26 Time November 4, 2019
a broken hand, foot and vertebrae—none caused
by a donkey—even a broken marriage. Despite
these painful hiccups, Sherman and his brethren
wind up helping their handlers just as much, if
not more, than they aid the animals. Donkey run-
ning offers therapy for a depressed college student,
and happiness for kids with autism and epilepsy.
Sherman approached running on his own terms,
so a stubborn donkey taught McDougall how to
adjust to those around him. “If he wants to walk,
he’s going to walk,” says McDougall, 57, during
a break in our donkey workout. Tall and fit, he’s
bare-chested—though not barefoot—and wearing
a red bandanna. “Breathe in, breathe out, man,” he
says. “Not everything is on your clock.”McDougall DiDn’t rush his way to non fiction
superstar dom. After rowing for Harvard in the
mid-1980s, he taught English in Spain for a few
years before returning home to Philadelphia,
where he played too much pickup basketball and
considered law school. He declined a legal life,
and once he realized his fondness for recreational
hoops was impeding a return to Europe, he hustled
back overseas. “I was on the fence about it because
I really liked these courts and my pickup game on
South Street,” says McDougall. “I finally said to
myself, Really?”
An Associated Press editor in Madrid hired him
as a correspondent, despite a clear lack of quali-
fications. Soon enough, the AP dispatched him
to Angola, then Rwanda, before he returned to
Philly again to try his hand at freelance writing. He
got stories published in places like the New York
Times Magazine and Runner’s World, and had a
steady gig at Philadelphia Magazine before clash-
ing with an editor. “I told him if you want to fire
me, fire me,” McDougall says. “You can’t tell a guy
from Philly to fire you more than twice.”
With his second daughter a week old, Mc-
Dougall lost his health care benefits and two-thirds
of his income. Luckily he had already gotten wind
of the Tarahumara tribe of super athletes while re-
porting another story. McDougall’s dire circum-
stances sparked him to pursue a book on the Tara-
humara; in the end, his firing was quite fortuitous.
While barefoot running caught hold after Born
to Run, Americans are unlikely to start donkey
trotting en masse if Running With Sherman
catches on. McDougall, however, hopes some
broader lessons break through. He’s convinced, for
example, that it’s no coincidence that his Amish
neighbors are generally healthier and happier than
average Americans. We’re not going back to the
horse and buggy. But a closer communion with
animals and nature can only bring us benefits. “By
actual ly focusing on another creature, you can
take that compassion and attention into your owni submiT: one has never really gone ouT for
a proper run unless one has shuffled through a
cornfield in Amish country, dodging a donkey
who’s trying to kick you with its hind legs while
passing gas in your face. That’s where I’ve found
myself on this bright late-September morn-
ing in Peach Bottom, Pa., on a trot with author
Christopher McDougall, his wife Mika and a trio
of asses. McDougall is the author of this century’s
seminal book on running, the 2009 best seller
Born to Run, which tracked an indigenous group
of ultra marathoners from the remote canyons of
northern Mexico; their minimalist style helped
spark the barefoot- running craze. Born to Run has
sold over 3 million copies, popped up in episodes
of Orange Is the New Black and Big Little Lies, and
made McDougall a star on the lecture circuit.
His newest book, Running With Sherman, touts
the benefits of burro racing. Yes, burro racing; run-
ners hold onto a rope attached to a donkey’s halter
and sprint alongside the animal. Sometimes the
donkey cooperates. Other times, it kicks and farts.
McDougall insists this flatulent burro attempting
to punt me across the stalks is actually having a
grand time. I’m not so sure.
Netflix has already optioned the rights to the
book’s story, which begins some four years ago
when McDougall—who moved in 2002 from Phila-
delphia to a farm in Pennsylvania Amish country—
takes in Sherman, a donkey neglected by an animal
hoarder. Sherman arrives with dung-crusted fur,
rotten teeth and hooves “so monstrously over-
grown,” McDougall writes, “they looked like a
witch’s claws.” A friend has to trim them with a
hacksaw. “He was catatonic, stunned and spirit-
less,” McDougall says now. “He looked like a
stuffed animal.”
McDougall determines that if Sherman is going
to survive, he’ll need a mission: training for the
world championship of donkey running, which
takes place in Colorado in less than a year. “Today,
movement-as-medicine is a biological truth for
survivors of cancer, surgery, strokes, heart at-
tacks... you name it,” McDougall writes in Run-
ning With Sherman, which came out on Oct. 15. “So
why wouldn’t it also be true for Sherman, with the
blood of wild African asses in his veins?”
Along the way to the donkey race, a rash of
calamities befall the humans training Sherman:
MCDOUGALL
QUICK FACTS
Old
McDougall
had a ...
On his farm in
Pennsylvania
Amish
country, he
has cats,
chickens,
goats, sheep,
geese, ducks
and donkeys.Get me
rewrite
McDougall
spent a year
writing a
draft of Born
to Run. An
editor told
him to start
over; he spent
another year
reworking it.Weight of the
world
He keeps
a 30-lb.
dumbbell
near his
desk that he
occasionally
pumps
during writing
breaks.TheBrief TIME with ...
Author Christopher
McDougall wrote a
seminal book on running.
Now he turns to donkeys
By Sean Gregory