50 Marathons In 50 Days In 50 States WTF?

When my wife was pregnant with Lucy, I got pregnant too. It wasn't because of nachos either. It was due to absolute sympathetic love. Me & my wife are like 1 big love Being and our bellies swelled like one belly. I shot up to 230, plus I quit smoking when Lucy was born, which kicked my big ass up to 240.

Something had to give. I bought a treadmill and started walking, but when you're walking you can still pound some chicken wings, so I started running. I ran my ass down to 2 hundo and I was hooked on running.

Running has provided me with some of my proudest accomplishments, as well as my most crushing senses of being a loser. For instance, out of the 3 marathons I've completed, I had to walk (limp) the last few miles for 2 of them, and I was so pissed. I wanted to choke those 19-year-old girls galloping past me to the finish line. It was the pony-tails, those bouncy little happy pony-tails. One marathon was completed in 5 hours, 6 minutes, and the other was 4 hours, 51 minutes. Lame. Another time I entered a 100 mile race and dropped out after 42 miles. Destroyed. And one time I was doing a 50 mile race, and my wife was working at the 25 mile turnaround. When I saw her cute little ass with her clipboard, I couldn't dream of clicking off another 25. I just chilled with her, feeling like a failure.

But then there are the successes. I was determined to pull off a marathon in under 4 hours and when that finish clock was in my sights, it read 3:56. I was ecstatic. I sprinted in to the tune of 3:57. I never walked the whole race and I beat 4 hours. I felt like I could tackle trees and track live deer and eat them raw like some crazed primitive motherfucker. And then drag Jenna by the hair into a cave and you get the picture. And one time I entered this timed race where you just ran around a 1/4 mile loop for 6 hours (or 12 hours if you're a total nut). I ran the whole 6 hours and clicked off 33 miles. I felt like some Greek God with those kick ass wings on my sandals.

One really cool part about that race was there was only about 20 people in it and one of them was the ultramarathon pimp, Dean Karnazes. Karnazes was voted the fittest man on the planet by Men's Fitness. He's the stuff mythology is made of. He wrote a pretty sweet book called Ultramarathon Man. He was in the 12 hour race and he made it 78 miles. Plus he was totally cool. Every time he'd lap my silly ass, he'd say "Keep it up" or "Hang in there" or "Are you bleeding?".

So when Hachette Book Group asked me to review 50/50, the story of how Karnazes ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days, I was all over it, because me & Dean Karnazes are like best friends. The kind of best friends who participated in the same race 2 years ago.

Anyway, when I saw the Table of Contents, I thought this book was gonna blow. He actually broke down all 50 marathons by chapter. Can you imagine a running narrative of a guy running through 50 marathons? "Then I ket running. And there were trees. I got a blister. Etc." But I need to tell you straight up that Karnazes is an excellent story teller. It's like each marathon he runs evokes different things from his past and he blends memory and the present with loads of running tips. So rather than a linear story of marathon after marathon, it's a finely crafted collage of his accomplishment, memory, and sound advice. The book is peppered with all kinds of good shit about running gear, diet tips, how to keep running when a bone shoots out your leg. Shit like that.

Actually I made up the bone thing, but I can tell you that Karnazes is at his best when he's inspring you to stay motivated through boredom and pain. Running is all about ignoring that whiny little bitch in us all that keeps muttering "Stop. My knee hurts. I'm a pussy. Let's stop and sit with your wife at the 25 mile turnaround." Dean Karnazes has those voices too, but he flips them the bird, laughs at them, and keeps on moving. Just reading his book makes you wanna leap out the door and climb a mountain or leap from car to car on a moving train. Dean Karnazes makes your balls swell to the size of oranges and floods your brain with sweet, sweet testosterone.

Get this. By the end of those 50 marathons, Dean had run 1310 miles (in 50 days! I ran 1000 miles in... 2007). His average time was 3:53:14 (4 minutes faster than my best time when I ran a marathon every day for 1 day in 1 state). Plus he clicked off a 3:00:30 on his 50th (!!!) marathon in NYC. And his schedule was such that he only got about 3 1/2 hours of sleep per night. It's just unfathomable.

Unfathomable. Which leads me to the only negative thing about the book: The Preface. The Preface is where Dean tries to tell us how average he is, what a plain old normal guy he is. Um excuse me but fuck that Dean. I've had the pleasure of dragging my ass through my 6th hour of running, having my tongue dry up & swell into a sizzler steak, seeing dead people, and wishing that a truck would run me over - only to have you trot by and chirp "Looking Good!". You're not normal, Dean. You're extraordinary. And you make us aspire to the same.