Nutritional Revolution Podcast

Eat to Endure: Dean Karnazes on Ultra Running Nutrition Without Burnout

• Season 6 • Episode 171

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In episode #171 we talked with the Ultramarathon Man, Dean Karnazes about

  • How nutrient-dense food and recovery have kept him injury-free
  • Intuitive eating supporting performance and aging
  • Mental Mastery in Endurance

Named by TIME as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World,” Greek-American Dean Karnazes has pushed his body and mind to inconceivable limits. He once ran 50 marathons, in all 50 US states, in 50 consecutive days. He’s run across the Sahara Desert and run a marathon to the South Pole. He’s run a 200-mile relay race solo, 10 times. An acclaimed endurance athlete and NY Times bestselling author, coach and speaker, he’s won the Badwater Ultramarathon, running 135 miles nonstop across Death Valley during summer, and has raced and competed on all seven continents, twice. Dean is an ESPN ESPY winner, a 3-time recipient of Competitor magazine's Endurance Athlete of the Year award and has served as a US Athlete Ambassador on three Sports Diplomacy envoys. He’s twice carried the Olympic Torch and is a recipient of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition Lifetime Achievement Award. Dean has been featured in TIME, Newsweek, The NY Times, Forbes, the LA Times, The Today Show, 60 Minutes, The Late Show with David Letterman, CBS News, CNN, ESPN, NPR, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, the BBC, and now the Nutritional Revolution podcast. 

He remains most proud of his ongoing contributions of time and funding to programs aimed at getting kids outdoors and active. He has raised millions for charity and served on the Board of Girls on the Run, an international organization that helps young girls learn valuable life skills through training and completing a 5K.

Please note that this podcast is created strictly for educational purposes and should never be used for medical diagnosis or treatment.

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Welcome back to the Nutritional Revolution podcast. Today we have for you guys Dean Karnazes and he was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He's a Greek American ultra runner. Dean Karnazes has pushed many human limits. He's done 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days, crossings of the Sahara and South Pole, and 10 solo finishes of the 200-mile relay courses. An acclaimed endurance athlete, New York Times bestselling author, coach, and speaker, he's won Badwater, the world's toughest foot race, and competed on all seven continents twice. Dean is an ESPN ESPY winner. a three-time competitor endurance athlete of the year and a US athlete ambassador on three sports diplomacy envoys a two-time Olympic torchbearer and a recipient of the president's council on sports, fitness and nutrition lifetime achievement award. His adventures have been featured in Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, Forbes, 60 Minutes, ESPN, NPR, the BBC and more. And now on Nutritional Revolution podcast. Despite the accolades, he's most proud of championing youth activity, raising millions for charity and serving on the board of girls on the run. On today's episode, we talked about Dean's unique fueling style that he has finessed over 30 years running in the sport. And he's obviously done very well for himself. He's maintained injury free. He's been able to do 30 races a year consistently. So he's been doing something right for his body. And this is a really fascinating episode for me. I think you guys will enjoy it. All right. Thank you guys for joining the Nutritional Revolution podcast. We have for you guys Dean Karnazes. Thank you so much for joining us. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me run by. Yes, yeah. So Dean is zooming in today from Athens, you said? Greece? Yeah. So uh evening time for you. But before our guests start to learn more about you and your history, we're going to dive into your two truths and a lie. So I'm going to let you break those down. I'm going to be taking some notes over here. Okay, here they are. I once ran 50 marathons in all of the 50 US states in 50 consecutive days. Okay. The second one, my name is Dean. And the third one is I once ordered a pizza delivered to me during an ultra marathon. Okay. Okay, so I definitely want to talk about these. We might not be able to save all these towards the end. em So em ultra marathon thing. So for our listeners, before we hit record today, Dean and I asked Dean about this pizza story because my husband had brought it up to me. em We're in the Bay Area, California. And he's like, Yeah, there's some guy that runs ultra marathons. And he like eats a whole pizza during the ultra marathon. And when we hopped on with Dean here just now, I asked him that question and it was Dean. So I know that one is true. I did read your bio. I know that the 50 marathons in 50 US states in 50 days is also true, which I would love to talk to you about that. And then we got a little spoiler. We know that your true birth given name is not Dean. Right. So but we can. Do you remember what was? Okay. Okay. for the listeners. Okay. But since we're on this, can we talk about the pizza story? Can we share that? Tell us about that. all right. Well, I read about this in my first book about this story. So I had run a 100 mile race called the Western States 100 mile endurance run. I ran this 135 mile race, which is called the Badwater Ultra Marathon. And I thought maybe I could go further. So there was no races at the time that were beyond that. But I heard about this 12 person, 200 mile relay race. Hmm. from Calistoga to Santa Cruz. And I asked the race director, can I just sign up as a team of one? I tried to do it by myself. So he thought it was crazy. He said, all right, if you want to try it, you can try it. So I was running uh all day. uh My crew was falling asleep. They kind of left me to keep running. I kept running into West Marin, which you know well. So I ran through Petaluma and started going out toward Nicasio. You know it that way. Mm-hmm. and I ran out of food, ran out of everything and I was starving. And I had a flip phone. You weren't even born when there were flip phones. But anyway, like this Motorola that flipped on, I'm like, what do I do? Well, I got a credit card and I got this phone. I'm gonna order a pizza. So I told the guy, you know, make me a pizza. I told him, don't slice it and make it with a really thin crust. He's like, all right, dude, whatever you want. And I said, here's what you delivered to me. He's like. Is that your house? just know. He said, there's nothing out there. I said, I know, I'm running. So he brought me this pizza and I rolled it up into this big like pizzeria, like a big burrito. And I just ate it as I ran. That's why I told him not to slice it and make it with the thin crust so I could roll it up. yeah, I ate the whole pizza. you must understand and you listeners must understand that. It wasn't like I was running a, you know, a hundred meter dash or even a, you know, a 10 K or whatever. I was running for two days without stop. So, you know, I, I wanted all those calories and the other thing, which I'm going to get a lot of hate mail and this probably the most controversial thing ever said on, your podcast. I like pineapple on my pizza. I'm sorry, people. It's very divisive. It's hugely divisive. Yeah, listener. I was going to ask. Yeah. Yeah. So was it a cheese pizza with pineapple on it? Is that what you ordered? It was cheese with ham. Ham, pineapple, and green peppers. wow, okay. And how did your gut handle that? Was it totally fine? No issues? great. I ate the whole pizza and I was like hungry an hour later. Yeah. think that says a lot. That's really incredible. Okay. So we're definitely going to get into fueling and nutrition, how that's evolved for you over the years with your training and racing. I'd love to dive into that. The pizza scenario obviously says a lot about your gut training, but over the years of ultra running, how has your approach to nutrition evolved? uh When you first started ultra running, were you fueling with stuff? Did you kind of have to troubleshoot? Were you hitting some know, bonking, hitting the wall and realizing you needed to bring some stuff on board. And if so, what did that look like, you know, when you first started? Yeah, I kind of learned through experimentation. So I just thought, okay, a calorie is a calorie. You're burning a lot of calories, you just eat a lot of calories. Doesn't matter if it's a pizza, doesn't matter what it is. You know, if it's a protein drink or whatever it might be, a burrito, just get your calories in. you know, then I kind of followed that path. It was okay when you're, you know, I was younger and I was strong and I was getting away with it and then someone said, no, you need to carboload. So I'm like, what's that about? Oh, you need to eat a lot of pasta, pancakes. So I started carboloading and that's when I really noticed these really big peaks but these horrible crashes and it started tuning me into that maybe a calorie is not a calorie. Maybe like a calorie from the simple sugar is different than from a complex carb or from a protein or a fat. And so I started learning, learning more about nutrition and have kind of refined things over the years. Amazing. When you say carb loading, we're talking about increasing your carbohydrates in the days leading up to a big run or a big race. Yes, at first I didn't even understand the idea of depleting your glycogen stores by not eating carbs and then eating a lot. This guy just said you need to eat a lot of carbs. I just, like maybe a week prior, just gorged myself on carbs. And I remember one time I was at the start of the New York City Marathon and I had gone to this pasta feed the night before thinking I'm going to get all these calories from carbs pasta in and I was just bloated and I was kind of nauseous even from last night's meal and I started thinking why am I doing this like is it really gonna help me that much to start in this state of kind of bloated discomfort hmm Yeah. So how did the New York City Marathon go after the pasta dinner? Was it not as you expected or? You know, I gotta be honest, Kyla, I've read it, I think, 15 times. I can't remember how that, like, it wasn't my best performance It wasn't a super human performance. And all I remember most is just standing at the starting line, just feeling bloated and nauseous and wondering, why am I doing this to myself? Yeah. So when you mentioned the complex carbs versus the higher glycemic carbs and how those made you feel, does that mean you changed your carb loading, carb sources over the years or how you consumed those in preparation for a race? Yeah, I mean I learned a lot more about, you know, both the complex carb versus simple sugar. I've learned a lot about the difference between glucose and fructose and galactose and all the other sugars. nowadays, know, nutrition is so sophisticated that you can get pre-made drink, know, ready-made drinks or powders or bars or whatever that kind of have it all, you know, plug and play for you. Yeah. So if you I'm telling you things you know very well. Yeah. uh like stop doing as much pasta in the days of pre-race and shifted more towards whole grains and things of that nature? Or what did that look like for you? Like, what are your go-to carb loading sources now? Yeah, so I started still trying to ramp up the carbs from different sources. So whole grains, definitely one thing I started to restrict was fiber. So I started really tuning into fiber as well for obvious reasons, especially insoluble fiber. So I shift to rice cakes or things like that that have very low fiber but still have carbs, but it's kind of complex, slowly dissolved carbs. Yeah, nice. And with your GI and experience with any GI issues over the many years you've been racing, you notice for you specifically, like if I do too much fiber in the 24 hours or X days pre-race, I can increase my likelihood of GI issues? Do you notice that for yourself personally? Yeah, I do. I'll give you another story. I ran this race here in Greece. It's called the Spartathlon. So it's a 153 mile race from Athens to Sparta. And it's based on the battle of marathon in 490 BC when this man, Fidipedes, or Fidipedes, the marathoner ran this distance. to recruit the Spartans to help the Athenians to battle the Persians. So in ancient Greece, there was this class of citizen called Himodromi, which just means day-long runner or all-day runner. And these guys, they were foot messengers, they were couriers, heralds, and they were trained to run long distances because the Greeks realized that a man, well-trained athlete, could outrun a horse in the mountainous and yeah, it's true, for long distances. yeah. I said, okay, I'm gonna do this race. I'm gonna write a story about the first marathon. I'm gonna learn about classics. I'm gonna go to these places and I'm gonna do this race using only the foods that he ate to kind of recreate the experience. So he ate ah cured meat, is like we would say beef jerky. He ate olives. uh He ate this stuff called pasteli which is ground up sesame seeds and honey. It's like an energy paste. Yeah. and Andy ate figs, both fresh figs to be foraged and dried figs. So I started eating figs, training with figs in Marin. I'd go out for seven, eight hour training runs, eating just figs and olives. It was fine. The Spartathlon took me longer, because obviously it's 103 miles. And after about 24 hours, having all those figs in my system, why do we eat figs, right? Yeah. Yeah. ultra marathon, you don't want to be regular. And that's when I realized, got to watch your fiber intake too. Yeah. So I learned a lesson on that race. It kind of came. So the moral of the story is don't eat two pounds of figs are going to run. Right. Yes. I mean, a lot of those things that you mentioned outside of the honey, Like the sesame seeds can have fiber and a fat source and then the olives, a fat source. And some of those things take longer to digest and empty from the stomach. yeah, well, but you can tolerate a pizza. So you know that you can tolerate cheese and fats and stuff like that. Just fine. So that's really great. um OK, so we've talked about some carb loading. Do you did you just do the that race recently? Or was that? was in, I think 2015. It was about a decade ago, maybe a little bit longer, yeah. Awesome. what, do you have any upcoming races that like in the, well, it's almost end of October(2025) for the listeners, but any races the rest of this year? Kyle, race, I probably do 30 races a year. Of all different distances. So yeah, I'm going to do a half Ironman here in Greece this coming weekend. And then after that, I have the Athens marathon, which is the original marathon. it's, you know, it's just a marathon. But, you know, this year I've several hundred mile races, several hundred kilometer races, all kinds of races. Yeah, adventure races, running races. Wow. Okay. So now I'm like with that much volume on your body and training stimulus and racing stimulus, how do you recover your body? Like nutritionally or tools, gadgets, massage? Like what's keeping your body continuing to go? Thank I don't know, but knock on wood it's still going because I've been doing this for over three decades. I've been running these ultra marathons and still going, it's still going pretty well. You know, one thing that I'm big proponent of is ice baths or at least a cold water shower. So I've been doing, you know, cold water immersion for a long time, maybe 20 years. And I still believe in that a lot. I believe in compression. Mm-hmm. I believe in active recovery. So always the next day after a big effort, I go out and run. You shuffle, know, jog, move, just try to get the blood flowing and the muscles moving. And I think that really helps accelerate recovery. From a diet standpoint, one thing I do is drink a lot of water, plain water until my urine is clear. I also gravitate toward high quality proteins and fats more than carbs. I don't know why. I really have gotten sensitive about it. I've gotten older to carbs. So I'm really careful about it. seems like any amount of carb, even a sweet potato by itself will put me into like this little glycemic tizzy. So I've noticed if I've mixed the sweet potato with maybe some tuna and definitely some olive oil and olives, I get the three food groups and it's pretty good nutrition. I eat food as medicine, I don't supplement all that much. Yeah, that's great. Do you find on your day-to-day diet, are you eating primarily like whole real foods or is anything coming from a package or a can or anything like that? No, I mean, I had this mentor when I was younger, his name was Jack LeLane. you your parents probably might have known, you know, but he was like the original muscle man from Venice Beach, you know, the weightlifter with the leotard on like the tights. And, but he was very revolutionary. And he said to me one time, Dean, if man makes it, don't eat it. And if it tastes good, spit it out. you try to eat foods that I can pick from a tree or dig from the earth or catch with my hands. So I try to avoid anything that's refined or processed and needs to go through a machine or in a bag, to your point. So that's kind of the day-to-day diet. Is there exceptions for race day? Are we using man-made foods for race day? Are you making your own fueling nutrition? No, I'm using more man-made foods and using uh a product by Hammer Nutrition uh called Perpetuem That's like a four to one carb, very long chain, know, like starches and protein. So I'm using some beverages like that as well to supplement. And honestly, I still eat a lot of solid food. in Greece, there's these places called... like they're taverns or like roadside taverns and they have this thing called souvlaki which is just like meat on a skewer but it's it's in olive oil so it's kind of got a lot of fat it's not a lot of fat on the meat a lot of times it's it's mostly chicken or really lean pork like they eat pork here that's very very lean so i i still like having solid food especially if it's salty and it's a hot race Yeah. Yeah. Wow. This is great. So we had on our podcast recently, uh, Killian Korth I don't know if you're familiar and he, yeah, he was sharing with us his nutrition experience, which I thought was very unique in compared to what's being promoted from like the science side right now. And what a lot of, endurance athletes are doing with like the high, like lots of carbs, 120 grams of carbs per hour, you know, stuff. And he was I mean, his diet was like a lot of red meat and, um, and yeah, his fueling during was, uh, I think he was doing some manmade sports stuff too, but I thought it was, if I recall, it was some unique, like maybe higher protein, higher fat foods that he was bringing in that I was surprised by. But I do think that there's, yeah, something to be said by that. And you're listening to your body. have here. And that was Killian's big takeaway is like his recovery was so much better, which I thought was very interesting. And yeah, and yeah, so you can keep doing those things that you love to do. And yeah, it's really incredible. I'm like very fascinated to see how people's bodies can handle things differently and push, push in the sport and see how far things can go. think I mean, I still think there's a there's a lot that's going to be revealed in the future with with nutrition and specifically men versus women because ultra-marathoning is one of the few sports, maybe the only sport that I know of where men and women compete equally. mean, it's not uncommon for a woman to win outright an ultra-marathon. And I think I was looking at some AI-generated data of something like at races above 192.4 miles or something like that, some random number, women are actually better than men. at these very long distances. And I think some of that might have to do with metabolism of stored body fat because women have higher, even lean women typically have higher body fat than lean men. So I think there's a lot going on with nutrition besides just the things you put in your mouth. Yeah, I mean, you're an expert at these things again. Always we're all always learning. There's always more research to come out and educate us. So with your different intensity, maybe training sessions, do you vary the types of nutrition you're using to support those training sessions during depending on the intensity? Yeah, I I try to eat what I race with as much as possible. So, you know, I'm not big on gels, like goo packs and things like that. Sometimes I'll eat them. uh Sometimes what I really like are nut butters. What I found that worked the best for me are like hazelnut butter, cashew nut butter, almond butter is not my favorite, but peanut butter as well. Peanut butter, think, is very unrecognized hero. of ultra endurance sports. I think the peanut got a of a bad rap because it's kind of the workhorse of nuts. It's kind of like the everyday man's nut. But good peanuts like the peanuts here in Greece taste completely different than the peanuts in America. Completely different, yeah. And when you grind them up in a paste with some Greek honey, it's incredible fuel. And I find that has just no... no impact on my blood sugar whatsoever, but it really ties, it just ties you for a long time. Yeah. Talking about blood sugar, have you worn a CGM to monitor what your blood glucose is doing out of curiosity through training or racing? Yeah, I have. I have. it's pretty stable, my blood glucose. Yeah, even, it's pretty stable. So when you're in a race or a training session, do you have a time schedule you're trying to stick to with fueling? Are you trying to get a little nibble in every 15 minutes or do you just go by feel? I used to go by feel actually. I can kind of forecast. know, three decades of doing this, could pretty much, without a heart rate monitor, tell you exactly what my heart rate is without even looking at a watch or anything, so. that's amazing. That is so cool. So then what does the fueling look like kind of on a normal day or I should say in the long run or in a race? Do you know how much roughly you might be getting in either calorically or whether it's carbohydrates, fats like per hour, do you think roughly? I like to get in roughly 250, 300 calories an hour. Typically, that's with a nut butter packet, that's 210 calories right there on a very small amount because it's concentrated. I also love olives. I love olives as fuel, the salt and everything else. Olives actually have carbs. Even though olive oil is pure fat, olives have some carbs, not a lot. but they do have carbs. ah Perpetuem I told you about from Hammer Nutrition, they have a capsule. So they've kind of taken this powder and capsulized it. So I just, I pop those a lot. Nice. Okay, I didn't know that about the capsules. That's neat. So is that just an electrolyte or are there carbs in the capsule as well? No, I don't think there's much electrolytes at all. It's carbs, it's starches and protein. Yeah, I think it's a four to one ratio. Yeah. It's kind of a weird food form because it's a capsule and it's not so sweet. mean, even though it's, you know, 75 % carbs, it's complex. like putting a potato in your mouth almost. A dissolvable potato. Yeah. that's interesting. So you're not, you don't swallow, you don't swallow it like, um like I think of like a pill capsule. It's a something that you let dissolve in your mouth, you're saying. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I gotta check these out. I can't believe I haven't heard of these or seen these. They're amazing and everyone I give them to, they're like, what'd you get these? And I don't know, it's a really great food form. It's lightweight. Yeah. that's so cool. What kind of olives do you go for? Do you go with the ones that are with a pit or no? In Greece, I do because there's not lot of options, but yeah. I typically use, I'll take the pit out before the race or I'll get a jar of olives, which you can get pitted. But again, the olives here taste completely different than the olives in the US. There's a place called Kalamata that makes these olives that are incredible. I get olives from ancient Olympia. Mm. which is where the Olympics began. I mean, there's olive trees all over there. I mean, these olive trees are date back, you know, to ancient times. Wow, that's so cool. The fascinating thing too about the olives and the consumption, and then it just makes me think about your ability to recover really well, is they're so rich in antioxidants and polyphenols, which is one of the big things we're seeing aid in uh tissue recovery and inflammation. And yeah, I feel like you're going to live to be like 120 with all your olives and olive oils. Well, I mean, we could get into the herbs I eat as well. And the spices, because we know these foods are chopped with antioxidants, right? yes, share your your your herb, your herb routine. One thing I do is I brew my coffee with rosemary. either, I mean, I grow it, it grows all, mean, rosemary grows all over Greece. It grows all over Marin as well. I mean, you wouldn't believe the similarities between Marin and where I live here in Greece. But anyway, I grind up rosemary in my grounds and brew it. Or I just use, I'm lazy, I'll just use dried rosemary. So the oil, you you see the oils, you see the oils, the rosemary oils in the coffee and believe it or not, it really mellows out any bitterness to the coffee. has, it's got a really nice flavor. I've tried, tried and some of you think, yeah. So you take fresh rosemary, grind it up, put it do you do an espresso maker and put it in there? No, it's a brew, like a pour over or whatever. Just anywhere there's hot water and the coffee grounds being brewed, just put it right in there. I mean, you could just strip a rosemary sprig of its leaves and just crush them up. Just grind it with your fingers and throw them in there. Yeah, love that. Okay, rosemary coffee. I gotta try that. I gotta try this Perpetuem thing too. And then what else are you doing, Dean? well, uh Regany (ρίγανη), which is the word, is a Greek word for oregano. Regany (ρίγανη. So every meal I have has got so much Regany (ρίγανη in it. And the Regany (ρίγανη, the Regany (ρίγανη, the regions in Greece all produce a different, like a different flavor of Regany (ρίγανη. So if you go to like Mount Olympus, where Zeus is from, that Regany (ρίγανη tastes different than if you went to like Santorini like one of the Cycladic islands. Yeah, that's cool. on Regany (ρίγανη, yeah. And it adds a plenty like a powerful flavor to the food. I don't even know to describe it, but yeah. Do you do that fresh as well or do you do dry or how do you do that? Yeah. dry, but I do have, there's Regany (ρίγανη, growing wild again all around our house. Sometimes I pick it fresh, yeah. And are you sauteing or are you just putting the dried leaves on like your dish or? Yeah, amazing. All right. So oregano and rosemary. Any other herbs coming into the daily mix? well, mean, peppers, spicy peppers, turmeric, turmeric, ginger, of that in my foods and my teas as well, yeah. So you, certainly I've heard of like turmeric, mean, juices and things like that. em Ginger, you just kind of like grating fresh ginger root in your dishes as well. Sometimes I'm using powdered ginger, other times I'm slicing it and you know, sauteing it with whatever I'm sauteing or adding it, you know, chopping it and dicing it and adding it into a dish. That's great. The oregano thing actually reminds me em oregano has something in it that I know is really effective for supporting the gut microbiome and it helps. em gosh. I know oregano oil you can supplement with to I believe it was like remove certain em potential pathogenic strains of like viruses or bugs in the gut too. So like regular oregano consumption helps like make sure to keep those things out or, it does something to the cell lining. The oregano is able to like break down the cell lining of these potential pathogenic bacteria or something like that. It's pretty cool. I remember it's it's H. Pylori. It's except yeah I read about that as well. Yeah I read that. yeah, yeah, very good. have and you're yeah, just the ability for your gut to tolerate. Yeah, I just think there's got to be some correlation. So ginger, turmeric and then turmeric, you said you'll do in your tea put in my tea, the powder, I actually, I chew on raw turmeric. It stains your teeth. Try to keep it in the back in the molars. your mouth is just, if you smile at someone after you've had some, like, what happened to you? Yeah. But I mean, that's part of the power, right? Is the polyphenols. Yes. Yeah. Turmeric is fantastic. don't like when I do nutrient analysis on clients' data and we do diet reviews, I don't see enough people using turmeric and more people really should be. And just herbs in general, like you're saying, a lot of people are just, yeah, we're missing out on all this amazing flavor like we could be getting. Yeah, well, my mother comes from an island called, a Greek island called Ikaria. And it's where Icarus, I don't if you know the legend of the boy with the wax wings that flew too close to the sun. That's where he crashed on this island, that's why it's named this. But Ikaria is one of the blue zones. Do you know about the blue zones? They like where the indigenous populations lived to be the longest. And Ikaria has the highest concentration of centenarians of anywhere on the earth. So these are people that live beyond a hundred. Yeah. And not only do they live beyond 100, they are active. mean, they're climbing, they're like goats. mean, they're climbing, know, they're growing all their own food. They're climbing. They drink mountain tea. They uh eat herbs in every meal they prepare. There are herbs. They eat everything from the ground. And the old men uh eat, there's nuts grow there as well. So they eat raw walnuts. Oh. with honey. And if you've ever had a raw walnut, it's fruity. It's still crunchy, but it's fruity. It's got a really great nutty flavor. But they say that's the Ikarian viagra for these men, raw walnuts and honey. And these guys are, I mean, they're Greek dancing all night long, 104 years old. Yeah. That's so amazing. Yeah, we have em we have some things to learn from from just Europe, I think in general and with regards to health and diet and movement and yeah, work life balance, all of that. Yes. Yeah. So how long are you living full time in Athens? I'm dividing my time. mean, I still have a house in Marin, but I'm trying to spend my, you my goal is to spend as much time as I can in Greece because the history here is so rich and you know, I'm Greek and it's the birthplace of the marathon and the Olympics and yeah, there's a lot to see and do and learn here. my goodness, yes. Yeah, that sounds amazing. so let's see. What did I want to ask you about your recovery? So you said compression. the ice bath conversation. Do you have a recommendation or process of how you apply your ice baths? you do them right after a workout, or do you try and keep them further away from a workout, or do you them first thing in the morning? How do you do your cold exposure? You know, during the training week, there's no regimen. It's just if I'm feeling a little swollen, a little inflammation, exercise related or anything related, I'll, you know, I'll do an ice bath or an ice shower, even a nice shower. mean, a cold shower. don't, it doesn't have to be ice water, literally. It can be cold. After a race, I try to do it, you know, that, that evening. For sure. If possible. Yeah. and how long you're trying to stay in there for. As long as you can, as long as you can tolerate it, yeah. And sometimes it's, know, the first initial dunk and you're shocked and then you ease back into it, yeah. It's, you know, I've trained my mind just to go somewhere else when I get into an ice bath. Because it's shocking, yeah. And it's horrible, but it is so effective. Yeah. Yeah. The mind thing is really such a tool, an important tool that gets trained or helps you, I would imagine, certainly with these ultra distances. Is there any resource or experience that helps your mind training over the years? Being in the here and now, the present moment of time, which, you know, when you run an ultra marathon, you're going to hit a point where it's just, you want to quit. Like it hurts so much. You don't think you can keep going. And a lot of people try to like recite a mantra or something to kind of take them somewhere else or whatever. But it doesn't work for me. You know, when I start reciting a mantra I'm like, you're just doing this because it hurts so damn bad. You're reciting a mantra trying to hide it, but you're So I just try to be here and now when I get into the ice bath, like be present. Don't think about recovering the future. Don't reflect on how the race went. Just put your toe in there. Ease it in. it's not easy to do. mean, our minds are so active. mean, even now as we're talking, you're thinking about what am I gonna ask him next? What are we gonna have for dinner? Did I feed the dog? but to quiet your mind and just focus on one thing, it really makes getting through these episodes like an unpleasant ice bath so much easier. Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, the mind is again such a powerful tool. Being in the here and now is can be hard for some people like you're saying is yeah, they want to get to that next marker or em yeah, think about what's yeah, what's next. And yeah, try and take their mind off the pain. Have you had to deal with any injuries with your sport and volume of training over the years? No. wood? No, never had an injury. amazing. No IT band tightness, nothing. No, no. I've got pretty good biomechanics. know, like my alignment is really true. I mean, 100% Greek, right? So, you know, it's like my dad says we're from the same village in the hills of Greece that Phidipides, the original marathoner came from. Like, dad, I was born in LA. Like, what village in the hills of Greece? You know, I've got very good biomechanics. You just, this is something you inherit. You know, there's a saying that the best thing you can do as long distance runner is to choose your parents' well Yeah. wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Mom and Dad. Amazing. Did your parents grow up in Greece or did they grow up in the United States? Okay. Okay. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So your body is tried and true. Again, you are very lucky, like you said. Good. Thank goodness for Mom and Dad genetics. But then what is happening? immediately after a race or a long training run from a nutrition hydration lens? Are you not hungry? Are you trying to get some food in? What does that typically look like? You know, it depends on the duration of the race, if it's a marathon versus an ultra marathon, but I definitely go initially to hydration, to drinking just pure water. And, then based on how depleted I am from the race, you know, I'd like to go to either solid food or a drink maybe, a lightly carbohydrate, you know, light carbohydrate drink. but I don't just immediately jump into the carbohydrate, you know, replace the glycogen stores. It's gonna help your recovery. All the things that we're kind of told to do, maybe it's my age, maybe it's, you know, the volume I've sustained over the years, but I just, can't do it. Like I really want solid food, like a, you know, a piece of fish or, yeah. that's great. I think there's so much to be said because what we're seeing in a lot of the endurance space right now is a lot of GI issues, right? Whether it's during the event or during the event and then post event, they don't have an appetite and they don't want to put anything in sometimes for 24 or more hours. And then their appetite comes back like roaring, right? And I think there's something to be said for being hungry during your race, but also like feeling true hunger and then also and being able to put food in. but then also having that hunger response after and your body knows it needs to replenish and is telling you to eat, I think is a good sign that your gut is functioning well and blood flow's going to the limit. So yeah, your body is yeah, very trained and you've done a really fantastic job. Okay, I wanna be mindful of your time. uh Killian sent in a question and he said, ah For you, Dean, did you foresee the sport expanding to its current extent? No, I mean, I ran, you know, my first ultra when I was 30 and I was drunk. I literally walked out of a bar in San Francisco in the Marina district. I mean, you know, San Francisco. I was partying with my buddies, having tequila shots. And at midnight, I told them I'm over this. I'm leaving. They said, where are going? You know, the night is young. said, no, I'm to run 30 miles to celebrate instead. So I ran to Half Moon Bay drunk. Yeah. I mean, I said ran. I mean, I stumbled, I hobbled, shuffled, but I ran all night. And that was my indoctrination into ultra running. And I remember going to ultra marathons and there'd be a dozen people there, maybe two dozen people, all dudes, lots of weirdos that these people are weird. They're all kind of out there a bit, they're misfits. And now it's almost become mainstream. Mm-hmm. you go to an ultra marathon, it's almost an equal mix of men and women. There's young, there's old, there's different ethnic classes. So I never would have foreseen this sport becoming what it is. When I first wrote my first book, which was like an immediate New York Times bestseller, and it came out in think 2005, I just wanted to write a book. It was like on my life list. I wanted to go skydiving, swim with sharks, write a book. the popularity of it shocked me. Cause I thought if I sell five copies to my buddies, I'll be lucky. And that's when it kind of tuned me into the power of ultra-marathoning. And I thought, it's so boring. Who's going to want to go run for 24 hours? But I think people are looking at this sort of thing nowadays. Yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah. More and more, think like we've gotten very far from the the gosh, I'm going to forget the Greek pronunciation of the original runners in Greece. Yes. Yes, we're far from that. And I think people really want more outside time. And it's just, yeah, to be able to run. And I think I heard you say it on another podcast. It's like a form of just play like for adults, be outside and run and explore and. Yeah, we want it. We crave it, I think. Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's a way to connect with the world and also depart from the world at the same time. Yeah. yeah. And it's good for your health. So for many reasons. OK, so I will I'll jump back to our two truths and a lie. So we we know you you did in fact do complete 50 marathons in 50 in the in the 50 US states in 50 days, which how you even did that is really incredible. Just getting to state to state and that's amazing. oh We know you ordered your pizza during an ultra marathon, but your name is not Dean. Do you want to share with the listeners what your birth given name is? Yeah, my birth given name is Constantine Nicholas Karnazes Where Dean came from, and those multi-syllables in this one syllable, Dean, I don't know. I think it was kids when I was younger, couldn't pronounce my name, so they just made something up. Yeah, Constantine Dean, works. And now you are your Dean to us. And maybe if I see you in person, I'll call you Constantine. you like do you? Nobody else knows. So probably people don't call you Constantine. So you said you're doing 30 races a year. But what's coming up for you next on the pipeline? Anything you want to share with our listeners, how they can find you, follow you, all that stuff as well? Yeah, well, I mean, we talked about I'm running the Athens Authentic Marathon. So it's the original marathon. I'm trying to get more Americans to come over and run this because right now it's mostly Greek runners, but it's the original course. So if you're a marathoner you want to do the first marathon that started it all, come visit me in Greece. But if you want to learn more about me or anything I'm doing, just someone said to do Google Dean. Not Constantine Google Dean, like I'm the first one that comes up. So you can put in Dean K and then, you know, I've got a website. I'm obviously on social media. I'm not, I'm not hard to find. My books are on Amazon and yeah. I do. Yeah. It's just ultramarathon.com. I just like that, didn't I? Yeah. my goodness. thing you could, yeah, I bet. That's a great one. Well, this has been so fun, Dean. Thank you so much for joining us. And we were excited too. We'll try and follow along the Athens marathon when that's going on and cheer you on from afar. Yeah, next time I'm in Marin maybe I'll see you out on the trails. Me neither, yeah.

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Kyla Channell, MS

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