RUNNING WITH SHERMAN

When Christopher McDougall rescued a crippled donkey from its filthy stall, he had no idea they’d end up running a marathon together

- Will Pavia

WE ARE three men at the edge of a field in Pennsylvania, about to go jogging.

It’s a warm afternoon, the locusts are in full voice and the countryside is lush and gorgeous with steep hills, stony tracks and large open pastures. The only complicating factor that I can see in this little jaunt is that each one of us is going to be hanging onto a donkey.

“When you start with a donkey it’s like zero to 60 immediately,” says Christopher McDougall (57) a writer, renowned authority on jogging and sometime donkey-runner, who’s the leader of our expedition. He’s tall, rangy and shirtless, and has a yellow bandana tied around his shaved head that makes him look vaguely shamanic. He’s holding the halter of a large, frisky Equus asinus called Flower.

I’ve been paired with a smaller one named Matilda. “Matilda is a goer, man,” Chris says. I think he means it encouragingly. We’re by the gate, pressed against the fence by our respective running partners. A friend of Chris’, a fit-looking teenager named Jack Boomsma, is behind me holding the lead of a small grey donkey named Sherman.

Sherman is the hero of this story, a donkey who’s achieved greatness in spite of his disadvantaged upbringing.

He was rescued from a hoarder’s barn, his hooves hideously misshapen. They feared he’d die. Chris taught the donkey to run a marathon.

At the time, Chris’ elder daughter had been asking for a donkey for her 10th birthday. They live about an hour and a half outside Philadelphia in a beautiful log cabin overlooking a river. When Chris saw the place on a property website he couldn’t understand why it was so affordable. The estate agent explained that it was deep in Amish country, too far from the madding crowd or a grocery store for most young city couples trying to find a home.