Thursday, December 28, 2006

50 marathons in 50 days!


The man who achieved this feat is Dean Karnazes who, in 1995, took part in a 199 mile relay race -- by himself! Wired has 12 secrets of his success; here's one of them:

Karnazes has a wife and two kids, and he worked a 9-to-5 job for the first eight years of his quest to transcend his own limits. Finding four hours for a 30-mile run during the day was next to impossible. The solution: sleep less. "Forgoing sleep is the only way I've figured out how to fit it all in," he says, noting that running in the dark can be soothing. Plus, there's less traffic to contend with. He now gets about four hours of shut-eye a night. Before he started running, however, he was just a regular guy who got a regular eight. As he started to run more, he found that he could sleep less. The National Sleep Foundation reports that exercise does lead to more restful sleep, and Karnazes takes this idea to the extreme. "The human body," he says, "is capable of extraordinary feats."

In the next quote, he says, "show your body who's the boss"!

"The human body has limitations," Karnazes says. "The human spirit is boundless." Your mind, in other words, is your most important muscle. As a running buddy told him: "Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!! What a ride!"

Thanks to PTDR for the pointer.

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