave us an evolutionary advantage over faster animals. (I told you it was nerdy). I know a couple of people who recently ran the New York Marathon so the topic intrigued me. The documentary was really good.
One part of the documentary tells the story of a village in Ethiopia called Bekoji which, despite being an impoverished farming community, produces more Olympic-level runners than any other one place on Earth. At the heart of this amazing success is a man named Sentayehu Eshetu, who runs a running school right on the dirt roads of the village. It was amazing and inspiring to watch the runners training, some barefoot, and hear the experts speculate why they excel the way they do. I want to go get trained by Coach Eshetu, although I’m sure I wouldn’t last a day.
Read about this remarkable man: click here.