Marathon - Dean Karnazes

With just 3.6% body
fat, 48-year-old
Dean Karnazes has
been told by doctors
that he has the
physique of a
20-year-old
12 the herald magazine 16.07.11

IntervIew
Words Susan Swarbrick
Photographs Paul Stuart
‘
Crossing through the wall
becomesmoredifficult and
challenging, but the elation
gets more intense. Thehighs
get higher and the lows get
lower. It’s awild ride
Inside themind of Dean Karnazes – the ultramarathon man
Why do we run? IfDean
Karnazes had adollar
for every time he’sbeen
asked that question, he
could comfortably retire
and put his feet up. Not
that he would want to. Karnazes does not
do sedentary. Nor does he do moderation.
This is aman who, in recent years, has
completed 50 marathons in 50 days. He
has run without stopping for 80 hours and
44 minutes, covering some 350 miles. And
he has traversed some of the world’s most
treacherous landscapes on foot, including
the Gobi, Sahara and Atacama deserts, the
Australian outback and Antarctica.
In May,the LosAngeles-born ultra runner
completed an almost 3000-mile, 75-day
challenge that took him from Disneyland in
Anaheim, California, to NewYork City.Days
after crossing the finishing line, he was
preparing his next adventure: to complete
amarathon in every country in the world
within ayear.
Bearing all this in mind, Ifear it may be
difficult to pin the 48-year-old down long
enough to interview.Infact, as we settle at
atable in the leafy garden of his London
hotel, he admits it feels alien to be sitting
down.“Inever sit once throughout the day,”
he says. “Even my home office is set up at
waist level so Ican stand. Itype on my
computer standing up, the same with
phone calls.”
Thankfully,heispolite enough to remain
parked on the seat for the next hour.
Karnazes – nicknamed the ultramarathon
man – has just published his third book,
Run! 26.2 Stories Of Blisters And Bliss,
charting the highs and lows of his remarkable
life.So why does he run? Partly because
of what he describes as the “magic in the
misery”. His achievements may appear
effortless but pain, he says, is adelicious
lure.Never does he feel more alive than when
“struggling to persevere against insurmountable
odds and untold adversity”.
It’sanintriguing philosophy.Some would
say he is off his head, amasochist,Iventure.
Karnazes smiles softly. “We have been so
conditioned in Western society to be at our
happiest when avoiding pain,”hesays.“We
aspire to live in comfort, but we are so
comfortable, we are miserable. More and
more people realise that perhaps this life of
comfort and convenience doesn’t get their
blood pumping or bring them the happiness
they thought it would.”
Dressed in athin vest and shorts,Karnazes
is ruggedly handsome with intense dark
eyes. His muscles appear to have been
chiselled from granite.Thick veins throb on
his arms and legs, and his skin isadeep
conker brown. As he runs ahand through
his thick curly hair, his bicep bulges with
mesmerising power.
Yet hedoesn’t profess to be anything
special.“Youjust put one foot in front of the
other,” he says, when asked the secret of his
athletic prowess.“Running is agood lesson
in simply being in the moment. In life, we
can get ahead of ourselves, which can be
demoralising.Those times when you think:
‘I’m so tired, how am Igoing to get to the
finish?’ Don’tthink about the finish, just be
in the present.”
Most mornings on his epic trans-American
run, his feet ached as soon as they hit the
16.07.11 theheraldmagazine 13

interview
ground.Each day,though,he would repeat
the same two words: “Just go.” “Youdon’t
have to go fast,”hesays now.“Youjust have
to go. How do you run 3000 miles across
the country? One step at atime. The same
way you get out of bed in the morning.”
Karnazes didn’t start long-distance
running until well into adulthood when, on
the evening of his 30th birthday, hehit an
existential crisis. While some men might
buy asportscar or get atattoo, Karnazes
crept into the garage as his wife slept
upstairs, pulled on gardening shoes in lieu
of trainers and started running through the
darkened streets of San Francisco. Thirty
miles and seven hours later he had found
his vocation. He stopped at aphone and
called his wife, asking her to pick him up.
That was 18 years ago and since then,
Karnazes has lost track of the number of
marathons he’s run (“when Ihit 100 I
stopped counting”). In fact, these days a
mere 26.2 miles isn’t enough to sate his
appetite. He regularly runs to the start line
including, on one occasion, 100 miles down
the Pacific Coast Highway to begin the Los
Angeles Marathon.
Marathon runners talk about
hitting the infamous wall at
19 or 20 miles. When does
Karnazes encounter his?
“Usually around mile 30,”he
says. “I not only hit the wall, Ihit multiple
walls. The further you get into an endurance
event, the walls become closer
together.Crossing through the wall becomes
more difficult and challenging, but the
elation once you get through it gets more
intense. The highs get higher and the lows
get lower.It’sawild, wild ride.”
There are hazards of the job. The first
time Karnazes ran the gruelling Leadville
Trail 100 series through Colorado’s Rocky
Mountains, he had to drop out after the high
altitude caused his brain to swell dangerously.Another
year, inthe Western States
100-mile Endurance race through California’sSierra
Nevada, he suffered nyctalopia
– night blindness – and had to battle to
complete the race, crawling on his hands
and knees at one point.
Those weren’t even his toughest races.
While attempting his first 135-mile Badwater
Ultramarathon through California’s
Death Valley – where temperatures regularly
top 49C – avicious bout of vomiting
and diarrhoea left Karnazes so dehydrated
he began to hallucinate.“Isaw this old miner
in front of me, a49er, with agold pan,
mumbling: ‘Water, water,’”herecalls. “I
poured some water from my bottle into the
pan only to hear it sizzling on the ground.
There was no-one there. After the miner I
saw dinosaurs scurrying across the desert.
It got crazy.”
He dropped out of Badwater that year but
returned in 1996 to finish 10th. He won the
race on his fifth attempt in 2004. His failures,
he stresses, are just as important as
his triumphs. “I learn more from failing
than succeeding. People need not be afraid
to fail. Isay: fail spectacularly. Take big
risks and fail big – then celebrate and learn
from that. If you don’t fail sometimes you
are not pushing yourself hard enough.”
Karnazes tries to include his family in his
outlandish endeavours. His wife Julie, a
dentist, their two children, along with
14 the herald magazine 16.07.11
From top: Karnazes in New York in May after running across the US
for 75 consecutive days; in Hyde Park, London with Herald Magazine
writer Susan Swarbrick; and flanking Michelle Obama outside the
White House en route to New York photographs: rex features
Karnazes’s parents, regularly tag along to
man his support vehicle,atrusty winnebago
nicknamed “the mother ship”.
“Itry to involvethem as much as possible,”
he says. “I get up at 3am to run so Idon’t
miss out on spending time with my family.
I’ll go out and do along run, maybe amarathon,
then come home and fixbreakfast for
the kids and get them off to school. They
come first.”
Of Greek ancestry, Karnazes grew up in
Los Angeles, the eldest of three children.
His father, affectionately known as Popou,
likes to claim the family originally hails
from the same village as Pheidippides, the
legendary Athenian herald whose story
inspired marathon races. “I tell him: ‘Dad,
we’re from Los Angeles,’” says Karnazes.
Popou also has amaverick streak. Two
years ago the 75-year-old challenged
himself to play 96 rounds of golf in 48 states
within 96 days. He completed 108 rounds.
“Obsession? That’s ashared family trait,”
confirms Karnazes. “My dad inspires me
more than anyone.”
Karnazes describes himself as an introvert
by nature.“There is apsychological analysis
scale called the Myers-Briggs test they give
to alot of high-level executives. Ihave
scored the highest introvert reading they
have seen. I’m ahermit, basically.”
For all he puts his body through, he’s
never had along-term injury. “I have been
‘
If youdon’t fail
sometimes then
youare not pushing
yourself hardenough’
tested in every imaginable way, from gait
analysis to my VO2max [aerobic capacity],
lactic acid levels and blood chemistry,and
the doctors have all told me Ihave the body
of a20-year-old.”
Is he simply physiologicallyblessed, then?
Karnazes suddenly looks bashful: “I’m an
average guy.Ilove what I’m doing. If someone
loves what they are doing they can excel.
Anyone who is willing to sacrifice, commit
and dedicate themselves the way Ihave,
they can do it.”
Such is his peak physical fitness,Karnazes
has aresting heart rate of 39 beats per
minute (a typical adult’sis60-80 bpm) and
3.6% body fat, compared to the healthy male
average of 10-20%. During his journey
across America he burned through an estimated
467,000 calories, the downside of
his leanness meaning he couldn’t tap into
fat stores for fuel. “I was burning 500-600
calories per hour which meant, if Iwas
running 10 hours aday,Ineeded an additional
6000 calories otherwise Iwould have
suffered muscle atrophy. Some days Iran
for 15 hours, which is alot of food.”
Early in his running career, Karnazes
was notorious for ordering pizza on the
road to devour as he ran. These days, he
has sharpened up his diet. “I used to eat a
lot ofjunk food,”hesays. “But right now I
don’t eat any refined foods, no packaged
stuff. It’s pretty much all natural and
organic foods. During the run Itried to stick
to that diet. Iate full-fat yogurt, lots of
berries, bananas and almonds.”
No pizza? Karnazes throws back his

interview
head and laughs. “I’ll never live that
down,” hesays. “I probably had about a
dozen pizzas delivered to me out on the
road. People could track my progress live
on GPS so Iwould come round acorner and
there would be apizza delivery guy standing
there saying: ‘Dave from Cincinnati sent
you a pizza.’ So I did eat pizza – at least a
piece.”
With each challenge completed, Karnazes
immediately looks to the next. Crossing the
finish line in NewYork was amoment tinged
with disappointment. “When Igot into the
studio and there was the big celebration,
that was the low point,” hesays. “It was
the journey that made the magic, not the
finish line.”
His next big adventure – completing a
marathon within every country in one year
– is scheduled to begin in November 2012
and finish with the NewYork City marathon
in November 2013. “The UN recognises
204 countries and Iwant to include North
Korea and Afghanistan, places where Westerners
typically don’t have access to,”
Karnazes says.
Isn’theconcerned about the risks?“Scared
s***less,” he laughs.“The travel will be tough,
particularlyinAsia and Africa where things
are so spread out. It’s going to be trains,
planes, automobiles, rickshaws, donkeys,
even swimming in some places, just to get
in and out. I’ll be sure to time my run in
Scotland when there are no midges.”
With the interview wrapped, Karnazes
invites me to pull on my running shoes and
join him for ajog through Hyde Park. Ijump
Karnazes is preparing to run amarathon in every country within ayear
at the chance to run amile (and abit) in his
shoes. As the afternoon sun beats down,
London is acauldron of humidity.There is
ahazy mirage on the tarmac path ahead
and soon I’m in my own personal Badwater,
perspiration beading on my forehead and
collecting in slick pools under my arms.
Karnazes smiles sympathetically as my
face turns puce, kindly offering to hail us a
taxi back to the hotel. But we carry on. As
we pass the Natural History Museum, a
woman shrieks: “Oh my God! You’re Dean
Karnazes. Can Iget my picture taken?”
Though startled, Karnazes smiles and
duly obliges.We run on but the deer-in-theheadlights
expression returns when an
elderly gent calls out:“Saw you on television.
Good luck with your future endeavours.”
“You get used to it,” says Karnazes, his
expression somewhere between bemused
and embarrassed. Another few steps and
an American man shouts: “I’m your biggest
fan. Ilove you, man!”
After the fourth, fifth and sixth encounter
Ilearn that it’s best just to wave and keep
running. Ican see why Karnazes craves the
solitude of the remote trails near his California
home.By the end of our run Karnazes
is as cool as acucumber,while I’m sweating
like beetroot.
Spotting the hotel, Imake adash for the
shade, unintentionally leaving Karnazes
eating dust in my wake. It’s only as he
catches up that Irealise what’s happened.
“Wow,” he says. “Youbeat the ultramarathon
man.”And Ireally did. n
Run! 26.2 Stories Of Blisters And Blissby
Dean Karnazes is published by Allen&
Unwin, priced £10.99.
16.07.11 theheraldmagazine 17