Good NYT article on ultramarathons:
Dean Karnazes thinks that comfort, convenience and quick gratification – the Big Three of the middle-class American lifestyle – are not making us happy and that we should seek out more suffering.
“Dostoyevsky had it right: ‘Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness,’ ” he writes in his new book, “Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner” (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin).
If that kind of talk sounds alien in the age of instant everything – a sort of Klingon-style philosophy that Mr. Worf from “Star Trek” might spout before hitting himself with a pain stick – well, it probably is. But in Mr. Karnazes’ world of super-distance ultramarathon running, many of the conventions of ordinary life do not apply.
He has run 75 hours straight, 262 miles down the coast of California. He regularly runs all night, 70 miles or more, and in fact dictated much of his book into a tape recorder that he carried while he ran. He has completed many of the nation’s toughest 100-mile trail races in under 24 hours. He once ran a marathon at the South Pole, in running shoes.
NYT Denver-based reporter Kirk Johnson ran 10 miles with Karnazes and writes, “Even though he was gracious and willing to run slowly, it was rather like setting up one’s easel next to Monet or Picasso, and excellent for keeping a journeyman runner’s ego in check.”
Karnazes will be on Letterman tonight, according to his website.
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