Hard Life Has Made Runners Formidable

They’re corn farmers from isolated Indian villages barely surviving drought, but they’re trouncing exquisitely-trained American athletes in the world’s most grueling marathons.

High in Mexico’s rugged Sierra Madres, Tarahumara Indians have run in marathon races for the thousands of years they’ve coaxed corn and beans from rocky soil.

Now, since an American couple from Tucson, Ariz., began sponsoring them, they’re sweeping top prizes in 100-mile ultra-marathons in the United States.

They took seven of the top eleven places in last summer’s ultramarathon in Leadville, Colo. - among the most challenging. This June, the couple hopes to enter them in the Western States race in Lake Tahoe, Calif., considered the most competitive.

“There’s nothing like them,” said Jamie Williams, an ultra-marathoner who has paced them. “These guys don’t train and they can beat the socks off these Olympic-trained athletes with special diets, massages, acupuncture.”

In traditional races between villages, Tarahumaras run without stopping for up to two days. Some of their ultra-marathons cover more than 150 miles. The runners burn 10,000 calories in 24 hours, close to the limit of human exertion, according to studies.

Their stamina may be due to physiology; they metabolize slowly and use oxygen efficiently, according to studies. Or, it could stem from prolonged conditioning since the runners, who don’t train regularly, compete in races from childhood.

“It’s amazing to see these 6- and 7-year-old kids running for hours,” said Favian Lopez, a Mexican relief worker in Choguita.

“Their bodies and minds haven’t been affected by the modern world,” Williams said. “They can completely block out pain.”

Either way, it was only a matter of time before someone saw the potential. Three years ago, Kitty Williams and her husband, Richard Fisher, who had a longtime interest in the Tarahumaras, did. Williams was a former ultra-marathoner. With Fisher, she operates a company that runs wilderness tours that take people to the area of Mexico where the Tarahumaras live.

They entered five Tarahumaras in the 1992 Leadville-100, but all of them dropped out in mid-race. Williams still isn’t sure why, but their wonder at the Colorado mountains may have been a cause. At the 30-mile point, a few were found sitting at the edge of the trail gazing at the view.

The next year, the Fishers entered six runners from different villages to create a sense of traditional competition. Victoriano Churro, at 55 years old, took first place before hundreds of American and international contestants.

“I think they were competing with each other, and the Gringos got passed in the competition,” Williams said.

Last August, only Ann Trason of California, one of the world’s top ultra-marathoners, managed to keep up with the fastest Tarahumaras at Leadville.

She came in second, behind Juan Herrera, 25, from Choguita and in front of Martimiano Cervantes, 42, also from Choguita.

“I passed her but then she cast a spell on my knee,” Cervantes said with all seriousness. Tarahumaras believe witchcraft is used in racing.

Herrera, who smokes and runs once every few weeks at most, was nonchalant. “I knew I was going to win,” he said.

Despite the sneaker controversy.

Since the shoe manufacturing firm Rockport sponsored them, Herrera and the other Tarahumaras wore Rockports at the start of the race. But they normally run in sandals made of tire treads, since those are the only shoes they can afford.

When their feet started sweating as they ran the hot Colorado hills, they took off the Rockports and put their tire treads back on.

“Rockport’s not sponsoring us this year,” Williams said. “It’s tough for a shoe company to sell shoes when they wear rubber tires. We tried to get a tire company to sponsor us but they wouldn’t do it.”

Last week, the Fishers were in Choguita helping a film crew make a documentary on the Tarahumaras and giving out corn meal in payment for winning the U.S. races.

At midweek, the men of the village painted their bodies white in anticipation of Easter and began dancing in slow graceful rhythms. They didn’t stop for several days, and in the dead of night, the hollow banging of tambourines could be heard.

By Good Friday, they had started drinking copious amounts of corn wine. Men and women got staggering drunk.

John Childs, an anthropologist living in Choguita, said they drink to relieve boredom. And, most likely, to forget the misery that no one sees when they run in American races in their graceful strides that make them appear as if they are floating over the ground.

In the last two years, there’s been scant rain for the crops, and at least hundreds died from diseases related to malnutrition.

Distrust is typical among Mexico’s Indians, who were massacred during the Spanish Conquest and who have languished in poverty ever since. They’re wary of the white couple scouting runners.

There are no cash winnings in the Leadville race. But the story going around is that a miniature car filled with gold coins was the prize, and that Fisher took it.

“Herrera was waiting and waiting for the little car with gold and it never came,” said one villager, who would not give his name.

“In traditional races, there’s betting and the winning village gains pretty substantially,” Williams said. “So I think it’s hard for them to understand that people run just to get a trophy.”