Christopher McDougall

And what Plutarch taught them is this: Heroes care. True heroism, as the ancients understood, isn’t about strength, or boldness, or even courage. It’s about compassion.

Heroism isn’t some mysterious inner virtue, the Greeks believed; it’s a collection of skills that every man and woman can master so that in a pinch, they can become a Protector.

Crete has weeds growing in every stony crack; but unlike most places, Cretans devour them. Weeds of all stripe—dandelion, purslane, chicory, sorrel—are picked and braised and tossed together in a peppery mix called horta. With a citrusy squirt of lemon and a little olive oil for fat and flavor, horta is a nutritional powerhouse of iron, calcium, omega-3 fatty acids, plus an alphabet soup of vitamins. For a man on the run, it was a life saver.

‘Do you know the healthiest diet in the world?’ he asked. ‘The Mediterranean?’ ‘Right. Do you know where it’s from?’ ‘Greece?’ ‘Close,’ he said. ‘Crete.’

All the strength, speed, and suppleness you need, you already have. You just need to release it.

I kept thinking about Eric’s advice—’If it feels like work, you’re working too hard.’

‘To move into the lead means making an act requiring fierceness and confidence,’ Roger Bannister once noted. ‘But fear must play some part ... no relaxation is possible, and all discretion is thrown to the wind.’

And the cost of those injuries? Fatal disease in epidemic proportions. ‘Humans really are obligatorily required to do aerobic exercise in order to stay healthy, and I think that has deep roots in our evolutionary history,’ Dr. Lieberman said. ‘If there’s any magic bullet to make human beings healthy, it’s to run.’

Ultra god Scott Jurek summed up the Young Guns’ unofficial creed with a quote from William James he stuck on the end of every e-mail he sent: ‘Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never pushed through the obstruction.’