Ultra Marathon Man
In running 1,127km from San Francisco to San Diego, Dean Karnazes has picked up a few people along the way. There was the man last week who, after finding Karnazes running along a beach promenade, decided to join him. He ran a full marathon before stopping.
Another day, while waiting to cross a street in California, Karnazes saw a good friend who promptly parked her car and proceeded to run in street clothes. She had run a half-marathon the day before.
Most people, on their runs, find loose change and discarded candy bar wrappers. As Karnazes made his way through the historic 21 California missions, he found a new tennis racquet and a Tiffany's charm. Then again, on yet another day where he ran into a set of friends who just happened to be out for a stroll, Karnazes, 45, covered 109km.
A New York Times best-selling author of Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All Night Runner and a ranking on Time's Top 100 Most Influential People in the World list, Karnazes has been hailed as the fittest man alive. There are profiles of the California native in Playboy and Wired, an appearance on the David Letterman Show and a sold-out movie screening last Thursday about his feat of completing 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days in 50 states. During those marathons, there were also runners who accompanied Karnazes, including his daughter who ran 10km on her 10th birthday and his son who ran nine miles on his ninth birthday.
There are stories of tequila, of heaps of junk food and of surviving on little sleep. Equally there are stories of the so-called Neanderthal diet, of heaps of granola (and not just because the company's a sponsor) and of being an Olympic torch bearer during the torch's only stop in the US.
First, however, there is Karnazes making his first trip to the Gobi desert as part of his goal to cross four deserts this year - the Atacama, the Gobi, the Sahara and the 'last desert' in Antarctica. He is attempting the feat along with Kenneth Johansson of Sweden and Australia-based South African Paul Liebenberg.