Life on the run

I loved this story when I first heard it a couple of years ago and I still love it.

It's simple and ingenious at the same time.

You're going out for a long Sunday run. Sorry, make that a really long Sunday run. You know you are going to get peckish along the way and you dislike carrying food/drinks with you.

Time for some quick mental arithmetic. You know that in three hours you will be halfway through your run and ravenously hungry and you figure out how far you will have travelled in that time.

Next you get out the map and calculate out precisely where you will be at that time.

A quick check of the phone book and you call up the pizza delivery place nearest to that point and arrange for them to meet you at such-and-such a corner in exactly three hours time with a family size Napolitana Pizza and extra mozzarella. Oh, and a supersize soft drink!

Confirming the exact cost of all this before you hang up the phone, you quickly stash enough money (including tip) in your bum-bag and head out the door for your (ultra-long) run.

Okay, you scoff, who would ever do such a thing?

Well, his name is Dean Karnazes and Men's Fitness magazine says he may just be the fittest man in the world.

A recent exploit was to run 50 marathons, in 50 states in the US, on 50 consecutive days, finishing with the 2008 New York Marathon which he completed in 3hrs and 30 seconds.

As a finale, after the New York event he ran back to where the first of his 50 marathons began, in St Louis, Missouri, covering nearly 1,300 miles along the way.

That sure sounds like a lot of pizza stops.

Just to mention another few feats, Karnazes has run a 135-mile ultramarathon across Death Valley in 120 degree heat, a marathon to the South Pole in - 40 degrees (finished second) - run a 200-mile relay solo (racing against teams of 12 runners) and completed a 350-mile run without sleeping (it took three days).

It all started like this: Dean Karnazes was slobbering drunk. It was his 30th birthday, and he'd started with beer and moved on to shots of tequila at a bar near his home in San Francisco.

Now, after midnight, an attractive young woman - not his wife - was making eyes at him.

This was not the life he'd imagined for himself. He was a corporate hack stuck in the rat race. The company he worked for had just bought him a shiny new Lexus. He wanted to vomit.

Karnazes resisted the urge and, instead, slipped out the bar's back door and walked the few blocks to his house.

On his back porch, he found an old pair of training shoes. He stripped down to his T-shirt and boxer shorts, laced up the shoes, and started running. What the hell, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

He sobered up about 15 miles south. It was nearly 4 a.m. The air was cool, slightly damp from the fog, and Karnazes was jogging through a residential neighbourhood, burping tequila, with no trousers on. He felt ridiculous, but it brought a smile to his face. He hadn't had this much fun in a long time. So, he decided to keep on running.

When the sun came up, Karnazes had covered 30 miles. In the process, he'd experienced something like a religious conversion. He had been born again as a long-distance runner.

He wanted to see just how far he could go, but first he called his wife and asked her to come and give him a lift home.

Visit ultramarathonman.com for more info about a man whose motto is: Run when you can, walk when you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up.

Registration

Entries for the Land Rover Malta Marathon and Half Marathon close on January 31.

We are receiving a healthy number of applications from abroad, but (as often happens), many Maltese runners are leaving it to the last minute. Entry itself could not be simpler; go to the marathon website and fill in the entry form online and send us a cheque for the entry fee. Don't leave it till the last minute.

As I had mentioned in recent weeks, the full results of the M2S race are now available from the marathon website.

There is also a map available for download showing in fine detail the new routes for this year's marathon and half marathon.

Don't forget my cautionary advice about not training along the busy parts of the routes.

Always be careful and stay safe to best enjoy your running.

johnwalsh42195@yahoo.it