Holy crap!
Ultramarathoner pushes limits of the human body
Dean Karnazes, others like him, seek happiness through pain
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Pondering life on his 30th birthday and finding something lacking, Dean Karnazes staggered home from a night out drinking with friends, put on his gardening shoes and went for a run. A 30-mile run. All night.
When he survived that, he set his sights on a 100-mile race. Then 135 miles. Then 199 miles. Then a marathon at the South Pole. Last summer he completed 262 miles non-stop.
"I wanted to see if I could make it 10 marathons without stopping," Karnazes said. "It took me 75 hours, and the conditions were really tough. It rained for about 20 hours of that."
Now 42 and running a natural foods company in San Francisco, Karnazes has just written a book called "Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner."
He started running home in kindergarten when he decided his mother was too busy looking after his new baby sister to pick him up from school. He ran in high school but gave up for over a decade through college, graduate school and his 20s when he worked in sales for a pharmaceutical company.
"The thing that sparked it was booze," he said in an interview, joking about his conversion to a way of life that seems to have done for him what religion does for many.
"I was in a bar drinking with a bunch of friends, feeling no pain. But I was feeling pain over the course of my life. I didn't feel very satisfied with my job and my career.
"The answer that night seemed to be walk home, put on my gardening shoes -- I didn't have running shoes -- and head south. So I put some money in my pocket and ran all night."
These days he runs 70 to 120 miles a week and regularly runs all night, sometimes putting the kids to bed on a Friday night, setting out for a hot spring 70 miles from home and meeting the family there in the morning.
Pizza on the run
"I'll just set out with my cell phone and credit card and run up to the Napa Valley," he said. The credit card is to help stock him with food since running burns a lot of calories.
"One of the things I love to do is in the middle of the night order pizza. I'll give them my coordinates, where I'll be at a certain time, and they'll deliver a hot pizza."
In his book Karnazes describes in gripping detail the pain and exhaustion of running his first 100-mile race in a mountain range with an elevation change of 38,000 feet -- equivalent to climbing up and down the Empire State Building 15 times.
"The first time I did it was really a journey into the unknown," he said. "I had no idea if I could withstand it."
Despite "pretty severe blisters, losing a toe nail as well as temporarily going blind," he made it.
"I realized when I crossed the finish line that I had learned more about myself in the past 21 hours than I had accumulated in a lifetime."
The next challenge was the Badwater race -- 135 miles across Death Valley to Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States, in July, when temperatures can exceed 130 degrees Fahrenheit.
"You run down the white line on the side of of the road because your shoes will melt if you run on the asphalt."
Next a 199-mile race, which he has now completed 10 years in a row, and which is normally a relay for teams of 12 runners. In 2004 Karnazes went "the extra distance," so to speak. He ran 63 miles to the start and then ran the entire race solo -- for a total of 262 miles or 10 complete marathons.
"The estimate was I burned somewhere around 35,000 calories," he said. Typically he will eat a mix of power bars, salty snacks, pizza, cheesecake and gallons of water.
In 2002 he joined a group of runners to attempt a marathon at the South Pole. The 12-day trip turned into a month, but despite frostbite and ferocious conditions, he made it.
"I was just glad to get out of there alive," he said.
'Why?'
At 5 foot 9 inches and weighing 155 pounds, Karnazes is not built like a typical, lanky marathon runner. His upper body is highly muscular, and his body fat is under 5 percent. He attributes part of his ability to good alignment, which helps his gait and reduces stress injuries.
There are around 12,000 to 15,000 so-called ultramarathon runners in the United States, meaning they run distances of 50 miles and up. But Karnazes said it was difficult to pin down "world records," given each event was so different.
"There's not good documentation ... (but) 75 hours is certainly pushing the limit as far as anybody has gone, as far as the number of hours running," he admits when pressed.
Karnazes enters up to 10 races over 100 miles each year and is aiming for 300 miles. "If it happens, it happens. If not, it doesn't. And will I stop at 300 miles? I don't think so."
He is regularly asked the big question -- "Why?"
"It's just the supreme challenge of seeing how far the human body can be pushed," he said.
His wife, Julie, puts it more simply: "Just look at him: He's so happy."
Nutbag runs 262 miles non-stop
Hey , its better than .262 miles.
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