Never Walk.
Review: “50/50” by Dean Karnazes
Author and Ultra-Marathon legend Dean Karnazes describes his successful attempt to run 50 marathons in 50 US states in 50 consecutive days.
The Book: “50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days — and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance!” by Dean Karnazes and Matt Fitzgerald; Grand Central Publishing; August 2009
The big idea: Karnazes, always on the lookout for another challenge, tackled 50 marathons in 50 days, writes about his experiences and mixes in his best advice for runners of all levels.
The backstory: Dean Karnazes is one of the toughest ultra-runners in the world. His first book (Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner), centered around a 200 mile relay race which he did as a team of one, was a bestseller and introduced a wide audience to the sometimes bizarre world of ultra-distance running.
Mixing content: The authors try to blend the story of Dean running 50 marathons with well-meant “advice” on running. Unfortunately the advice is mostly either extremely simple and plain (a full page on the differences of running a popular vs a not-so-crowded marathon) or outright wrong (a lot of the sports science related advice).
There is only so much to say: You can clearly see that after marathon number 10 all marathons are mostly equal - and actually rather boring. Dean’s stories about each marathon, the participants and courses get shorter and shorter as you go along.
If you read nothing else: The first few chapters are quite fast paced and entertaining - they also don’t contain any of the “expert advice” and thus make for interesting reading. Follow Dean on his journey to pull off this endeavor and read about his first few marathons. Then stop reading.
Rating: 2 (1=Rubbish; 10=Awesome). Karnazes proved with his first book that writing about ultra-distance running can be entertaining. Unfortunately he didn’t pull of that trick in his second book.
