Forget marathons. Dean Karnazes runs a marathon to get warmed up. Then he does some serious running for the next couple of hundred miles. Karnazes likes to run at night. Often all night, and much of the next day. And sometimes the day after that.
Who is Dean Karnazes and how crazy is he? Kirk Johnson, a reporter for the New York Times, found out the hard way, by accepting an invitation to run alongside him at an altitude that is less than hospitable to most humans. We’ll save you the humiliation that Johnson suffered and tell you a bit about what he learned: Dean Karnazes is a 42-year-old father of two and president of a San Francisco health food store, who really, really likes to run. If you really want to find out why he likes to run, you can by his new book, "Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner" (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin). Here’s a clue: Karnazes believes that Dostoyevsky was right when he said ‘Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness."