Born to Run is a true story and as such, the characters in the book are real people. This post is a sort of a Google-ey “Where are they now?” for many of those who played a part in the book.

• Christopher McDougall
  Chris has been happily bouncing around the country promoting Born to Run. He’s got an affable goofiness and seems genuinely filled with joy when he talks about his journey in writing the book.Chris spoke at TEDxPennQuarter in July 2010:
  Christopher McDougall – REINVENTING RunningIn 2009 Google invited Chris to to speak, both in CA and NYC, as part of the Google Talks series:
  Chris McDougall @ Google California (October 16, 2009)
  Chris McDougall @ Google New York (October 22, 2009)

  Chris is also blogging.

• Caballo Blanco (Micah True)
  Caballo organizes the Copper Canyons Ultra-Marathon and leads what can only be called adventure tours of the Copper Canyons at caballoblanco.com.
• Barefoot Ted McDonald
  Ted, of course, has a blog: Barefoot Ted’s Adventures. He also started the Minimalist Runner Google Group and is active on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.In March 2010, Google invited Ted to speak as part of Talks@Google.As an aside, I loved how in the book Chris set Caballo Blanco and Barefoot Ted as the Yin and Yang of natural running.
• Eric Orton
  Eric was one of Chris’s trainers from Chapter 27. He leads the online running community Running With Eric. The site has instructional videos and many well-informed discussions. Eric’s personal training and coaching business is at Train with Eric.
• Ken Mierke
  Ken is the head coach at Fitness Concepts. The introduction to Ken’s Evolution Running video can be watched online where he use different systems of working out as weights and exercise bikes, and also how to get  legalized steroids for improved results.
• Dr. Ruth Heidrich
  Dr. Ruth is the nutrionist, triathlete and cancer-survivor Chris spoke with in Chapter 27 (salad for breakfast? on page 210) and one seriously inspiring woman.
• Scott Jurek
  Scott is active on Facebook and Twitter, he also has a promotional site and blog.
• Luis Escobar
  Runner and photographer, Luis posts his running photos at All We Do is Run.
• Joe Vigil
  Legendary Coach Vigil appears in a few short videos which are worth watching. The first, which Chris referenced on page 94, is his parable about The Goddess of Wisdom and Goddess of Wealth. Another inspirational clip is Great Coaches-Olympic Distance Coach Joe Vigil. That appears to be an outtake from the documentary The Long Green Line, which is well worth watching (it’s on Hulu).
• Dennis Bramble and David R. Carrier
  Dr. Bramble and David R Carrier are professors of Biology at the University of Utah. Dr. Carrier’s research is focused on the interrelationship of animal movement and evolution. Dr. Bramble has recently been focused on human evolution and our human capacity for physical endurance.
• Daniel Lieberman
  Dr. Lieberman is a Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University where he leads the Harvard Skeletal Biology Lab. Together with co-author Dennis Bramble, he has published a number of scientific papers, the latest has been frequently cited as contributing to a scientific foundation for barefoot running. Since his 2010 paper was published, he’s become something of a “science rockstar,” including being dubbed The Barefoot Professor in a video by the Journal Nature.
• Louis Liebenberg
  Dr. Liebenberg is the South African mathematician who ran down a kudu with the Kalahari Bushmen in Africa. His 1990 Book, The Art of Tracking, the Origin of Science is currently out of print (considering the only used copy I could find recently sold for $250, someone might want to consider reprinting this). In 2008 he published “The relevance of persistence hunting to human evolution” in The Journal of Human Evolution. Dr. Liebenberg is the Managing Director of CyberTracker and has a semi-public Facebook page.
• Billy Barnett
  Billy’s living in Hawaii, here’s his personal blog.
• Norawas De Rarámuri (Friends of the Tarahumara)
  This is a non-profit created to support the Rarámuri culture.

Several other people from the book are online, but I chose not to link them out of respect for their apparent desire to keep their private lives private. If someone mentioned in the book isn’t here, it’s because I guessed they wouldn’t have wanted to be here. (If that’s you and I’m wrong, let me know)

I also wanted to comment on an unintentionally poetic edit made to the book’s cover photo. In Louis Escobar’s original image, Billy “bonehead” Barnett is standing next to a seated Caballo Blanco. Somewhere along the book’s journey to print, Caballo was photoshopped out, vanishing, perhaps appropriately, into the sky above the Barrancas del Cobre. Barefoot Ted posted the original photo.

The Japanese release of Born to Run uses the original photo with a restored Caballo.