I'm a Trial and Error Learner

My dad and brother are in town, and last night I took my brother hiking on some fairly rocky mountain bike trails. I wore my Vibram FiveFingers and stubbed my toes a couple of times. I knew when I hurt the middle toe and hopped around going, "Ow! Ow!" for a few seconds, but don't know when I hurt the pinky. They hurt to the touch, but seem to be OK for walking (although the soles of my feet are sore from all the rocky walking).



When [Caballo Blanco] arrived in the Barrancas, he decided to chuck logic and trust that the Tarahumara knew what they were doing. He wasn’t going to take the time to try figuring out their secrets; he’d just tackle it swimming-hole style, by leaping in and hoping for the best.

He got rid of his running shoes and began wearing nothing but sandals. He started eating pinole for breakfast (after learning how to cook it like oatmeal with water and honey), and carrying it dry with him in a hip bag during his rambles through the canyons. He took some vicious falls and sometimes barely made it back to his hut on his own two feet, but he just gritted his teeth, soaked his wounds in the icy river water, and chalked it up as an investment. “Suffering is humbling. It pays to know how to get your butt kicked,” Caballo said. “I learned pretty fast you’d better have respect for the Sierra Madre, ‘cause she’ll chew you up and crap you out.”

By his third year, Caballo was tackling trails that were invisible to the non-Tarahumara eye. With butterflies in his stomach, he’d push himself over the lip of jagged descents that were longer, steeper, and more serpentine than any black-diamond ski run. He’d slip-scramble-sprint downhill for miles, barely in control, relying on his canyon-honed reflexes but still awaiting the pop of a knee cartilage, the rip of a hamstring, the fiery burn of a torn Achilles tendon he knew was coming any second.

From Born to Run

(And: http://through-the-prism.blogspot.com/2006/08/i-love-trail-running.html)