I Run, Therefore I Am

Hi. I'm Alison. I've read a lot of blogs about running...some of them are good, and some are not so good. One thing I've noticed about all of them, however, is that they all seem to be personal accounts of one kind of another. Everything from training logs, marathon aspirations down to shoe size. That's great and all, but where are the blogs about the history? The current events? The business behind it all?...I don't know about you, but I can't find it. Anywhere.

This is where my blog comes in. I'm the kind of person who asks questions. Who, what, where, when why. I want to know where running started. How and why. It's evolution. So of course I googled "history of running", as I do with every question that plagues me. Google knows all. Thousands of results came up, but I found one that particularly interested me runtheplanet.com. This basically sums up the entire article:

"The researchers do not know why natural selection favored human ancestors who could run long distances . For one possibility, they cite previous research by University of Utah biologist David Carrier, who hypothesized that endurance running evolved in human ancestors so they could pursue predators long before the development of bows, arrows, nets and spear-throwers reduced the need to run long distances.

Another possibility is that early humans and their immediate ancestors ran to scavenge carcasses of dead animals—maybe so they could beat hyenas or other scavengers to dinner, or maybe to "get to the leftovers soon enough", Bramble says. Scavenging "is a more reliable source of food" than hunting, he adds. "If you are out in the African savanna and see a column of vultures on the horizon, the chance of there being a fresh carcass underneath the vultures is about 100 percent. If you are going to hunt down something in the heat, that is a lot more work and the payoffs are less reliable" because the animal you are hunting often is "faster than you are"."

- Taken from "The Evolution of Human Running"

I've always taken it for granted that if our ancestors didn't run they'd be eaten, or squashed, and we wouldn't be here. But this gives me a whole new perspective on something that most people take on as a hobby, or even a lifestyle, has evolved from something so instinctive and basic. Back then it was about survival, it wasn't about cutting your 5k time or wording on your stride.

So that's what this blog is about. In order to understand something now, you have to know where it came from.