Ultramarathon Man: A book review
Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner is a book that I picked up on a whim a few weeks ago while browsing through a bookstore. The lady and I were waiting to meet some friends down the block and it seemed like a good place to get out of the rain.
I loved this book. It was a lot of fun to read. I was constantly pausing my reading to read a passage to my girlfriend, which usually elicited one of two responses. “That guy is crazy” was the most popular, but there was quite a few “You better not think of ever doing that, honey” sprinkled in too.
The book is funny, and it engaged me right away. The book is about Dean Karnazes, a guy who runs. A lot. He has done the Western States 100-miler in under 24 hours 9 times. He has run 28 miles down at the south pole. He has run around the world naked (granted, that was also at the south pole where the circumfrence is not that long; quite cold, I imagine), and he has run the badlands desert run.
Right at the start, he talks about a run he is doing where a pizza guy asks if he is like Carl Lewis (possibly the only runner he could name off the top of his head). Dean’s response? “Yeah, I’m like Carl Lewis, only a lot slower.”
Some of the stories are a bit fantastical and put me in mind of Big Fish
The book is a fast read. I did not read it in one sitting, but given a chunk of uninterupted time I can easily see myself completing it in an afternoon. It certainly does not inspire me to go out and train for a 100 mile race (I’ll stick to running a marathon in every state, thank you), but it did make me stop second guessing my decision to start working out twice a day 3 or 4 times a week for the next month or two. Hell, if he can run 2 or 3 times a day and balance a 9 to 5 and a family, I can manage my own workouts.
- 50 Marathons 50 States 50 Days
- Do we get a fair depiction of Dean Karnazes, or is he overrated?
- Inspirational Running Books
December 19th, 2005 at 9:59 pm
I just realised that I spelled his name wrong all this time. His name is Dean Karnazes, not Dean Kazarnes.
April 24th, 2006 at 9:03 am
[...] One of my goals in life is to run a marathon in every state. I do not have any interest (right now) in races longer than the marathon. I have previously written about Dean Karnazes when I reviewed his book Ultramarathon Man. Things do not seem to have changed much in his life. [...]
February 12th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
[...] to start turning for me to look into venturing up into the 50k or even 50 mile range of races. The review of Ultramarathon Man was the first review that I wrote for Run to Win. Best Retrospective of a Single Event Coast to [...]
August 6th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
[...] a humorous look at how an ordinary person can train himself to do extraordinary things in his book, Ultramarathon Man. He has raised a lot of money for various charities through his extreme feats of endurance. He is [...]