50/50: 12/02/08

At the time that Dean Karnazes was running his fifty marathons in fifty days, Ian and I were preoccupied with new born Harriet. Although he is a local sports celebrity, I have only just heard of him this year promoting his account of those fifty marathons: 50/50.

For the 50/50 challenge, Dean Karnazes ran fifty consecutive marathons, each in a different state. All of the marathons were on official marathon routes, but not all of them were run during the normally scheduled marathons. Those that couldn't be run during the usual marathon were recreated. The recreated runs had different permitting issues and could sometimes only have a dozen or so participants running along with Karnazes.

Karnazes had a team of handlers to take care of the organizational issues of such an undertaking and he had a bus to ride on between the races. It sounds like it was a nightmare to carry off but they did it.

As you can imagine, most of 50/50 is dedicated to the 50 marathons and the 50 different cities visited. Peppered into this runner's geography of the United States are running hints. The hints include training schedules, diet tips and product recommendations.

If you are a runner or know a runner, you will probably enjoy this book. If you're not a runner, you can still enjoy reading about Karnazes's adventure. For the non runners, the book is fairly quick and can be skimmed. There's a lot of repetition as to be expected in a book about fifty marathons.

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