Meet Dean Karnazes, The Man Who Can Run For Three Days Straight Without Getting Tired

In high school, one student participated in a fundraiser race and finished 105 laps while his competitors managed only 15. After more than 15 years of no running, he again set off running and stopped only after 30 miles (48 km). That man is Dean Karnazes, often dubbed as ‘The man who can run forever,’ and he has almost a superhuman level of endurance for a runner.

Dean suffers from a condition which clears the lactate buildup in his body at a very fast rate as compared to other runners.

Laurent Messonnier from the University of Savoie, where Karnazes was tested, says that a person’s body, while under physical exertion, breaks down glucose for energy, resulting in lactate as a byproduct. This lactate can also be converted back to energy, but the rate of that conversion is slow. After a person reaches a certain threshold of the lactate clearance capacity, their muscles start to tense up.

 

Karnazes’s cells seem to have larger mitochondria, whose enzymes help in breaking down the lactate build up.

“At a certain level of intensity, I do feel like I can go a long way without tiring.”

Dean never gets tired or gets muscle fatigue, like other runners do. In his own words, “To be honest, what eventually happens is that I get sleepy. I’ve run through three nights without sleep and the third night of sleepless running was a bit psychotic. I actually experienced bouts of ‘sleep running’, where I was falling asleep while in motion, and I just willed myself to keep going.”

 

Dean’s list of participations is nothing short of extraordinary, just like his body and muscles.

Dean has trained for 50 marathons in 50 days in 2006. He has also completed a marathon on the South Pole in  -25° C temperature. He also has had less difficulty in completing the Marathon des Sables, the toughest ultramarathon on the planet, in which athletes run for 6 days over 251 km in the Sahara Desert.

 

Dean is an ultrarunner, and many of his achievements are because of his high endurance, which in turn are the result of genetics and proper maintenance and environmental factors also.

There is a saying among runners that if you want to be a good runner, you should choose a good set of parents. While the genes from Dean’s parents might have helped him out to a certain extent, his low body fat, low sweat rate, high alkaline diet, and staying away from major environmental toxins have also contributed in this ability.

Although Dean is no less than a superhero, he is also a huge inspiration to runners around the world that there is no such thing as a limitation and the only obstacles you have are in your mind.

More power to you, Dean!

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News source: The Guardian
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