Is Mark Anti-Running?

Am I anti-running? As I enthusiastically promote my 2025 book, Born To Walk, I’m hearing a few grumblings from the die-hard endurance running community. I acknowledge the incredible camaraderie and social enrichment offered by the community, and the satisfaction of challenging the body to achieve daunting goals such as completing a marathon or triathlon. When I detail the potential adverse effects of what I call “chronic cardio,” I’m simply offering a word of caution and sensibility to the frenzied marketing messaging of the running boom that is often leading to injury, burnout and failed weight loss efforts.

Running is a very difficult and injurious sport that’s appropriate for only 1-2 percent of devoted runners. With very few exceptions, most of us would be much better served (fitter, leaner, healthier and much happier) running far less and, instead, developing our walking skills. For anyone other than a genetically gifted, truly competitive athlete, there is no good reason to run! There is no health benefit available from running that you can’t get in a similar or better (and less injury-prone) form from a host of other activities.

If you absolutely love running and are proficient at it, with a minimal history of injury, I am not here to take that away from you. I simply want to give you permission and encourage you to emphasize walking over running. But if you run because you think you have to, because you assume it’s the ideal form of cardio or weight loss, I will offer up a far better solution here.

Before I continue, I want to offer you a brief philosophical overview to give some context to what might appear to be an anti-running stance. It is my main thesis here that walking is the quintessential human movement pattern and that we all should do more of it, regardless of how fit we are. It is hard-wired into our genes that we should walk extensively every day to promote optimal metabolic, hormonal and musculoskeletal function. We are literally born to walk: to be in near constant low-level movement throughout the day.

The fanciful idea that we are born to run is a gross misinterpretation of evolutionary biology. We humans indeed have an assortment of magnificent physiological attributes that make us well-suited for endurance activity. This is obvious looking at our narrow frames and foot complexes perfectly suited for bipedalism, along with things like our sweat glands to dissipate heat, and even the obscure nuchal ligament in our necks that keeps our heads steady while running. We are adapted to perform occasional great feats of endurance, but not to engage in the extreme modern-day endurance training patterns that lead to burnout and injury.

To anyone who has ever felt guilty about skipping a run, I want to strongly reject the idea that more miles automatically mean more fitness, and that you can push your body through fatigue and pain indefinitely without paying a price. I learned that lesson the hard way, through years of overuse injuries, exhaustion, and the nagging sense that all that effort wasn’t delivering the health I was chasing. It took stepping away from the mileage to discover that I could be fitter, stronger, and happier doing far less.

Here’s what I’d ask you to consider. Make walking the foundation of your fitness, something you do every day and at every opportunity, without needing to schedule it or recover from it. Add a couple of brief strength sessions each week, and an all-out sprint session every week or so. If you love to run, keep running. But run because it brings you joy, at a pace and volume your body can sustain for decades, not because you feel obligated. And if your running keeps leaving you injured, depleted, or no leaner than when you started, treat that as useful information rather than a challenge to push harder.

Our ancestors didn’t train. They walked for miles every day, lifted and carried heavy things, and occasionally ran fast or far when circumstances demanded it. That pattern produced remarkably capable bodies, and it remains the most reliable path I know to lifelong fitness. You don’t have to run to be fit. You just have to walk, and keep walking for the rest of your life.

The best takeaway from evolutionary biology is that we are born to walk, lift heavy things, and sprint once in a while. This is the Primal Blueprint Fitness philosophy that I’ve been communicating for well over a decade. Don’t get me wrong. I was a competitive runner. I still identify as a runner, I ran over a hundred miles a week for several years, and yet I have not run a mile in over 30 years now. At 73, I am as cardiovascularly fit as any of my running boom contemporaries, and probably much stronger and more flexible. I walk often, I sprint once in a while, I lift weights and I play a lot. I am still in the same VO2 Max equivalent for my age group now as I was at age 27, when I finished 5th at the US National Marathon Championships while running 100+ miles a week. Oh, but today I have 20 pounds more lean muscle mass and essentially the same body fat percentage.

So, am I anti-running?

Not at all. I’m pro-walking, and my own experience shows that you can step off the chronic cardio treadmill without giving up the fitness you worked so hard to build. The runner I was at 27 would have been shocked to hear that, and probably a little defensive. But the proof is my own body three decades later: still fit, stronger than I’ve ever been, and no longer battling the overuse injuries that once defined my running life.

If you’re a runner, I invite you to try a simple experiment. For the next 30 days, replace about half of your weekly mileage with walking, keep the runs you truly enjoy, and pay attention to how you feel. Notice your energy through the day, how well you sleep, and how your joints feel when you get out of bed in the morning. I suspect you’ll discover what I did, that the body we were born with thrives on frequent, comfortable movement, and that lifelong fitness is far more enjoyable than the running boom led us to believe. Then decide for yourself how often you really need to run.