In the brief opening chapter of Born to Run, author Christopher McDougall partially introduces readers to the primary character of his book, a mysterious American man known as Caballo Blanco who had trekked into the Barrancas, or Copper Canyons, of northwestern Mexico years earlier to live among the Indigenous Tarahumara of the region. McDougall describes the Tarahumara as “a near-mythical tribe of ‘Stone Age’ superathletes” and argues that they “may be the healthiest and most serene people on earth, and the greatest runners of all time” (4). Because so few outsiders have witnessed the Tarahumara in action, their athletic prowess in running great distances has largely become known to the outside world only through stories. McDougall had spent days searching the region for Caballo Blanco because McDougall was told that Caballo alone could “translate the ancient secrets of the Tarahumara” to him (4). After narrowly missing him in several different locations, the author finally found him in the lobby of an old desert hotel.

In Chapter 2, McDougall backtracks to explain how and why he was in Mexico to learn about the Tarahumara. It all began, he explains, with a visit to his doctor in 2001 to find out why his foot hurt.