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Comment by ramblerman | Hacker News Reader

"but in his entire life he has never experienced any form of muscle burn or cramp"

Having read his book "Ultramarathon man" recently. I grabbed it and here are some quotes:

"My legs throbbing and cramped" ... "Then without warning the quadriceps and calf muscles of both muscles seized in wicked cramps" ... "The cramps were still so severe that..."

I'm gonna stop there, but ctrl-f finds at least 10 more references.

Really shows how far these pseudo-journalists go for a story. The rest of the portrayal of him being some super human is also completely in opposition with his biography.

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As is typical, he is portrayed as being a genetic freak, someone capable of things nobody else ever could aspire to.

It actually takes away from him. The reality is that many, many people WOULD be capable, if they displayed the level of dedication that he does.

Many, many people are and do it all the time right now, every day. There was a video where Scott Jurek talked candidly about Dean a while ago - it was great. The site took it down (or the site is down?) but in a nutshell, Jurek was very super critical of Dean because Dean for goes around like the ambassador and greatest ever athlete in ultrarunning when he's never been one of the top 10. Dean's a pretty great athlete - there's no question about that. But he's only a fraction of the god that he thinks he is or that the media empire he's built around himself makes him out to be.

(for background: Scott Jurek is definitely one of the top ultrarunners of the current generation)

Dean has a background in marketing - and has been a very good self-promoter.

His athletic accomplishments are pretty awesome but you're right - Jurek and others make up the elite of the sport.

Yes, I'm a big fan of Jurek. He is featured very prominently in the book "Born To Run".

Then you should definitely check out his book "Eat and Run". http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Run-Unlikely-Ultramarathon-Greatne...

"...when he's never been one of the top 10."

Not correct. He has won the Badwater 135 Mile and the Vermont 100 Mile ultras, and has come in fourth place in the Western States 100 Mile (iirc).

Jurek has a more impressive record than Karno as an ultra runner, and a history of being negative about not being as well known as Karno. Karno is a great runner who also wrote a great book and got a lot of people to read it and has a history of being positive and encouraging about everyone running.

Edited to add references:

First place at Badwater 135 Mile, 2004: http://www.badwater.com/results/index.html

First place at Vermont 100 Mile, 2006: http://vermont100.com/html/2006_results.html

Fourth place at Western States 100 Mile, 2003: http://www.wser.org/results/2003-results/

Athletes are generally not ranked on the performance in individual events. Aka after wimbledon the #1 men's tennis player is rarely the guy that just won. Simply because individual events are to random and often based around who shows up, what the weather was like etc.

PS: http://xkcd.com/852/

There are some people who are genetic freaks though. Could you ever hope to spontaneously come up with brilliant mathematical theorems like Ramanujan did?

Yeah, his quote is "at a certain level of intensity," but the author interprets it as "It is your body's way of telling you when to stop – but Karnazes never receives such signals." D'oh.

Right. Also, what happens when he sprints, or can he only run at a single speed?

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