One step at a time
by Dan Jones
On a recent sunny afternoon, Dean Karnazes powers up a trail on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California.
This is—literally—a walk in the park for the 59-year-old Costco member, a renowned runner of ultramarathons, races that can stretch 50 to 100 miles or longer and take anywhere from several hours to several days to complete—with the runners resting at the end of each day.
Some longer marathons allow runners to bring along a crew for moral and practical support. While most traditional marathons are run on roads, ultramarathons are run over challenging terrain, such as mountains, forests and deserts.
Karnazes took on his first long one, the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run on California's Sierra Nevada trails, in 1994. Twenty-eight years later, he's still going. In the first part of this year, he was set to cover 321.8 miles in 63 days at seven events, traveling as far as Patagonia, Argentina, for a 100-miler.
Karnazes once said that running an ultramarathon is easy—all you have to do is not stop. He hasn't yet: "I still love it," he says.
Amazing accomplishments
Karnazes, who is married, with two adult children, says he's probably logged more than 100,000 lifetime miles—or about four times around the Earth. He won the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon in California's Death Valley in 2004. He ran 350 continuous miles in just over 80 hours in 2005, and, a year later, conquered 50 marathons, in all 50 U.S. states, in 50 consecutive days. Those types of achievements put him on the list of Time magazine's top 100 most influential people in the world in 2006. Men's Fitness magazine hailed him as one of the fittest men on the planet. Karnazes has claimed an ESPN ESPY award, twice carried the Olympic torch, earned the President's Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition Lifetime Achievement Award and helped raise millions of dollars for charity. His image has appeared on a cereal box (Nature's Path) and his words were printed on a Starbucks cup: "Run when you can, walk when you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up."
For all he's accomplished, Karnazes says his focus is on moving forward. "I don't think about [past accomplishments] too much," he says. "It seems like it's in the past. It was done, it was great, but I never stop exploring."
Good habits, a dogged attitude and the spirit of his ancestors have helped keep him going, Karnazes says, adding that despite being closer to 60 than 50, he feels 35.
