Living outside the usual parameters

SAN FRANCISCO- Remember, as Dean Karnazes was speaking, his voice had a modulated tone, so even, so steady, so lacking in emotion, he could have been talking about going to a department store to buy a pair of pants.

"I left my house and went for a run," said the man who has become the most well-known face, body and mind in endurance running.

His house is in San Francisco.

"To Calistoga," he said.

That's 100 miles, by the route he took. Without stopping.

"I hopped the fence of this inn in Calistoga," Karnazes said. "Found a chaise lounge. It was about 3-4 a.m. The padding was nice and thick. I went to sleep for about four hours. Woke up. I was right across the street."

From the start line of the 2008 Napa Valley Marathon.

"I ran the marathon," Karnazes said, "and then I ran home."

That would be San Francisco.

And then Karnazes changed the oil and filter in his car and rotated his tires.

From what you just read, which part is untrue? The previous paragraph. Not that vehicle repair and maintenance is beyond his limits. It's not like Karnazes ran 350 miles non-stop like he did in October, 2005. It's not like he did 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states like he did September-November 2006. It's not like Karnazes winning the 2004 Badwater, the most grueling footrace on the planet, 135 miles long, 120 degrees hot and 100 percent certifiable that he lives outside the usual parameters.

"He made me know what was possible," said Santa Rosa's glutton-for-punishment Bill Bradley. "He made it cool to be crazy. He was my inspiration."

What Karnazes has done is take the sport of endurance running out of the shadows and into the main light. The sport itself oftentimes attracts the athlete who is content to suffer in silence as he or she runs in isolation for 40-60-80 hours through forests, deserts and mountains. Endurance runners never experience the maddening crowd of 70,000 of an enclosed stadium monitoring their every step. Their ego is never massaged. Because of this extremely individualistic sport, they are self-effacing, suffering and succeeding in silence. It's a code of humility, as it were.

Karnazes, 45, has appeared on Letterman, Conan O'Brien, Today Show and NPR. He has been featured in TIME, Newsweek, People, GQ and Esquire. He speaks about eight times a month, half of them paid, the other half to school kids. His book, "Ultramarathon Man, Confessions Of An All-Night Runner", was a New York Times best-seller.

Karnazes is the best promoter the sport has to offer. Articulate, handsome, chiseled, he makes real something so unreal. The sport that was in hiding for so long is out to where everyone can see. Directing the spotlight, he is without peer in that regard. He is also, without question, a target for doing so.

"Personally I don't get that logic," Karnazes said. "It (criticism) really used to bother me. But I guess there's always going to be a backlash. I was talking the other day to an agent for some rock stars and he said, 'Don't forget someone killed Gandhi'. I am not a shameless self-promoter."

In the dictionary, next to the definition of a "shameless self-promoter" is Don King, the boxing huckster who would sell a no-rules cage match between two nuns if there was money in it.

Place that picture against a picture of Karnazes running Badwater through Death Valley in June, covered completely head-to-toe in white fabric, running on the white line of the pavement because anywhere else his shoes would melt from the 200-degree surface heat.

Try to imagine Don King doing that.

"I never said I was the best ultra runner," Karnazes said. But he's still an elite runner, a tic or two below the Scott Jureks of the world, the guy who won seven Western States 100s, or certainly below Ann Trason, who finished first among the women in that race from Tahoe to Placerville a stunning 14 times.

But Karnazes ain't no couch slouch if he won Badwater, did those 350 miles, finished 10 Western States under 24 hours, good enough to earn a prized buckle. When asked how many miles he's run in his life, he replied, "It's approaching 100,000." He rarely runs without running for someone, some charity or organ donation.

But all those miles and achievements, in reality, is just a mere backdrop to what makes Karnazes a hot-ticket inspiration.

"He's motivated a lot of people to get off their ass," Bradley said.

In 1990 Karnazes was sitting on his petunia in a bar in San Francisco, the now-defunct Paragon. He was celebrating his 30th birthday with friends and he was getting hammered, a drunken slobber.

"I didn't want to be a corporate yuppie anymore," Karnazes said. He had his MBA, was director of marketing for a pharmaceutical company and stuck in a rut that reached his eyeballs.

Karnazes stumbled off the bar stool, looked at his friends and said the magic words that would change his life.

"I'm going for a run."

Dressed in slacks, shirt and gardening shoes -- yes, that's right -- Karnazes began to run. He knew the route to Half Moon Bay. He knew it to be 30 miles.

"At 15 miles I sobered up," Karnazes said. At 30 miles he called his wife and said to pick him up at the 7-Eleven. She asked which one in the city.

"I said the one in Half Moon Bay," he said.

Since then Karnazes' longest stretch without running was three days (flu) and that was only once. He runs 85 to 125 miles a week. He eats grilled salmon and a veggie for dinner but on 100-milers he orders pizza from his cell phone to be delivered while he running; he then rolls it up into a burrito-shape and stuffs it in his mouth while he runs.

He often runs through the night, takes his two kids to school and then goes to work for a health food company he owns. He sleeps three to four hours a night.

Karnazes runs because he can. He also runs because he must.

"I can't control what's in my heart," he said.

He is not idiot. Sure, he would like to win every race. Sometimes, it's just the doing of it that's important. Like that run he took from San Francisco to Calistoga to begin the Napa Valley Marathon.

"No one does that if they want to win," he said.

Karnazes certainly didn't. He finished 530th out of a field of 1,761 runners. But he ran a very respectable 3:51.26. No couch slouch there. And no couch slouch was he this last weekend either.

The Relay is a 199-mile run from Calistoga to Santa Cruz to raise money for organ donation. There were 202 12-member teams and two soloists, Bradley and Karnazes, who completed the run seven times. Bradley made it. Karnazes bowed out at 150 miles.

"Dean's body still wasn't over Atacama," said the Relay race director Jeff Shapiro.

The Atacama Crossing is a 155-mile, six-day stage race in a Chilean desert that is a virtually rainless plateau (one millimeter of rain per year).

Competitors must carry their own food, water and clothing. It's the driest spot on the planet. The race ended April 5th. Karnazes won, beating 68 others from around the world. Two weeks later he was still feeling the effects of that race.

Not to worry though. Just like Tiger Woods shapes his schedule around golf's four major tournaments, Karnazes is shaping his 2008 running calendar around the Desert Grand Slam: The Atacama Crossing, China's Gobi in June, Badwater in July, the Sahara in October and Antarctica in November.

And one day Karnazes plans to run up Mt. Whitney.

"I believe a human can run 500 miles non-stop," Karnazes said. "But I'm not that human."

For Bill Bradley and so many others, they'll believe it when they don't see it.

You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5490 or at bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com.