“I finally said to myself, really?”Īn Associated Press editor in Madrid hired him as a correspondent, despite a clear lack of qualifications. “I was on the fence about it because I really liked these courts, and my pickup game on South Street,” says McDougall. He declined a legal life, and once he realized his fondness for recreational hoops was impeding a return to Europe, he hustled back overseas. After rowing for Harvard in the mid-1980s, he taught English in Spain for a few years before returning home to Philadelphia, where he played too much pickup basketball and considered law school. McDougall didn’t rush his way to nonfiction superstardom. “Breath in, breath out, man,” McDougall says. Tall and fit, McDougall’s bare-chested – though not barefoot – and wearing a red bandana. “If he wants to walk, he’s going to walk,” says McDougall, 57, during a break in our donkey workout. Sherman approached running on his own terms, so a stubborn donkey taught McDougall how to adjust to those around him. Donkey running offers therapy for a depressed college student, and happiness for kids with autism and epilepsy. Despite these painful hiccups, Sherman and his brethren wind up helping their handlers just as much, if not more, than they aid the animals.
“So why wouldn’t it also be true for Sherman, with the blood of wild African asses in his veins?”Īlong the way to the donkey race, a rash of calamities befall on the humans training Sherman: a broken hand, foot, and vertebrae – none caused by a donkey – even a broken marriage.
“Today, movement-as-medicine is a biological truth for survivors of cancer, surgery, strokes, heart attacks … you name it,” McDougall writes in Running with Sherman. McDougall determines that if Sherman is going to survive, he’ll need a mission: training for the world championship of donkey running, which takes place in Colorado in less than a year.
0 kommentar(er)
