16
Body Matters Monday, July 18, 2011
What does Dean Karnazes eat?
On average, Karnazes will burn
between 500 and 600 calories per
hour when he’s running.
‘If the event lasts 24 hours, that’s
12,000-14,400 calories in total,
which is nearly a week’s worth of
food for the average person,’ he
says. ‘I try to match my
consumption with my expenditure
to avoid muscle wasting. Some
people might think it would be
great to eat all that food without
gaining weight but the truth is,
when you’re pushing your body
that hard, most of the time you’re
just not hungry; food loses its
appeal. You have to force yourself
to eat to be able to keep going.’
For those long runs, he often
eats pizza, cheesecake, cinnamon
buns, chocolate éclairs and
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cookies. However, when he’s not
breaking records, Kanazares eats
grilled salmon five nights a week.
He also avoids processed sugars
and fried foods and even tries to
steer clear of too much fruit
because if contains a lot of sugar.
TOP NUTRITIONAL TIPS
■ Avoid products that contain
High Fructose Corn Syrup
(HFCS), trans-fats and
hydrogenated oils.
■ Include foods rich in Omega-3
fatty acids to help with recovery.
■ Try to eat minimally processed
foods, going with organic choices
whenever possible. It’s what
Karnazes calls The Neanderthal
Diet. ‘If Neanderthal Man could
catch it, he could eat it,’ he says.
Body Matters
Edited by Vicki-Marie Cossar [email protected]
A human
running
machine
Long and winding road: Dean Karnazes thinks nothing of
running hundreds of miles, for days at a time, across some of
the most dangerous terrain in the world by vicki-marie cossar
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‘T
he word ultra means
“beyond” in Latin,’
explains Dean Karnazes,
aka Ultramarathon Man.
‘So an ultramarathon is
something beyond a
normal marathon and the distances I run
are hundreds of miles at a time.’
With most of us struggling to complete
20 minutes on the treadmill, and even for
those brave enough to have entered the
London Marathon, the idea of running
anything more than the standard
26.2miles seems insane. But Karnazes
is a real-life Forrest Gump. He has run
some of the longest ultramarathons,
across some of the most dangerous
terrain. He has competed in the Badwater
Ultramarathon eight times, a 217km race
from Death Valley, California, to the
Mount Whitney Portal in 120F (49C)
heat – just for fun.
‘The first time I ran that race it nearly
killed me,’ he says. ‘I collapsed by the
roadside halfway through but I went back
the following year and finished tenth.’
He has since gone on to win the race.
‘I never say I won,’ he says. ‘Just that
I survived the fastest.’
Growing up in a working-class
American family, Karnazes is the oldest
of three siblings. His mother struggled to
pick them all up from school so he would
often run home. ‘I was six years old
when I first ran home from kindergarten,’
he says. ‘I ran my first marathon aged 14
but after that I decided to hang up my
running shoes.’
It was 16 years before he would pick
them up again. ‘I was working as a
marketing executive and felt like a caged
animal,’ he says. ‘My life was boring and
there were no challenges left. It was on
my 30th birthday when I was drunk in a
bar that I suddenly had the idea to run
30miles to reclaim my life. So, I left the
bar, took off my pants and started running
in my briefs and a pair of plimsolls. It
wasn’t pretty and there was chaffing
where the sun doesn’t shine but I did it.’
Now, aged 48, Karnazes shows no sign
of stopping. Men’s Health magazine says
he ‘might just be the fittest man in the
world’, while he was once listed at No.27
in Time magazine’s Top 100 Most
Influential People In The World.
Karnazes says when you envisage
marathon runners, it’s not always a
healthy picture. However, as well as
completing almost 400 marathons, he’s
also swam across San Francisco Bay,
climbed Half Dome in Yosemite,
mountain biked for 24 hours straight and
surfed the huge waves of Hawaii.
‘I’m not the strongest man in the
world,’ he admits. ‘And I’m certainly not
the fastest but when you talk about
overall endurance then I would say I’m
pretty high up there.’ It’s a modest
statement when you consider Karnazes’s
last feat was to run across the US. From
LA to New York, he covered 4,800km in
75 days. Without stopping. ‘Running an
ultramarathon is more mental than
physical in a lot of ways,’ he explains.
‘I like the challenge of overcoming great
pain to succeed against a pretty lofty goal.’
Karnazes has trained himself to pee and
nap while running. ‘It’s pretty dangerous
but it happens,’ he says. ‘I’ll wake up and
realise I was asleep. The human body is
remarkable and it just forces itself to shut
down. It’s just for about 20 seconds and
when I wake I actually feel rejuvenated.’
Along with the Death Valley
ultramarathon and being the only person
to complete a marathon to the South Pole
(in -40C) in running shoes, Karnazes has
also run 250km across the Atacama
Desert in Chile.
‘I’m curious to see what the limits of
human endurance are and how far the
human body can go,’ he says.
In 2005, the day after he finished
running 50 marathons in 50 states in 50
consecutive days, he left his hotel and ran
1,300miles back home to San Francisco.
His achievements are inspirational and
as an endurance athlete he’s untouchable.
He says he owes it all to the fact he’s not
afraid to fail. ‘That’s one of the mindsets
I don’t think we carry with us enough,’
he says. ‘The willingness to push
yourself to failure. We’re too intimidated
to go that far so we never really figure
out how far we can actually go. I’ve
learnt more from my failings than any of
the races I’ve completed.’
Despite his love of running, he says
there’s ‘nothing fun’ about it. ‘I just long
for the points where I feel I have to stop
as that’s when the struggle, to me, is at its
peak. I live for the challenge.’
Run! 26.2 Stories Of Blisters And Bliss by
Dean Karnazes is out now priced £10.99
(Allen & Unwin)
Monday, July 18, 2011 Body Matters 17
Dean Karnazes’s favourite quote
comes from Winston Churchill: ‘When
you’re going through hell, don’t stop’
❯ A real-life Forrest Gump
■ Karnazes has raised nearly $1.5million
(£943,000) for children’s charities from
sponsorship of his ultramarathon events.
■ He has just set up his own charity,
Karno Kids, which supports
fitness activities for children.
■ Sponsored by outdoor
outfitter North Face, Karnazes
gets through 40 pairs of
running shoes each year.
■ He survives on just four
hours sleep a night so he can
train twice a day and spend
time with his family.
■ While running an
ultramarathon, he has
arranged for pizza to be
delivered to the roadside.
■ When he’s running a normal
marathon, he can burn more
than 4,000 calories a day.
When he’s running an ultramarathon he
can burn more than 10,000 calories.
■ He drinks up to three litres of water
during a normal marathon and 20-30
litres during an ultramarathon.
■ Karnazes has trained himself to pee
❯ Top running tips
■ Listen to everyone, follow no one. Only
you can find what works best for you.
■ Invest in a good pair of shoes.
■ Change your running route often to keep
things interesting.
■ Stay hydrated.
■ Wear technical wicking fabrics to help
stay dry and comfortable.
■ Cross-train to help build good leg
strength and improve overall muscular
development.
■ Follow the hard/easy routine. Push hard
one day, go easy the next.
■ Try ice baths to help recovery and
muscle soreness.
■ Practise ‘active recovery’ (remain active
post-race not idle).
■ Wear compression tights or compression
socks in the days following a race to aid
recovery.
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while running without getting a drop on
his shoes.
■ When he’s running he uses Crazy Glue
to cover up blisters – something Body
Matters doesn’t suggest.
■ He prevents chaffing
with NipGuards.
■ Karnazes has built
himself up so he doesn’t
have to worry about
tapering, or stretching
before an event.
■ On his training recovery
day, he uses an ElliptiGo
(an elliptical bicycle that
simulates the action of
running, through the
functionality of a road bike,
without the impact).
■ Karnazes does pressups and sit-ups in a
sauna to get ready for an ultramarathon
in a hot climate.
■ He doesn’t sweat.
■ He once ran for 48 hours on a treadmill
suspended two storeys in the air, in the
middle of Times Square.