If you haven't read Ultramarathon Man, you should. It's written by Dean Karnazes, who is arguably the best endurance athlete in the world.
It's futile to compare one's own level of fitness with Dean's, but let's give it a whirl. I run five miles a day, five days a week. That's twenty-five miles a week. In a month, I run about a hundred miles. It takes me about four months to run 350 miles.
Dean Karnazes has run 350 miles straight. Without stopping to sleep. Without stopping to eat. Without stopping. To put this further in perspective, occasionally I drive from Boston to New York or New York to Boston. This is a distance of about 220 miles, and it takes me nearly four hours. And I don't even do that without stopping. Dean Karnazes does this on foot. The distance I run in four months, he runs in four days. I train for months to run marathons; he runs marathons before breakfast.
There is a 199-mile race in California that is meant to be run as a relay, in 12-person teams. Dean Karnazes has run this race solo. He has run it solo and beaten other teams. He has run more than 100 miles to the starting line of this race and then completed the 199 miles. Solo. Without stopping.
Dean Karnazes is the only person who has ever run a marathon to the South Pole (wearing regular running sneakers, not snowshoes), and he has won Badwater, which is billed as "the world's toughest foot race": 135 miles through Death Valley, where temperatures get up to 130 degrees (so hot that the soles of the runners' sneakers melt off unless they run on the reflective white strip on the highway).
He does his best to be modest about all this in his book, but he can't help coming off sounding a little bit arrogant, a right I do not begrudge him at all, because he has got to be the fittest man on earth.
His next feat is to complete 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states. I'm hoping to run the New York City Marathon in November, but if I don't make the cut in the lottery, I might consider running Dean's recreation of the Boston Marathon in October. Just to see him up close. Because...dude.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Run with your heart.
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9 comments:
That post was so good I read it again!
Oh wait, that was cause you posted it twice.
All this proves is that you must check my blog constantly, because I deleted the second entry immediately after I posted it twice, and you must have read it in the five seconds they were both up.
hehe, i must have read it then too, because there were definitely two there when i read it :P
There's a footrace up here up Mount Marathon where you run 3 miles and 3,000 vertical feet (they call it the stairmaster with a view). People come from all over the world to run it. The best do it in 45 minutes, but it takes the average healthy person 3 hours to hike it. Every year people break bones trying to run up and down this mountain. I wonder if Dean's ever done it?
Dude, I would love to do that! Let's do it! I can't believe that we have never completed an endurance event together. Like, hmm, The Amazing Race?
You could totally do it! And don't get your hopes up or anything, but I've been toying with the idea of training for a marathon (how could I not with so much inspiration??). Maybe Cape Cod 2007?
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