The Perfect Runner (2012)
Summary
The Perfect Runner (Clearwater Documentary) celebrates the modern passion for running by exploring our evolution as a distance-running species. This is a big, ambitious documentary, with locations from Ethiopia to Arctic Russia to the Canadian Rockies, featuring some of Canada’s fastest athletes in extreme slow motion, one of the world’s most gruelling ultramarathons, and a slew of fascinating science from cutting-edge researchers. Dr. Daniel Lieberman, “the father of the barefoot running movement”, plays a major role, explaining his research on running biomechanics and the importance of the “natural running” technique.
Review
Beyond the presumptuous title, and the fact that the producers completely ignored the original Running Barefoot website’s (since 1997) contribution to the modern barefoot running movement, and cited Dr. Daniel Lieberman as the “father of the modern barefoot running movement” (a researcher who, until one of our contributors, Jeffrey Ferris, suggested it in 2004, wasn’t even looking at barefoot runners), I enjoyed this documentary, as I do most documentaries about life and living, and how we came to be how and who we are and able to do the things we do, and why we enjoy doing some of the things that, though come quite naturally to us, are a great expenditure of energy, unnecessary for living in a modern world – in other words; why do so many of us have such a strong desire to run, when it’s totally unnecessary for survival any more?
Anyway, lot’s of fascinating footage (pun intended) of people of various cultures running for extremely long distances, on all sorts of terrain, and climates, all day long, etc., with and without shoes.
Worth watching – unfortunately, no information whether it is captioned for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired on their website.
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- The Perfect Runner (2012)
