Full transcript: Dean Karnazes on London Real
5:47 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is ultramarathon runner Dean Karnazes, who Time magazine named as one of the top 100 most influential people in the world and Men’s Fitness called one of the fittest men on the planet. You’ve run 50 marathons in all 50 states in 50 consecutive days, you ran the South Pole without snowshoes, and you once ran 350 miles straight in 80 hours without sleep. You are also a best-selling author and have recently released to the UK “The Road to Sparta,” which details how you recreated the infamous marathon from Athens to Sparta nearly 2,500 years ago, and your second book, “Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner.”
6:26 Dean, welcome to London Real. I’m exhausted just listening to an introduction.
6:30 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, thanks for having me on.
6:31 Brian Rose: Yeah, you know, you’re born in America, your family’s from Greece, you’re in London now, which is kind of in the middle. What does it feel like to be here?
6:39 Is it kind of between those two worlds? Okay, no. What does it like being here?
6:44 Dean Karnazes: Well, one of the individuals I work with on the book is Professor Paul Cartledge, who’s one of the foremost authorities on ancient Greek culture, and he’s from Cambridge, so I feel like there’s a very close connection with Britain, because some of the, you know, the modern historians that have captured ancient Greece are from Britain, Cambridge specifically. So I feel somewhat of a connection, and I’ve got a lot of fans in the UK.
7:08 I love London. I’m always here for like three days and I’m out of here, so it’s always too quick, but it’s been good.
7:14 Brian Rose: Yeah, and you’re gonna run the marathon Sunday? Yeah. You are?
7:17 Dean Karnazes: Okay. Yeah, I mean, here’s all my life rolls. So, you know, the last four weekends I’ve run marathons. On Monday, so a couple days ago, I ran the Boston Marathon, hopped on a flight, you know, no sleep, flew to London, and it’s just been non-stop since. Run the marathon Sunday, and then I’m off to Portugal for another marathon.
7:36 Brian Rose: Wow. And you said you were here four years ago and this feels like an order of magnitude bigger in the response that people have to you, like fanbase and stuff like that. First of all, what does it feel like to be you and walk around like the ExCeL Centre for these expos, and why do you think, you know, you got so much love here?
7:56 Dean Karnazes: You know, walking in my shoes sometimes it’s surreal. I mean, even just coming through the airport, so I’m walking, you know, you collect my luggage and, you know, two guys are walking toward me, one guy says, “Holy, it’s Dean Karnazes!
8:10 Like, what, I can’t believe it, what are you doing?” And, you know, in London, I mean, it’s Dean Karnazes and his buddies looking at it like, who is this guy? Yeah, so some people know me, other people don’t, and that’s kind of how my life is. I think my stories are very personal and I think every runner can relate to suffering and pain, no matter if it’s trying to run your first half marathon or trying to run your first hundred-mile race. I think there’s something that is very personal in that and I think that’s why I have such a much as a loyal fan base, but an empathetic one.
8:42 We feel the same way, we’ve shared the same miseries.
8:45 Brian Rose: You know, when I look back at the things you’ve done, you know, when you go on YouTube you see you talking to 60 Minutes, 10 years ago on the Letterman show, talking to Conan O’Brien. You know, there’s a term that some of the gang members use in LA, it’s called OG, and it means like a pioneer, an original gangster, and when it comes to ultramarathon you’re that guy, and in the last five or 10 years the sport has exploded, but you were the one that was doing it just back in the day, and I was wondering what kind of perspective you have now compared to back then and seeing kind of this boom.
9:17 Back when you were doing it, everyone probably just thought it was crazy, hey.
9:21 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, I mean, I used to show up at the start of a race and be like 25 guys there. You know, now there’s waiting lists, you know, or the race sells out in, you know, 15 minutes, so it’s grown very popular. It’s become more like the marathon. If you’ve watched the marathon over the past 20 years, the average race times have increased a whole lot.
9:41 So it used to be a bunch of very elite white guys running marathons. Boston, the Boston Marathon we just ran, it’s 40% women. London Marathon, I think, is 60% women. The average finish time is an hour slower over the past decade, so more everyday athletes are getting into these sort of challenges. I think people seek out these sort of extreme challenges.
10:05 For someone, a marathon is very extreme because life is so ordinary, and when you’re out suffering and struggling, it’s it’s a unique experience. It takes you out of your everyday comfort zone.
10:15 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s almost like the movie Fight Club, right?
10:18 Dean Karnazes: I’m telling you, it is. There’s so many similarities.
10:21 It could be just running a marathon or, you know, the only thing with running a marathon or ultra, it’s just you against you, so you’re really doing battle with yourself versus an opponent, right?
10:30 Brian Rose: Which is, in fact, the toughest opponent?
10:32 Dean Karnazes: Absolutely. And everything else. Well, I guess in the movie Fight Club this guy built up this beautiful kind of pampered life, which is what we all strive for in this world, and then he realized he had no connection with reality, so he would go down in there and go to these fights.
10:46 Brian Rose: You’re saying it’s kind of similar with people thrusting themselves into this huge long race. They’re gonna go into some pain, but it’s real, right?
10:53 Dean Karnazes: It’s very real, and I mean, that’s kind of what got me into the sport. It’s the same thing. I was bored with my life.
10:59 I mean, I had a cush corporate job, fat paycheck, you know, stock options, company car, and, you know, business degree, an MBA, and I was miserable. I mean, I thought, this sucks. Like everything so comfortable, everything so easy, like there’s no struggle, there’s no real hardship. And so I walked out of a bar on my 30th birthday in San Francisco and decided I was gonna run 30 miles that night. I’m just like, I’m gonna run to Half Moon Bay.
11:23 And I was drunk and it was midnight and I just, I had some of these like Jockey underwear on that were silk. I pulled off my pants and just started running south and just ran away from my old life. Yeah.
11:36 Brian Rose: Wow. You know, a lot of people would do that and then they would stop after a mile, but you kept going.
11:42 Dean Karnazes: As the war, it’s 15 miles, like halfway there, I started still growing up and like, what the hell am I doing? This is ridiculous. But it’s something bad, it felt right, like this is ridiculous and there’s misery, but there’s actually kind of some magic in that misery. So I kept going. I ran straight through the night, 30 miles that night, and decided at that point I was gonna become a runner.
12:05 Screw being a business guy, I’m gonna become a runner. I didn’t know how I was gonna make a go of it. Not, you know, it’s not dissimilar to what you did. I mean, it’s just kind of figure it out as you go.
12:14 Brian Rose: And you literally ran away from that old life.
12:16 Dean Karnazes: Battery, yeah.
12:17 Brian Rose: That’s crazy. And before that it had been 15 years since you ran. You had had a bug for it in high school, right, with a certain coach. Yeah.
12:24 And again, there you went over the top, right? Some kids were doing 10 laps, you did a whole marathon when you were a teenager, right? And blew out the charity.
12:33 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, well, there was a fundraiser and most people, you know, the people are pledging $1 a lap, and there’s a run, you know, high school track, so it’s a quarter mile, and yes, some people were able to run 10 laps and they’re getting $10. For me to donor, I ran 105 laps.
12:47 Never forget knocking on my neighbor’s door like, “You owe me 105 bucks.” Like, what?
12:52 Brian Rose: Yeah, I think, yeah, my cousin Vinnie to break their legs of it in. Okay, and then you had a break, but you walked away from the run, anything for 15 years. That’s rare, right?
13:02 Dean Karnazes: Uh, you know, it’s not uncommon for runners to take a break, but typically there’s no restart or the restart is very casual. Like they might have said, “I ran when I was a kid, now I’m overweight, I’m gonna start jogging,” you know, jog around Hyde Park. It’s not common for someone to start running more than they ran in a previous life.
13:23 Brian Rose: Okay, so you turn 30, you ran that night, you walked away from this life. You know, so many people dream of doing that, you know, but they just can’t, right, because it’s too comfortable.
13:35 What did you do from there? Did you know you were gonna be an ultra guy?
13:39 Dean Karnazes: No, I had no idea. I mean, I knew I liked running long distances. You know, just for my business background, I also knew that I got, um, you know, a mortgage to pay, got a daughter on the way, so I got a mouth to feed.
13:52 You know, no one’s gonna give me health care anymore, I gotta, you know, buy health care insurance. And so I thought, you know, when you win a 100-mile race, what do you get? You know, a belt buckle. They used to be horse races and everything. You know, the first guy ran one, got to the finish like, this guy ran 100 miles, what do we give him?
14:09 And it was a horse race, so they gave him a belt, like a rodeo buckle, and that just became the lore of it. So that’s what you get if you run 100 miles. So I figured there’s got to be another way besides, you know, just running these races. I got to piece it together if I’m gonna make a go of it. Yeah.
14:23 Brian Rose: And so you figured out the business model behind it.
14:26 Dean Karnazes: Yeah. figured it out. Stubbed my toe a lot of times along the way, literally and figuratively, so yeah, I learned a lot of great lessons. But I think, you know, in my first book, “Ultramarathon Man,” I write about my story, and I think that people enjoy that book because it kind of gives them permission to live their dream.
14:43 You know, they might be stuck in a job or in a rut they don’t like, and they read about this guy who was in the same place and all of a sudden said, “Screw it, I’m gonna change things,” and had the courage to do it, and it became better. So I think when people read that, it empowers them to try themselves. Yeah.
14:59 Brian Rose: Why long distances? Why were you attracted to those things as opposed to just sticking with the marathons?
15:05 Dean Karnazes: I just like the experience of being out in the mountain area, under, in the mountains, and there 24 hours. So I like the experience of being in nature, raw and real, watching the sun rise, you know, watching the day progress, watching the sun set, running straight through the night. How many times do people stay up all night, let alone running in the middle of the wilderness for 24 hours straight? It was just fascinating to me and there was something that drew me into it.
15:32 Brian Rose: Yeah. What’s it like to run all night? Like, what would I be surprised to learn about running all night? Is it hard to see? Do you actually not fall asleep, do you fall asleep?
15:42 You’ve actually fallen asleep while you’re running before.
15:45 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, I mean, everything you just said happens to you, and that’s the thing, is that everything you can expect and not anticipate will happen to you. So, you know, I have fallen asleep while I’ve been running and I didn’t fall over, I just kept sleep running. I have hallucinated, you know, I have had my headlamps go out and running in the dark, stumbling around, I have got lost, you know, I have had animal encounters, bear encounters, snake encounters.
16:08 So these things happen to you, and you know, I know it’s the grand adventure of it, I’m really drawn to it.
16:14 Brian Rose: I think you did an interview with our friend Joe De Sena, a Spartan Race. Yeah. I think you said the first 50 miles is about your body, the next 50 miles is about your mind. What does that mean?
16:25 Dean Karnazes: Well, there’s a quote with the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run, and they say that, you know, you run the first 50 with your legs and the next 50 miles with your mind, and I think that running is more of a mental challenge than a physical one, especially those greater distances, because at a point your body is destroyed and you have to override that feeling that you want to stop, that all systems are saying you’re done, you can’t keep going, and you have to have the discipline and the mental power to say, I’m gonna keep going, I’m gonna have the resolve. And you learn a lot about yourself when you do this. It tests you in ways you haven’t been tested before, and to me that’s part of growing, right, is to try new things, take on new things, fail.
17:06 I mean, I’ve certainly failed, learned a lot from my failures, and to keep pushing the distances. I mean, from 100 miles I went to, can I run a hundred thirty-five mile race across Death Valley, you know, in the middle of summer? Did that. You know, oh, there’s this 200 mile relay race, 12 person relay race, can I just enter as one guy? You know, ran 200 miles non-stop.
17:26 So you can keep expanding, keep learning and never stop exploring, and that’s why I like the old tradition says.
17:32 Brian Rose: Talk to me about Death Valley. I mean, I think I saw there was a 60 Minutes piece on that maybe when you ran it. Later, how hot is it, of those conditions? Like, and again, it’s just the craziest people coming up with the craziest ideas, is that how this stuff happens?
17:47 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, I mean, it’s the race is called the Badwater Ultramarathon. It’s called the world’s toughest footrace and it’s a hundred thirty-five mile continuous race across Death Valley in the middle of summer. So that tells a bit of the story. You know, when it’s 130 degrees, I can say these numbers, when you’re standing in that heat it’s a totally different reality. It does crazy things to you.
18:13 Brian Rose: I mean, that is really, really extreme. And to think about running in that, I mean, I ran Boston Marathon on Monday, it got up to about 77 or 78 and people were freaking out and people were ending up in the hospital with dehydration. What about this heat?
18:29 Dean Karnazes: And I’m thinking, you know, I had 60 degrees to that, man. You know, and try to run, so it’s a really extreme race.
18:36 And I think that, you know, someone ran 100 miles and never thought that would be possible. You think about it, when I first heard of a guy running, a human running a hundred miles non-stop, I thought, there’s no way a human being can, it’s impossible, right? And someone did it. So I think that at that point it’s, you know, we got to the moon, can we get to Mars? You know, we’ll get to Mars one day.
18:58 You know, can we go beyond our solar system? You know, how far can you go? So I think that once something’s achieved, it just sets the bar a little bit higher there for others.
19:07 Brian Rose: What’s it like going through Death Valley? I hear you have to run on the white lines because otherwise your shoes will melt, because something like that, the pavement is up, up, and your 202, it’s up to me to turn the degrees.
19:19 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, you’re good, you do your research. Yeah, this is, he’s good at people, he’s really conceived of that heat right now. You know, you stand on the line because, you know, why, reflect some of the heat, so you, you know, you don’t want shoes to melt, and the tarmac, the asphalt is 200 degrees. Yeah, that’s so, that’s pretty well. And you know, there, I mean, there’s it, that’s only half of it.
19:40 So there’s climbing, you got to climb out of Death Valley, you got to end up on the side of Mount Whitney, which is the highest point in the contiguous US. There’s a savage headwind and this headwind will drive you out, and I mean your eyeballs get dehydrated, your sinuses, your throat is scratchy, there’s sandstorms. The first year I did it, the soft palate of my mouth, so the upper top of my mouth, I got third-degree burns on there because I was panting as I was running, and the reflection, the UV reflection, I had a hat on, I’m covered up, the UV a reflection off the asphalt up into the upper of my mouth got sunburned.
20:19 I mean, this race will do horrible things to you.
20:22 Brian Rose: Yeah, and you can’t foresee that stuff, so you go in and you just have to deal with all these new pain points.
20:28 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, well, I mean, it’s like Rocky. Yeah, you know, I just thought an analogy. I mean, think about Rocky getting beat on by Apollo, right?
20:35 It’s just it’s happening to you, you’re just like, you know, can I get back out, what can I, you know, can I keep going? And you’re just getting the crap beat out of you. Yeah. And to me it’s, I don’t know, I kind of thrive on it. Yeah.
20:46 Brian Rose: Do you get close there to tap, you know, to say, because you can stop whatever you want?
20:51 Dean Karnazes: Well, I mean, the first year I tried the Badwater Ultramarathon I tapped out, and voluntarily, I’m, and I passed out on the side of the road and my crew found me lying in the dirt and they put me in a car and drove me away. So yeah, it will get you at some point, it can if you’re not prepared.
21:06 Brian Rose: It can lost your vehicle. You had no prep and that’s probably why.
21:10 Yeah. Yeah, came back smarter the next time.
21:13 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, well, I mean, I, you know, I’ve been in probably a couple hundred ultramarathons and I’ve, you know, DNF’d, did not finish, maybe a handful, so it’s very rare. Only when I feel like I’m doing sort of injury to my body, like maybe a permanent injury, do I really pull out of a race. Otherwise it’s just keep going.
21:31 Yeah.
21:31 Brian Rose: Pain, what does that word mean to you, and what should that word mean to other humans in your opinion?
21:38 Dean Karnazes: I’ve shifted my paradigm on pain, so I don’t try to avoid pain anymore. In fact, even on when I run the London Marathon on Sunday, it’s gonna hurt. There’s gonna be a point or it’s gonna be painful, and I’m looking forward to it, not in a masochistic sorta way, like, okay, can I be the master of my mind, can I get through this pain, cuz it’s all perception.
22:01 Pain’s perception, and can I push through it? And I kind of thrive on that. Yeah, it’s a challenge. I think pain is a challenge to overcome like any other challenge.
22:11 Brian Rose: Do you think it’s just an indicator, and that these days we all run away from the pain, right, safety, we protect our kids, they get, and do you think it’s just an information input as opposed to a digital decision saying stop this?
22:24 Dean Karnazes: I think we need to get, I think it’s the former entirely. I mean, what’s the ads on television, half of them for pain medications? Oh, you have no pain in your joints, is your back hurt, this and that? Like, come on, do some, do some burpees or some sit-ups for your back. I mean, yeah, when you’re running is everything have pain, pain inputs, all of your body, ankles and knees, and there’s been points where the tip of my nose radiates pain, every cell in my body is screaming, my ears are radiating pain, to just stop.
22:55 Yeah, there’s, yeah.
22:56 Brian Rose: You once said that we’re happiest when more struggle, and then, theory, that sounds right, you know, but when you’re in the middle of it, most people, they don’t want to struggle anymore. I mean, I think you’ve grown with this relationship you have now with pain, but even I know that’s true, but when I’m in the thick of the, I’m where I’m, and I really want this to stop. Yeah, I mean, is that like some Zen Buddhist next-level stuff, when you can be in there with the pain and think, wait a second, this is actually the good times right now, this is gonna make me feel great?
23:27 You know, how can you get that point across to most normal people?
23:31 Dean Karnazes: You know, I’ve come up against that scenario you just described so often that I’ve kind of intellectualized it and said, okay, how are you gonna get beyond this? You know, you’ve been here before, what are you gonna do, where does your mind go, what are you gonna do to keep going? And what I’ve learned is that instead of trying to chant a mantra or put your head somewhere else, instead just be in the moment of time, being the present instant, being the here and now.
23:57 Don’t think about anything, don’t think about how much further you’ve got to go, don’t reflect on the past, just think about being your very best, literally, in that instant of time and that next instant of time and that next instant of time.
24:10 Brian Rose: So maybe this is kind of a Zen-like stage you put your mind in, almost kind of like The Power of Now, I guess. A marathon will make you present.
24:18 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, well, I mean, you know, running the London Marathon or Boston Marathon is a very different experience than running 100 miles through the mountains.
24:26 I mean, there’s, you know, millions, thousands, hundreds of thousands of fans cheering for you. Nowadays running has become very social, so I mean, I ran Boston Marathon and probably took a hundred photos with people. People run up, “Do you want a picture?” You know, I was running a freaking marathon with other runners. Yeah.
24:42 Oh, I’m surrounded with people the entire time.
24:44 Brian Rose: You’re talking about during the marathon.
24:46 Dean Karnazes: So marathon is no longer that kind of solo, you against you experience that it once was, so it’s changed a lot in that way. Yeah. But then, a marathon is still, when you’re out in the mountains by yourself for five or six hours, it’s very different.
24:57 Brian Rose: Okay. Yeah, I think you once said that a marathon is really about salvation and opportunity and not about running. For people that are watching, maybe some of these people are actually gonna do the London Marathon, maybe for the first time, maybe they’re shooting for a 4-hour finish and they’re gonna be, B, what do you mean by that, as in, as opposed to them thinking, man, I just want to get through this and get to the end and have a pint? Yeah. Where can they find the salvation?
25:22 Dean Karnazes: You know, I will tell these people that are running the first marathon, if you haven’t run a marathon, sign up for one. You’ll train, but sign up for one, because at the finish of 26.2 miles or 42 kilometers, you’ll be a different person than that person that was standing at the start. You will learn so much about yourself along the way, and that to me is salvation. You you’ve broken through limitations, perceived limitations, you’ve learned that all limitations are self-constructed, you’ve done something that you thought might have been impossible.
25:54 Brian Rose: I mean, I’m sure a lot of people watching this are saying, oh, that’s great for you to say, Dean, you’ve run hundreds of marathons, I could never run a marathon, I mean, look at me.
26:02 Dean Karnazes: I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think, and if you run a marathon, I’ll teach you that, and it changes your life forever. So answer your question. Yeah, getting me excited.
26:10 Brian Rose: So sign up, and on top of that post it all over your social media, and so you’ve got the social reason not to back out.
26:16 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, throw a charity up.
26:18 Brian Rose: Exactly right. You feel really bad. Yeah, then you’re just, then the pressure’s on and you’re doing it for something bigger than yourself, and yeah, there’s no way out.
26:27 You know that you can’t fake an injury, you can’t say, because you know every person you tell, “Oh, my knee hurts,” they’re gonna say, “Whoa, I gave you all this money.” And yeah, yeah, anyway, that’s my recipe for, I okay. And 3:01, yeah, it happened. What was Boston like? You know, I went to school in Boston.
26:43 Brian Rose: Yeah. When I heard about the tragedy and you know, the previous marathon, it was hard to imagine it happening where I went to school. What was the feeling like being there this year? You know, it’s been a couple of years after, but still, what was the feeling like, and was it important that you run it because of what happened there with the tragedy, in the bombing?
27:01 Dean Karnazes: Yes.
27:01 I was there in 2013. I had finished the race, so I had already finished and I was just walking back to my hotel. So I stood around in my Mylar blanket, cheered on a lot of runners, I thought, okay, I’m getting a little cold, you know, let’s walk back to the hotel, which is right by the finish. And as I was walking down the street, I heard this sound, and I thought, wow, that was really loud, and I thought, wow. And then I heard another, and I thought, you know, it’s Patriots’ Day in Boston, you know, so I thought maybe they’re shooting a cannon, maybe it’s three o’clock, where’s that third chime?
27:32 And it was like, it wasn’t close to three, I was like 2:47, and I thought, what was that noise? And then someone comes running up the street, “There’s terrorists, there’s terrorists, they’re bombing!” And when you say that in a crowd of a hundred thousand people, it was pandemonium. I mean, it was chaos like I’ve never seen before. It was terrifying, it was really terrifying, and I just, it scared me.
27:57 I mean, when you hear something like that, it owns you, it, I mean, it shakes your body, and I thought, you know, I got to sign up right now and go back in 2014, and I did so, and I’m gonna run Boston continuously, I’m not gonna let anything I got stop me. And I think that the spirit along the course now is stronger after that bombing, and the amount of fans at the finish line, it didn’t scare people off, it’s doubled the amount of fans.
28:22 Brian Rose: Yeah, it’s a proper American, isn’t it?
28:24 It’ll piss you off that these people decided to mess with your sport, and I mean, to do something like that in a finish line of something that you kind of hold sacred, like you said, everyone should do a marathon, you’re trying to push people to push their limits, and now people are just like, you know, ruining something that’s potentially so beautiful.
28:44 Dean Karnazes: I think it cuts both ways. I think that it shows, unfortunately, it shows the vulnerability of trying to please American, I mean, it’s like, think about the Super Bowl over 26 miles.
28:54 I mean, how do you possibly protect every inch of that course? It’s almost inconceivable. So the amount of security now and the cost of producing a marathon is astronomical. On the other side, I think that it’s, um, it’s made people stronger. Yeah, hardship makes people stronger, and you know, there’s that kind of shared suffering brings people together.
29:16 Brian Rose: Yeah, yeah. I was in New York City for 9/11 and though I was actually in London for the bombings here, and yeah, a few years later, you know, five, I know, I thought I was gonna hit everything, and, um, I was impressed at both times by the resilience of the people, and you know, the Americans in New York City, and now they just rallied and came together, and the Brits taught me an amazing thing. Like, literally the next day it was like back to work. Yeah.
29:39 And I realized that they’d done this before. You know, in 1940 they had been bombed, you know, probably a thousand, two thousand, ten thousand decks, and yet they got on with it, the motto “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Yeah. And they really impressed me, as that was their way of fighting back, was to carry on, and it was a beautiful thing to see.
29:59 Dean Karnazes: Well, I mean, I think, you know, the human, especially the male, needs to fight.
30:04 I mean, we know that. I’ve been a teenage kid, I mean, you have a fight in you, and how do you express that? Unfortunately there are people express it in what we’ve seen, you know, they’re in sort of terrorism, which is a bad manifestation. You know, there’s the Fight Club mentality, you know, you get into kickboxing or whatever, and then there’s the marathon. It’s the same damn thing, you’re just, you’re fighting against yourself, you’re getting that fight out of you.
30:28 But I think if people were running marathons instead of, you know, planting bombs, we’d be a lot better. So that’s, you know, I’m kind of a, that’s my manifesto for getting out there running marathons.
30:38 Brian Rose: Yeah, what’s the culture like in some of these ultramarathoners? You know, I talked to Joe De Sena when he was talking about these crazy races and the death races and all those things, but he said, Brian, man, there are some quirky people in there that do this kind of thing.
30:52 What are your peers like when you guys hang out afterwards and have a drink? Like, what do they like?
30:58 Dean Karnazes: There are some quirky people. I’m pretty normal. Well, you know, that’s the thing, I think most ultramarathoners, most extreme athletes could pass as normal.
31:08 Like, you know, they could walk down the street and you’d say, what I thought was pretty damn fit, but you’d never think they’re doing incredibly weird things. I think that it’s with ultramarathon and more so than even like the Spartan races. I’ve done Spartan races and there is kind of a funky set to the summer. They’re pretty different kind of crowds, some of them, but I think mostly really good people, really enthusiastic, really energetic. Yeah, maybe a little extreme.
31:34 Brian Rose: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and I ask the question I’m gonna go back to it now. You’ve seen this sport evolve for many, many years now. I mean, you’ve been doing this for 30-some years at 20, 25 years.
31:45 Yeah, I mean, what have you seen, you know, what’s your take on it, because I don’t know anybody that’s been in it, into the extreme that you are, other than you. And what do you see now, what’s the state of ultramarathon now versus where it was, and where do you think it’s going?
32:00 Dean Karnazes: So it’s become much more democratic in that there’s a much broader base of, you know, everyday athletes. If we, well, I would say everyday athletes, but, you know, sub-elite athletes.
32:09 So there’s more people running ultramarathons that never thought they could go that far, people that have real jobs. Before it used to be kind of just people to have or living on the fringe, you know, you couldn’t have a real job because you couldn’t train as much as you needed, and this and that, but now there’s professionals doing it. The other trend, so that’s been one major trend, and the growth has been, you know, incredible. It’s still a very small subset of running, ultramarathoner, but it’s a growing subset.
32:35 The other trend is that at the distance, like a 50 kilometer, which is 31 miles, into 50, even a 50 mile race, a lot of elite marathoners, like Olympic qualifying marathoners, kids, you know, I say kids, and they’re, you know, early 20s, are running ultras now and they’re smashing course records. I mean, almost every ultra last year, if you look, there was a new course record set by some person you’ve never heard of before. You know, it’s not one guy who’s like dominant winning every race, there’s elite marathoners that are saying, wow, these ultras are kind of fun, I’m gonna try it, and they’re smashing records.
33:11 So that’s the other trend.
33:13 Brian Rose: Okay, so now bringing new heights, pushing that sport even further. Do these guys use ultras to train for marathons and maybe get better?
33:20 Dean Karnazes: And I think they use marathons to train for ultras. Yeah, but I mean, these guys race, like still, most of the ultramarathoners are not in it to race.
33:29 I mean, they’re in it for the experience, especially when you get out to a hundred miles. I mean, you know, someone’s gonna win and they might know who the winner is, but they’re just more, can I make it, can I get to the finish line? That success is defined in completing the race, so it’s a different mindset completely, where they, you know, these elite guys, if they’re like marathons and they’re looking at their split times, they’re really racing against each other.
33:52 It’s a very different reality for them than someone in mid-pack.
33:55 Brian Rose: Okay, and you’re okay with that?
33:57 Dean Karnazes: I think both of those are good, both those trends are good, both more mid-packers and more elites. I think they’re both good things for the sport.
34:04 Brian Rose: Okay, talk to me about the book, “The Road to Sparta.”
34:07 Brian Rose: Look, it’s a fascinating read, you’re a damn good writer.
34:10 Dean Karnazes: Oh, well, thank you. I mean, you know, I’m English teachers, so.
34:12 Brian Rose: Well, I mean, like you said, people in the airport are coming up to you and they’re like, feel a connection with you, but this is a personal book. You know, you’re talking about your grandfather to start off this whole immigrant story.
34:23 You know, I’m fascinated with this immigrant mind, people that come into a situation where they have no choice but to stay. Your grandfather had no choice, right? You know, he was there, barely spoke English, changed his name, and made a life for himself. You know, now I couldn’t go back to Greece when he got to LA. Talk to me about your family, what you learned about him, this whole book, this race.
34:43 Dean Karnazes: I mean, there’s a lot better. Well, I mean, I understand Greek, so, you know, my ancestry is Greek and I’ve always heard about my family coming from the same village as Pheidippides, however you want to say his name, the original Greek marathoner. So I thought I gave a good of his village, and by God, everyone looks like me. I’m like, looking at these people, this is weird. A lot of them are not athletes, I mean, there’s a lot of more, you know, goat herders and farmers, and we all kind of look alike, and they all have incredible bodies.
35:12 I mean, they’re not, they don’t train and work out in the gym, but their bodies are amazing, and that was really startling to see, that so little in some areas of Greece has changed. The other thing is, you know, doing all the history of Greece and the Greek culture was fascinating to me, learning about the birth of democracy. I mean, somehow some of these principles have percolated through time and are still relevant twenty-five hundred years later, so it was beyond just a running book.
35:40 Brian Rose: If you, oh, it’s much more of a deeper dive, a deeper study. Now, what have your family comes from, our Spartans? Yeah. And can you explain to me the difference between the Athenians and the Spartans and kind of what you took from all this, and then maybe go a little bit deeper and talk to me about this marathon?
35:58 Dean Karnazes: You know, I mean, the city-states of Greece, Athens and Sparta, were kind of like California and, you know, New York or something.
36:05 I mean, you know, there’s, if you go at least these different cities or different states, you’ll notice that people are different. A New Yorker is very different than a Californian, and the Spartans were very different than the Athenians. Athenians were more intellectual obviously, they’re more into ascendancy through the mind, where the Spartans were into ascendancy through the body. So if you’ve seen “300,” I mean, yeah, who’s the most badass fighting?
36:29 Brian Rose: Fortunately, agree. I mean, this is Sparta, this is Leonidas.
36:33 Dean Karnazes: And so the culture, they were very, very different. Sparta became irrelevant because of that. Sparta almost became like North Korea now.
36:42 I mean, not as weird as North Korea, but they became a military state that kind of became outdated, if you will. And I always, you know, I tell Joe, go to Sparta. I mean, he started something that people in Greece don’t even know about. I go to Greece and I tell us, there’s a Spartan Race, in, you know, it’s global now, and there’s people that want to be like Spartans and they don’t get it. And I tell Joe, you got to go to Sparta, but I think if you actually go to Sparta, he’d be disappointed, because Sparta is not like what it was 2,500 years ago.
37:14 It’s a very different place now, but in the main square of Sparta there still is this towering bronze statue of King Leonidas, and this Spartathlon race is a hundred and fifty-three-mile footrace from Athens to Sparta, and you’ve got to complete this in sub 36 hours or else you get cut out of the race. It’s the most elite athletes from around the world that attempt this race, and typically only about a third of them finish, and you finish this race unlike any race in the world, and that most races, when you get to a finish line, there’s a finish line, right? Well, you get to Sparta, there’s no finish line.
37:49 What you do is you run up to the statue of King Leonidas and you touch his bronze feet, and that they stop the clock when you touch his feet, and it just, it melts you. Every runner I saw who made it would just break down crying. I mean, there’s, it’s such an emotional moment, so I got to feel that sensation and live it. Yeah. Wow.
38:09 Brian Rose: And that whole point of that run was because it was a messenger that went both ways, right? What was it, to kind of ask the Spartans to help the Athenians fight the Persians, is that what was going on there?
38:21 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, so in 490 BC the Persians invaded Greece outside of Athens in a place called Marathon. Incidentally, marathon means field of fennel, because wild fennel grows in Greece all over, and where the Persians landed it’s a big coastal plain filled with wild fennel.
38:37 So that’s what marathon, most people think marathon means a run of 26.2 miles, it actually means field of fennel. But when the Persians landed, their fighting force was about fifty thousand men, the Athenians had ten thousand, and they said, we need help, we need reinforcements. Pheidippides, who is a hemerodromos, which meant a day-long runner, a professional foot messenger, they said, run to Sparta, recruit the Spartans, and that’s what he did. He ran one hundred and fifty-three miles to Sparta to get the Spartans to come back and help battle the Persians.
39:12 Brian Rose: Okay, now how did marathon, it being 26.2?
39:15 Dean Karnazes: It’s a convoluted story, you read the book. He got to Sparta and the Spartans said, yep, we’re coming, that’s no, we don’t want Greece to fall, you know, where you’re, your brothers. The problem is the moon is not full and our religion forbids us from leaving for battle until the moon is full, and the moon wouldn’t be full for six days. So now Pheidippides is there thinking, well, the Spartans are coming but they’re delayed by six days, I’ve got all my men, and think about the pressure on this guy.
39:45 I mean, he’s fighting, this, you know, he’s running to save Athens, his family, his father, his mother, they think he might have had children, he knows that the Persians will rape his wife, they’ll castrate his son and make him a slave, they’ll turn his daughter into a sex slave. That’s the pressure this guy’s running under. So he decides, I got to go back and tell my countrymen, my Athenians, that they’re not, there’s going to be this Sparta delayed by six days.
40:13 So he turns around and runs back to the battlefield of Marathon. So now he’s running 153 miles round trip. The final marathon killed him, which after the Athenians somehow defeated the Persians, he ran from the battlefield to the Acropolis and proclaimed, “Nike! Nike!” Nike, Nike, victory, victory, you know, we are victorious, and then he fell dead, but it was further than just a marathon, it killed him.
40:40 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s real talk. Hey, yeah, and what did you learn about your Greek roots by doing this? And I know you tried to survive on what he would have eaten and drank, right, figs, and you were really trying to take it back to proper old school when you did this race. Mm-hmm.
40:55 Dean Karnazes: You’re right, I ate just the foods he would have had access to.
40:59 So when these hemerodromoi ran, they would carry satchels with food but they would forage a lot as well. So they picked figs, olives, and cured meat, just like a beef jerky. So I wanted to see if I could tackle the Spartathlon using only these ancient foods, and that’s what I did.
41:16 Brian Rose: Yeah, go nuts. Oh, well, okay, you missed your gel packs and things like that, which are.
41:22 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, I had some oversights as well. You know, I’ve got it for six or eight hour training runs, eating figs, it was fine. I’d never eaten figs for 24 hours non-stop, and things do things to your stomach, right? That’s why you eat figs. So I had some GI problems.
41:38 Yeah, the figs are great on the way in, but I’ll leave it at that.
41:42 Brian Rose: Did you ever think you wouldn’t finish in 36 hours?
41:44 Dean Karnazes: I thought I was not gonna finish. Yeah, but this race was very personal to me, so I got it, I just, I made the commitment at a point when it hurts so bad, look, you’re either gonna get to the finish line or they’re taking you out of here on an ambulance. That was my commitment, like you’re not gonna stop until you fall over.
42:02 Brian Rose: That’s a pretty big commitment. I mean, think about it, you’re committing to, I’m either gonna pass out or worse, or I’m gonna make it to the finish line.
42:10 Dean Karnazes: And I went through hell to get there.
42:12 Brian Rose: Yeah, but I think that makes the book interesting. I mean, if it was a good race, it’d be a standard race report: yeah, I did this and this and, you know, top ten, check that off.
42:21 Dean Karnazes: That’s not what happened at all. That’s what I wanted to happen and that’s not what happened, so I think it makes it more interesting that I struggled.
42:31 Brian Rose: What was it like to be on the ground in Greece and, you know, the terrain, to be around the people? What were some of your observations?
42:39 Dean Karnazes: You know, it’s hard for people to relate to this because there’s very few people that have a lifestyle like me, but in Greece I’m somewhat of a celebrity, and I would be running and I’ve come into these aid stations, like checkpoints, you know, at 75 miles where I’m destroyed and all I want to do is, you know, sit in a chair, I have some food, kind of massage my legs, you know, kind of regroup, and I’ll get there and there’s a hundred people waiting for me with books to sign, they want to take pictures.
43:12 So I’ve come to these checkpoints and all of a sudden I’m just mobbed with people in the middle of this race. I, there was no peace, and it was a very interesting experience.
43:22 Brian Rose: Yeah, what do you do there, do you sign it away, or you just got to go, keep moving?
43:26 Dean Karnazes: You know, I mean, the Greeks are very forceful people. I mean, I tried to keep moving as best I could, but I mean, you don’t just keep moving when your yaya’s there and your thea, which is your grandma, your aunt, say all the old women say they’re your thea, which means they’re your aunt, they all want pictures, and these women are forceful.
43:45 I mean, they just did. Yeah, if I was sitting here like this, it just come sit on my lap. You know, it’s great, so I just did my best, but it was challenging.
43:53 Brian Rose: Yeah, you were there for the economic crisis, so you got to see what happened. I think it probably got worse after you left, and you mentioned that in the foreword of the book.
44:01 Yeah.
44:01 Brian Rose: What did you learn about Greece as a political entity, where it’s going from here? It’s obviously taking the brunt of all these issues in the EU, and you could probably go up and back and forward on why, but as a humanitarian, as a Greek and as an outside observer, what do you see and what’s the future there?
44:22 Dean Karnazes: I see people desperate and I see a bright future, which you might think, if they’re desperate, how do you see a bright future? The Greek resolve is stronger than I’ve ever seen it, and I think this economic crisis they’ve gone through will ultimately help them.
44:39 You know, keep being a member of the EU has obligations, you got to play like a big boy, and they were not playing like a big boy and now they’re paying the price, and I think they get it. I think that they had to go through this to kind of cleanse themselves of that old way of thinking, that they could keep taking, borrowing money, borrowing money, and there’d be no repercussions. Now someone’s paying the repercussions and they realize that, so it’s, I think they’ve turned the corner.
45:04 The other thing is that, you know, you go to an island in Greece, it’s still an island in Greece, Turks are gonna come here. I mean, the tourism industry has boomed during this economic downturn, so that’s gonna continue. It’s Greece, the people are still Greeks. I mean, they’re never beyond just saying, screw it, let’s have a shot of ouzo and do some Greek dancing, no matter how bad things look. So that Greek spirit is not broken.
45:27 Brian Rose: Yeah, yeah, it’s that culture, that’s these houses a years. Yeah, yeah, and like, I remember I went to Mykonos and Santorini with my girl at the time, and yeah, it’s just like, you know, parts of that island probably haven’t changed in 5,000 years, right? Yeah. And it’s, what did you think? I mean, it’s sighs.
45:43 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, yeah, amazing. Yeah, it gets in you, it doesn’t ever leave you when you go to Greece.
45:48 Brian Rose: Yeah, you said something about maybe the philosophers should be the politicians instead of kind of the way that it doesn’t always work out that way. What did you mean by that and will that ever happen?
46:00 Dean Karnazes: Oh, that was Plato’s take on things, you know, that the thinkers should be running the world, and I think that it’s gonna take a while before we get there.
46:09 I mean, Plato said that 2,500 years ago, right? Plato said in “The Republic,” you know, the worst thing we can face right now is economic inequality, there’s the rich and the poor, we got to solve this. That was 2,500 years ago, what are we talking about today? So until, I think, you know, people that are a little more enlightened are actually running things, it’s gonna be the same way.
46:32 Brian Rose: Let me ask you about that.
46:34 Brian Rose: I mean, you’re older and wiser now, you spent a lot of time going around the world connecting with people, are we evolving, you know, as a human race, are we getting closer to that equality or are we going the opposite way?
46:49 Dean Karnazes: No, I think we’re definitely getting closer. I think if you statistically, I think if you look, we’re getting closer. I mean, I think if you look at the number of lives lost through war, it’s much lower now than it has been. I think that the unfortunate thing is the news sensationalizes, so news broadcasts tragedy.
47:09 I mean, if it bleeds, it leads. So when you think about some of these countries, all you hear about is, oh, there’s a war here, you know, there’s, they’re fighting in the streets. For instance, I was in Uzbekistan of all places last summer, running across Uzbekistan, and these people I met out in the countryside, they’d never met an American before, and you know, here I’m running down the street, where there’s another story, but you know, we’d start talking and they would say to me, aren’t you worried living in America?
47:35 I mean, the, you know, the black people are killing the police and everyone hates each other, and aren’t you worried about living there, do you feel safe? And here I am running through, you know, it was Uzbekistan, right above Afghanistan. You know, people hear about Uzbekistan, they think, you’d never go there, and all they’re saying is, why, Uzbekistan seems like such a dangerous place. So it’s just media bias, I think, all of it, but I think we’re all very, yeah, very wise.
47:58 Yeah, I say turn off the TV.
47:59 Brian Rose: Yeah, no, I had a guest, his name James Altucher, and he said he used to work in a newsroom, and he said, Brian, it’s like Halloween every day, they try to scare you. Yeah.
48:08 Dean Karnazes: And I just turn it all off. Yeah, because most of the time it doesn’t have anything to do with me.
48:13 Yeah, and me worrying about it means that I don’t get to do something helpful and productive. I say watch enough news to stay informed and no more. Yeah, I say if it’s really important, your friends will tell you, or just not, doesn’t look good, say that Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. Yeah. Oh yeah.
48:31 Brian Rose: Yeah. What’s next for you? You got some crazy big plans for the next, like, maybe, I don’t know, of the year or two, like that. You’re talking about really pushing the envelope. I don’t even know how you did the 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days, but you want to go bigger, right?
48:43 Dean Karnazes: Well, I mean, that 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days was, to me, the ultimate road trip. I mean, it was incredible to imagine seeing, have you been all 50 states? I mean, how many people have, you plug into 25. Yeah, those is like just driving, land in the airport. Yeah, I know, but to me that was like the ultimate road trip.
49:03 I met interesting people, you know, I got to try the different foods, culture, all the cultures in the States are different, so I want to take this same footprint and just go global with it. So to run a marathon every kind of the world in a one-year timeframe, a global expedition, there’s two hundred three countries and run a marathon in each and every one of them.
49:24 Brian Rose: That’s a little crazy. Is it doable?
49:26 Dean Karnazes: I’ve been saying I want to do this for six years, so it is testing me.
49:30 Yeah, I think physically I could do it. Giving the permits and the passports and the visas is another challenge. I’ve had things lined up, and with the change in the administration, the change in the US with the government, all my contacts, my main contacts at the State Department are now gone, so I’m in a few weeks I’m meeting with the State Department again in DC to kind of reintroduce this idea of doing this. So every time I’m like rolling a boulder up the hill, you know, I get a little bit closer and then it pushes me back a bit.
50:03 Brian Rose: You’re struggling, you’re happy, this, right? Yeah. No, you said physically, what makes you physically different? You’ve got a mean picture of your calves in the book and it’s pretty crazy. Fair, we’re gonna get some close-ups of that later.
50:14 Brian Rose: You know, you talk about purge and lactic acid from your body. What are some of the things that, in your opinion, besides your brain, make you able to do what you do?
50:24 Dean Karnazes: I think I’m a good animal, so I treat my body like an athlete’s body should be treated. This is the longest I think I’ve sat down in, you know, weeks. So I’ve had my entire office set up at standing level for about the past 15 years.
50:38 I’ve got a pull-up bar in my office, sit-up mat. I do cycles of HIT training, so high-intensity interval training, you know, with push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, dips, burpees. I do probably four or five sets of those throughout the course of the day, and it’s probably a twelve to fifteen minute cycle, so I’m constantly working out. Feeding my body well, I mean, my diet’s really clean, if you will, so kind of a modified Paleo diet, and I’m just doing all the things an athlete needs to do to be an athlete.
51:10 And the only thing that’s killing me is just freaking travel. I mean, you know, I mean, I’m half destroyed right now, thinking I’m, I, you know, in a 9-hour time difference, and I’ve just flown here after running a marathon, right? But that’s the worst thing to do to my body, in hydration and planes, maybe no water.
51:30 Brian Rose: Oh yeah. What, 56?
51:31 Dean Karnazes: I’m over 50, let’s put it that way.
51:33 Brian Rose: I quit 56, right? Yeah, yeah, like 32 right now. So I, and what’s the lactic acid thing? You always said that you had a way of purging lactic acid from your body.
51:42 Dean Karnazes: Well, I mean, every endurance athlete has the ability to purge lactic acid more efficiently. They’ve tested me and they’ve said I have an incredible ability to do this. They’re not sure why. They said your ability to purge lactic acid is beyond even elite athletes. You know, whether that’s good, bad, indifferent, it is what it is.
52:04 Yeah. Okay.
52:05 Dean Karnazes: So it helps me not to cramp, like I don’t cramp much, and I can sustain a, not a sprint, a pace, but a slower pace for a longer duration. Okay.
52:15 Brian Rose: Yeah, and you don’t pronate or something, eight, you got some great biomechanics.
52:20 Brian Rose: Yeah, in your, that’s hereditary. I mean, you just get that from your parents.
52:24 Dean Karnazes: They say the best thing you can do as a long-distance runner is to choose your parents well. Yeah.
52:29 Brian Rose: And you said was you don’t work out regularly, you work out constantly.
52:32 Ah, sorry.
52:32 Brian Rose: And there’s the description of where your office is, like you were just constantly moving, basically.
52:37 Dean Karnazes: I mean, I’m going back to my hotel right now because I’ve got about a minute. Wow. Like an hour break until I got to go into this book signing, and I’m gonna do burpees.
52:44 There’s a, I have a shower rod and I’m gonna do pull-ups and chin-ups and push-ups.
52:48 Brian Rose: Yeah, I gotta introduce you to Ido Portal. There’s a guy, cuz he would love this. You know, he remember he said he went and trained Conor McGregor in Ireland and they did like a training session in the ring and they hit some pads and they did some stuff, and yeah, guys were all hanging around and he said, it was like, you guys don’t move enough.
53:05 Dean Karnazes: And I move in 8 or 10 hours a day.
53:07 Brian Rose: Yeah. And I got, he’s all about that.
53:09 Dean Karnazes: Yeah, I even eat standing. My kids think I’m weird. I say, “Dad, you’re eating standing.”
53:13 Dean Karnazes: Happily, yeah, I feel like I digest food better, and why not?
53:16 Brian Rose: Yeah, is it true you’ve eaten the entire pizza?
53:19 Dean Karnazes: Well, right, yeah, my younger self did that. Yes, yeah. That was you.
53:22 Brian Rose: Yeah. Um, just some bigger picture things as far as you, I mean, what keeps you awake at night, you know, social media?
53:31 Dean Karnazes: No, I mean, I worry about the future. I’m not a young man anymore. I mean, I worry about how am I gonna, you know, what’s the next iteration of Dean, you know, how do you shape-shift and continue doing what you love and making a go of it?
53:48 I’ve always wanted to have staying power as an athlete. Most athletes have a very short athletic career. I want mine to last forever. So how do you twist and turn to do that, and that’s what I think about a lot. Yeah.
54:00 Brian Rose: Okay, and that means staying in peak condition and also being creative with ideas and challenges you want to accomplish,
54:07 Dean Karnazes: challenges as well as, you know, figuring out other ways to work with my sponsors on, you know, hosting events, you know, more business-related endeavors where I might be a host or an ambassador versus just an athlete running, producing an event, you know, selling sponsorship, doing all that sort of stuff.
54:25 Brian Rose: So almost it’s almost like a separate business venture to just running. Okay.
54:29 Brian Rose: And is your question about maybe a success secret that you found over the years, where you were like, I woke up and like one day when I started doing this differently, maybe it was a diet, meditation routine, a sleep routine, something that really had a step function increase on the way you felt, your endurance, your results? Was there something that you figured out early on that you could share with us? What would be something we’d be totally surprised to learn about Dean?
55:22 Dean Karnazes: That I’m a massive introvert. I mean, people think of this gregarious, outgoing kind of Tony Robbins kind of guy. Things like this make me so nervous. I’m so nervous inside, and you know, I just came from a place where I gave a talk to 200 people and then there’s a line of people at signing books for two hours. It’s terrifying to me to be on stage, it’s horrifying, and people think you’re such a natural, you know, you’re charismatic, you know, you’re so good with people.
55:51 That’s why I run for hours and hours by myself, is because it just, I sit in my room at night and I try to put the day in perspective, and that’s what an introvert does, you just need process time, alone time, and when I’m thrown into an environment like this where, just my schedule, if you saw my schedule, I mean, search from sunup to sundown I’ve got things booked. I mean, my, you know, the book, the publishers just booked me. If I can’t run or chill, I sit in my hotel room and it just, I think all night, so that’s probably the definition of an introvert, is they need time to be alone and kind of process everything.
56:24 Brian Rose: That is an introvert. Yep. Okay, and yet you push yourself to extrovert things because probably you’ve enjoyed the struggle, and you know that’s how you got to get things to the next level. It’s, I said the same thing, I said, you’re an introvert, how do you rise to the occasion and get better at being an introvert and doing what you need to do? Yeah, so you’re getting better.
56:42 Dean Karnazes: Well, there’s a term I heard. So you know what someone who’s ambidextrous is, what? Oh yeah, right, you don’t know ambivert is. You can figure it out, somebody can turn it on when they need to, but then they become an introvert.
56:53 Brian Rose: Yeah, yeah, I’m actually a massive introvert as well.
56:56 Most about most people on YouTube are actually massive introverts. Some people don’t understand it cuz they broadcast in front of millions of people, but yeah, they do it in front of a camera all the time, so it’s like their way of kind of attaching socially without having to deal with all of these strange people. I want to rock, you’re with me, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, Dean, I always ask everyone a few questions here at the end.
57:14 Brian Rose: I’m going to ask you, if you could make a phone call to the 20 year old Dean, and I guess this guy probably hadn’t run for five years, probably started climbing the corporate ladder, hadn’t got the MBA yet but was thinking about it, but if you could give that young man a bit of advice, straight up and into that phone, what would you tell him?
57:34 Dean Karnazes: Don’t take yourself so damn seriously. Don’t think you’re that important, because you’re not. You’re one of six billion or seven billion people on this planet.
57:43 Brian Rose: Yeah, well, you were pretty serious about your future at the time, and too serious.
57:48 Dean Karnazes: I think a lot of young men are, and my son is the same way, so I’ve given it to him.
57:52 Brian Rose: Oh yeah, so we put a lot of pressure, what’s the future, what’s the degree, like, what’s all that’s gonna happen right there, and sometimes that pressure became too much and you were lucky enough to be able to run away from it at 30.
58:05 Dean Karnazes: I think you can have that pressure and still have a shot at ouzo and Greek dance.
58:10 That’s what I’ve learned from the Greeks, you can still feel that weight but you can still back away from it and not let it crush you, right?
58:18 Brian Rose: Yeah, so be serious and you have fun at the same time. So, and Greek dance. Yeah. On that same note, what’s the best advice you ever received?
58:26 Could be something from one of your Greek you know relatives or it could be something you heard from another runner, although you don’t sound like one to collect mentors you sound like a solo act, but is there some piece of advice that resonated with you over the years?
58:43 Dean Karnazes: Well, I’ll go back to ancient Greece, and I mean this has resonated with many people over many years. You know, the Oracle of Delphi: know thyself. Know thyself, know who you are. But the other, you know, proclamation of the Oracle is be thyself, or be, and I think that people might know themselves, but can they really be who they are, be authentic?
59:04 That’s one thing. I am authentic. I mean, when people meet me, they get Dean, and this is who I am. I don’t have any clot, you know, skeletons in the closet. You know, I’ve been married to the same woman since she’s my first girlfriend, you know, I’ve never cheated on my wife.
59:22 I’m not the same camera, but no, I really haven’t. You know, I don’t, I don’t, you know, drink on the side, I don’t have any vices, if you will. I’m just who I am, and that’s not easy to be. Yeah. I don’t pretend to be something different than what I really am.
59:37 Brian Rose: How long did it, how old did it take for you to figure out who you were?
59:42 Dean Karnazes: It took until I was 30 years old. Yeah, it took some bad tequila to get it out of me. Yeah.
59:49 Brian Rose: And then how long did it take to figure out how to then just be yourself as well?
59:55 Dean Karnazes: That was a cleansing process. Yeah, that took another probably decade.
59:59 Brian Rose: Yeah, we get wiser as we get older, we all know that, and we all, I think it happens to most of us. Yeah. Okay, that’s powerful: know thyself and be thyself.
1:00:07 Brian Rose: Last part of that question, to that 20 year old that’s watching us right now in China or Uzbekistan or in Russia, America, who wants to, I don’t know, grow up one day and be like Dean, you know, and maybe that means being able to run 350 miles straight, or maybe it means a guy that’s able to travel the world and inspire people and enjoy their lives, you know, through this art. Mm-hmm. What do you tell them, what advice?
1:00:34 Dean Karnazes: I say take out a pad of paper or even on your computer and script your perfect life.
1:00:39 So just write freeform a paragraph or two, if you could be doing anything that you wanted to be doing right now at this instant of time, just fantasize, what would it be? Write that out, right, and then you have a blueprint of like where you want to go. If you don’t have an idea of where you want to go, it’s hard to get there, right? So just fantasize. Say, guys, I want to be a movie producer, I want to be, you know, a lot of people think, oh, I just want to be a millionaire, and I’m gonna be happy.
1:01:05 When they actually do this, say, well, you don’t want to be a charity worker, you know, in Africa. So that’s what I say, write out what exactly you’d want to be doing if you could do it, and then you got a blueprint.
1:01:16 Brian Rose: Okay. Yeah, finally, why do you think you’re getting so much love when you come over here? You know, people really coming up to you, they want you to sign their book.
1:01:25 I was watching your Instagram feed, it’s crazy. I mean, not only people coming to see you with it, they seem to be smiling a lot around you, you know, a lot of love, people kind of seem really inspired by you, but it’s more, what do you, what do you chalk it up to?
1:01:41 Dean Karnazes: I thought about this a lot, because I always, I’m, it’s it’s surreal to me to go to it, like to go to a book signing in London and there’s 200 people there that paid and it sold out in like five minutes.
1:01:53 I’m like, they’re all for me? Why? And I think, I think that’s what a lot of people say to me, that I kind, you’re so humble, like you’re just, you’re like just a regular guy. I think that people admire that because maybe I’m not a regular guy, I just think of myself as a regular guy. I mean, I, I guess pretty successful, right?
1:02:12 I’ve, you know, done some things with my life that are, I guess pretty amazing, but I don’t, I don’t even think of these things. I mean, I have this, I didn’t have a trophy room and I’ve got all this stuff in the garage and sometimes I’ll sort it, I’m like, wow, I carried the Olympic torch, that’s really cool. I got an Olympic torch, you know, oh wow, president, you know, Michelle Obama gave me a Presidential Decree when I ran through the White House, hole that I ran to the White House no one’s ever won, and like it doesn’t, it, I don’t know, I’ve never really come to grips with that’s really me.
1:02:44 Brian Rose: Yeah, I know, early on when the movie Forrest Gump came out, they made Harrison’s about his running to you, but I just thought about the whole movie compared to you, because he’s meeting all these presidents and do have his cool stuff, so yeah, you know, yeah, if you,
1:02:58 Dean Karnazes: I mean, you won’t believe the people I’ve met. Yeah, I mean, I was one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. I hear that, I’m like, I was really this guy?
1:03:08 Brian Rose: No, no, this guy is just a normal guy.
1:03:10 Brian Rose: Yeah, well, I think if the people really respond to kind of who you are and the fact that you were doing this from the beginning, when there wasn’t a sport involved, there was no reason to do it except for the love of doing it. Yeah, and I think these last five years, and I’ve got the next ten years, you’re gonna feel this even more, because they look to you as the guy that has been doing it forever and yet still comes in smiling, beaming. I mean, when I see you, like I said, just like, shh, you got all this energy, and you are a very real dude, you know.
1:03:38 In this book, this book is real talk, you know, it’s really personal, grips me right from the beginning, and I can really feel what it was like to be a grandpa, they’re coming to America, and the fact that you went back and really struggled with this race, and again, you’re a great writer and it really shows, and I read a lot of books and my job paid endorsement right now.
1:03:56 Dean Karnazes: Oh no, no, it’s very gracious of you.
1:03:57 Brian Rose: So I don’t see why people connect and the books are fantastic, and just keep doing what you’re doing, inspiring people.
1:04:03 Dean Karnazes: I love talking to people like you, and um, yeah, I think people, that they can tell the real from the not real, and I think that’s why they’re coming out,
1:04:10 Brian Rose: and probably you’re gonna continue even getting more love over the next five or ten years.
1:04:14 Dean Karnazes: Oh, so cool. Well, I love right back, and maybe that’s it, cuz I love these people as much as they love me. So yeah, that’s awesome stuff.
1:04:20 Brian Rose: Well, good, when the two hundred and three countries gets ready, we’re gonna be there ready to support you.
1:04:25 Brian Rose: You can come back and talk to me afterwards about that. In the meantime, people should definitely pick up your books, and thank you, Dean, for coming on. Appreciate it, huge inspiration. Appreciated. Unreal.
1:04:35 We say it’s about the journey, you know about that. So all the best. Cheers, thanks for keeping it real.
