Run to Win

This week last year I had marathons on my mind.

• I wrote a lengthy article that explains why 50 Marathons in 50 Days is impressive. The sport can not really afford to be insular, and people like Dean Karnazes and Sam Thompson can much more easily relate to the “average” runner than somebody like Scott Jurek or Robert Cheriyout.
• On a personal note, it took 5 weeks of low mileage to decondition. I managed to regain that level of fitness in the two months that I had before the New York City Marathon, though, so it was only a temporary setback. I also began lifting weights with a wedding ring on, which has surprisingly enough brought in quite a bit of search traffic to the website.
• The B.A.A. published a press release that they were going to move up the start of the Boston Marathon by 2 hours to 10:00 a.m. I predicted that there was going to be a blizzard due to the earlier starting time (despite my approval of moving the race up), and I was not too far off of the mark. A Nor’Easter blew through right before the race.

In a continuing collaboration with Scott over at Straight to the Bar, we will be writing about training and media influences throughout the month of August. I would like to start the discussion about how much the media colors our perceptions of athletes, specifically referencing Dean Karnazes.

Dean Karnazes is almost a household name.

He has inspired hundreds if not thousands of people to change their lives and become more fit. He wrote 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 very personable, and a master at promoting both himself and his causes.

He also rubs a lot of people in the ultramarathon community the wrong way. His often blatant self-promotion gets on a lot of people’s nerves, and even Karnazes himself will be the first to admit that there are people out there that are much better than him at some (or even most) of the events that he competes in or stages.
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