Ultra Marathon Man

I first heard about Dean Karnazes while reading though a Runner's World magazine, they were doing a story about his latest accomplishment of running 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states.  The article was interesting, but it wasn't until a family vacation last summer when I was talking to one of my cousins about Dean's book Ultra Marathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner, that I really got interested.

My cousin was telling me about the book and some of Dean's accomplishments and how inspiring he thought the book was.  Well about a month after that vacation I was looking through for an audio book to download, I like to listen to them during my commute to work and back, I came across Dean's book.  I listened to the first four chapters and got motivated and went out for a run.  I had only run about 3 times in the past month and a half, but I was in somewhat good shape from a previous marathon that I ran in June.  This was around the middle of Sept.  

I guess the runner's high and the inspiration from the book really hit me and I ended up going for 23.5 miles.  I had to walk most of the last 5 mile, they were quite painful actually. But it was an amazing experience to be able to get a little glimpse of being able to push your body to do something you did not think you would be able to do.  Which is the theme of Dean's book, being able to achieve what is thought to be impossible and taking advantage of every second of life.

I strongly recommend this book to everyone, runner or not.  Dean has just published another book about his experience running the 50 marathons, I'll have to post an entry about that one later, it was good but not nearly as good and this book.  

Some of Dean's next goals are to run 300 miles non-stop and run from L.A. to Hawaii in what looks to be a big inflatable hamster ball.  Go read the book and be inspired to do what you though you couldn't.