Book Review: Out of Thin Air by Michael Crawley

Elite African distance runners have what us marketers call a “differentiation problem” in the western world. Many of the top marathoners hailing from Kenya, Ethiopia, and other nearby countries get lumped into the jumbled mass of “East African Runners.” Even the most ardent followers of the sport will probably struggle to name over five current runners from those countries and will do an even worse job at naming what country marathoning stars such as Eliud Kipchoge (Kenya), Kenesisa Bekele (Ethiopia), and Dennis Kimetto (Kenya) come from. I’m not here to lament this state of affairs but rather note that there is much more we can learn about and from these runners. It seems like Anthropology professor and 2:20 marathoner Michael Crawley agrees with this assessment, and his book Out of Thin Air provides an inside look at the running culture of Ethiopia with lessons for pavement/trail/grass pounders everywhere. Although Kenya has traditionally been seen as the hotbed for marathoning talent, Ethiopia has been producing international running superstars since Abebe Bikila won an Olympic gold medal running barefoot through Rome’s cobbled streets in 1960. Crawley does a fine job at providing a readable ethnography of this Ethiopian running community.

Out of Thin Air is essentially a sister book to Adharanand Finn’s Running with the Kenyans with a more academically meaty bibliography (in an anthropological sense). Kenya has much higher rates of English speaking and has developed some semblance of a running tourism industrial complex catering to curious journalists and wealthy runners looking to learn from some of the best runners on the planet. Ethiopia is a tougher nut to crack for outsiders but it is quite interesting in its own right. The country is the only African nation with its own alphabet, the first to adopt Christianity, and the only one to successfully fight against colonialism. On the running front, it also boasts twice as many marathoning Olympic gold medals as Kenya. Crawley embedded himself in an Ethiopian running community around the capital city of Addis Ababa for fifteen months, learning the local Amharic language and frequently training and racing with his subjects. This participatory angle allows Crawley to get to know his subjects on a much deeper level than what we usually get on such athletes, many of whom are not fluent in English. Crawley’s own outstanding running abilities go a long way towards endearing himself with the runners and getting them to open up to him. Anyone who has been on a group run before knows that there are few better ways to quickly develop a bond with someone than the shared experience of a long run.

Ethiopian runners somewhat paradoxically balance the concept of idil, or luck bestowed from God, with the notion that they can create their own luck through hard work. Ethiopian days technically start at 6am and runners frequently began their runs as early as 3 or 4am to beat the traffic and/or heat and cram in workouts around work schedules. There is a strong collectivist ethos among the runners as well. They believe that runners can feed off of others’ energy and focus on matching pace and cadence. Running watches are not terribly common among runners, but when they are used they are often shared across athletes and used to monitor the pace of the entire group. There is also a strong sense of confidence and hope among the runners. This is a rarefied running community, where a runner with a 2:05 marathon would say that they ran “...and five” because the notion of a marathon over three hours is unfathomable to them. While race glory only accrues to individuals, the “condition” or fitness necessary to achieve those goals only comes through grueling group training runs.

Crawley befriends and writes about many runners during his time in Ethiopia. Some go on to lucrative wins in foreign marathons and half marathons, others fizzle out and leave the sport, and many fall somewhere between those two extremes. This allows Crawley to provide a fuller picture of the Ethiopian running “community” rather than needing to extrapolate from detailed profiles from a handful of in-depth interviews. From an anthropological perspective I would imagine that this is best practice. But one drawback to the lay reader is that there is no climax or big race being built to that the reader is highly emotionally invested in. The author does travel to a half marathon in Turkey with some Ethiopians he is particularly close with near the end but we still don't know them well enough to feel that strong a connection with them. Still, we get a first-hand experience of running in an elite international running event, which is pretty neat.

So what lessons can running readers take away from Ethiopians? I think the biggest lessons deal with the value of group training, focusing more on “maximal gains” and tough workouts and putting less stress on the smaller stuff, and running with a sense of feel and not being slaves to Garmin splits (though Ethiopians were sticklers to adhering to the overall time allocated for a workout). Easy runs are intended to be truly easy, though virtually every easy run featured strides afterwards to inject some speed and “springiness” into every workout. Ethiopians also believe that certain environments are imbued with specific characteristics and they often sought out different routes to ensure they were deriving the full range of benefits from different altitudes and terrains. Finally, the runners all showcased considerable confidence (earned through punishing work) and always had goals they were striving for. None of these are particularly earth-shattering, but it is always good to have them reinforced and learn more about one of the biggest hotbeds of marathoning talent in the world while doing so. Long-distance training can be a slog and there are only so many ways Crawley can make a long run sound interesting (but he tries his best) but Out of Thin Air shines a light on Ethiopian running culture and brings the country’s running scene to life and shares how we can apply Ethiopian running philosophy to our own training. It’s a solid read overall and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for similar fare to Running with the Kenyans.

7/10