Running from Zombies

Dean Karnazes follows up ‘Ultramarathon Man’ with an account of his 50/50 challenge – to run 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 US states.

50/50 - Dean Karnazes

The full title of the book is ’50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days – and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance!’ which seems a little contradictory to some of the books’ content. Karnazes himself says how genes play a major role in the ability to run massive distances, and the science-y bit at the end backs it up. However, there is still an attempt to teach the reader something in the form of textbook style boxes. These cover anything from post-marathon tips to good marathons to run in order to qualify for Boston. Unfortunately, if you’re already a runner there isn’t a whole lot of new information here.

The rest of the book is pretty much what the title suggests. Karnazes has a plan to run in various states as part of a holiday with his family, an idea that seems to get hijacked by The North Face, who turn it into a roadshow/giant advert. It’s obviously more than that – not only an amazing feat for Karnazes but also an inspiration to the people he meets along the way (and a fundraiser for his charity). By the end, however, you do get the impression that he’d have rather just done it his way. The regimented schedule and constant PR is obviously not what he wants to do…supported by the fact that when he’s finished his last marathon he goes for a run on his own, without a map and a time limit.

The book itself is just an account of the 50 marathons, broken up every now and then with various thoughts and musings from the journey:

“Upon receiving this information, I found myself wondering why so many people like Kris are drawn to marathons and other such challenges these days. I can’t help thinking that the phenomenon is in part a largely unconscious backlash against comfort culture and the easy life. Heated seats and online shopping and robot vacuum cleaners have created a void that we’re all sensing. Our modern comforts and conveniences have accumulated to the point that they have stopped making us feel better and started making us feel worse. Some primal instinct lurking deep inside is trying to tell us that what is needed is a good, hard sweat – some struggle in our lives, some physical challenge.”

I must admit I didn’t really get on with this one as well as I did with Ultramarathon Man. Whether it was the book, the fact I was having trouble with my running as I was reading it, or a combination of the two, I found myself leaving it half way in order to read something else before coming back to it.

This is, quite literally, Paula Radcliffe’s running career from age 4 onwards. While the athletics is the obvious focus of the book, and many races have been ommitted as uninteresting, inconsequental, or just to save space, it’s still nearly 400 pages long. The narrative attempts to culminate in the Athens Olympics in 2004 and, as I understand it, Paula started the book before then in the hope of finishing it off with an Olympic medal. Instead, there’s an extra 70-odd pages on what happened after and the half dozen races run in the following year. For me, this was too much, and the last handful of pages were skim-read.

My Story So Far

I found myself interested from the start. While I took part in sports at school it was nothing like this and the novelty of it kept me entertained. By the time the athletics meets are described in full my attention started to wane. Unless you’re familiar with middle distance running over the last 20 years the names won’t mean much to you.

The rest of the book is basically a list of races, the desire to win the Cross Country Championship, the 5,000, 10,000 and then the marathon, and the one personal touch of meeting her husband Gary. You really get the sense that running is her whole life, but I suppose it has to be to a certain extent – being a professional athlete straight from school.

While Paula states at the start of the book that she is not giving excuses and just wants a chance to tell her story, the whole thing comes across as defensive from the start. Every race is lead by a story of the injury leading up to it and, while there is very little talk of how she prepares to races, plenty of time is spent discussing injuries that may have slowed her down.

Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to my expectations. I found sections of it a bit boring, and the not-so-straight time line had me checking and double checking which year it was supposed to be. It was OK, but not the insight I was hoping for.

I bought this book shortly after I had finished reading Born to Run, but hadn’t got round to reading it until recently…and then finished it in a matter of days.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, and it didn’t quite flow as I hoped it might, but it was still a great read. To me it felt like 6 exceptionally in-depth race reports (25% of the book is spent talking through his first Western States 100) with a few pages of rest-of-his-life information in between. Obviously the book is about running but I think it would have been more well-rounded if there had been a bit more information about what else he had done. Except for the death of his sister, which was obviously a major point in his life and had a direct influence on his running, there is little talk of the rest of his home life – whether it be sporting, family or career. A good example is the first mention of windsurfing as a hobby:

“…but I channeled most of my focus into windsurfing, winning some competitions and ending up on the cover of several magazines. I even managed to land a few sponsorshop endorsements, which helped pay the tuition bills.”

Now, to me, getting on the front of a magazine for windsurfing would warrant more than 2 sentences. The book would have been a lot longer, but at least then Karnazes wouldn’t come across like a running machine that does little else than put one foot in front of the other.

Ultramarathon Man

Not knowing how he feels the day after the race doesn’t really make the distances that he runs any less amazing. The mile by mile description of the first Western States is detailed, fascinating and inspiring. It almost makes you think “well if he can run that far then so can I” but then you remember that he ran 30 miles on his first ever training run (15 years after his last cross country race) and that it takes someone slightly different to be able to do that.

In the end, the sheer distances become incomprehensible. If someone said to me that they had run 10 miles then I would understand, as it’s a distance I’ve done myself. If someone said they’d finished 26.2 then I’d understand (and then congratulate them!) as it’s a well known and challenging distance. If someone said they’d run 199 miles without stopping then it becomes harder to fully comprehend exactly what that means. I think it’s probably something only another ultra runner would get.

Karnazes book (and his life) is an amazing testament to what the human body can do when pushed to it’s limits. It’s inspiring and motivating, and the stories from Badwater and the South Pole Marathon will make you appreciate the mild weather you live in :-)