"A Runner's High: My Life in Motion" A Review

 

 

Dean Karnazes and the Crazy World of Ultramarathon Running

I had to google Dean Karnazes after I read his book “A Runner’s High: My Life In Motion”. I picked it up off the shelf at my local Barnes & Noble on whim. I wasn’t particularly looking for a book on running or even a book with a sports theme. But after getting lost in fiction and checking out the new authors, I traipsed back to the sports section. Sport themed books can be a mix of biography and history, business and self-help. I wanted something easy to absorb, not a deep dive. Golf had the most authors per square inch but running managed a few slots. The first one I grabbed turned out to be a textbook. It was a detailed plan for a running program with tips in between. Nothing against schedules and planning but I wanted something more personal.

That’s when I grabbed this Dean Karnazes book on ultramarathon running, his 4^th to date.

Looking Back 

Now I’m not an ultramarathon runner and I have no interest in it. But I love jogging and even marathon running. I wanted to know what got him started in this insane sport. Maybe he would answer the “Why would someone do this?” question. He does in part. But this book is an examination of the life of an aging athlete, finding a new way to endure with a different set of goals. A good chunk of it is looking back on a brilliant career and savoring the success while training for the Western States 100. Along the way he examines if he’s been a distant father, a loving husband and good son. There are some touching moments with his dad, a man who still accompanies him to his races and provides that much needed encouragement.

Dean Karnazes has a few books under his belt already. I didn’t read it but, "Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All night Runner” was a best seller in 2006. It put ultramarathon running into the public conscious. For years it was an obscure sport that only endurance junkies had anything to do with. It likely wasn’t the only book or film that did this, but it certainly made regular people aware of it. I still think it’s a sport for endurance junkies, it’s just that we have more of them now. 100 miles at any pace through the open desert or woods is a crazy thing to do. Certain people need to push themselves beyond the limits of what even endurance runners go through.

A Very Different Sport

In Runner’s High, Dean settles into the reality of his age and what’s still possible given the miles he’s put on his body. Understandably, there is a lot of comparison to his former self and his former successes. As a Western States alum, he is acutely aware of his progress when seen in contrast to his previous performance. Spoiler alert, he isn’t the runner he used to be. He was 58 or 59 when this book was published. That’s over 15 years since his first book. That’s a lot of miles for an aging athlete. But the same grit that got him through the 100 milers when he was a younger man is still there. He just needs more of it. He nearly drops out on multiple occasions but manages just enough push to finish.

Endurance running takes otherworldly mental toughness. It’s one advantage that older athletes have on younger ones. Dean doesn’t say this in the book but it feels true. Your body won’t move as fast or recover as quickly, but if you’ve finished before you’ll do it again. It won’t be pretty, but you’ve solved a big piece of the puzzle on how to complete a big race while exhausted. Having others there to cheer you on helps a lot. Help and support are difficult to measure, but essential for finishing strong. Karnezes gives a lot of credit to his family and friends for joining him. During the Western States race, he encounters a few former runners who help out as volunteers at the aid stations. Their encouragement and motivation is often the difference in the late stages of an ultramarathon when you’re starting to fade. His son Nick and both his parents, along with multiple volunteers, got him over the hump.

Conclusion

The book is less than 250 pages. It’s light on detail and doesn’t bog down on race particulars. There is just enough of his personal life in there to keep this a human story. Dean explains well the emotional highs and lows of ultra racing and provides the reader with a reason for why he runs. It won’t make sense to people who don’t run though. You’ll get an answer to the question “Why would someone do this?” but you won’t like the answer. It just doesn’t make sense to most people and that’s OK. You will understand, and feel, his passion for this niche sport though.

It may even make you start jogging whatever your age.

The New Pope and World Wide Christianity

 

New Pope, New Church, New Day for Christians?

I guess we have a new pope. The white smoke billowed out from the roof in the Vatican earlier this week. An American, he grew up in Chicago and traveled all over the world for most of his life. Naturally, in the service of the catholic church. I’m not a catholic but I do realize to most people, the pope reflects Christianity to rest of the world. It’s not fair of course. Martin Luther’s criticism was about the sale of indulgences and papal authority. In other words, the church as intermediary between God and man. As the only real reflection of the church in the West, the list of grievances was long. But the core complaints could be described as men standing in for God.

We were meant to have a relationship with God the Father. The Roman Catholic church likes to have intermediaries, priests and cardinals, to interpret the divine for us. I’m not dumping on faithful Catholics. I’m merely stating facts about the top-down authority of the church. I don’t imagine the masses are much different in structure than it was a hundred years ago. The biggest difference being mass in the vernacular. A good many would like to go back to the Latin version exclusively.

The adherence to tradition is admirable, we live in an age where the gospel is always being challenged. If the church needs to update according to a moving cultural target then why bother with the church? But institutions become corrupt over time. Reform is seriously needed. That’s where I’ll leave my criticism though. I’m not Catholic. I won’t drop bombs just because I can see how broken the walls are.

My people are the Evangelicals. We’ve got our own problems. Actually, we’ve got more problems than the Catholics. We picked up our penchant for schisms from the protestant godfather himself, Martin Luther. To be fair to Luther though, he was excommunicated. We split churches along every conceivable doctrine, practice and eschatological theory. Sometimes it’s just a split over personalities. This isn’t exactly schism worthy, but it does reflect the Protestant comfort with going it alone. That’s not a bad thing necessarily. Jesus’s idea of the church (ecclesia) is a body of believers that reach the lost with the gospel. Traditionally it’s easier to reach them through an organized ministry. The sending out of missionaries, here and abroad, is easier by pooling resources.

But it doesn’t always need to look like this. In some countries, small groups of believers might be more effective at reaching the lost. Large churches can be a target for government censorship around the world. It’s much more difficult to patrol small churches that split constantly and add to the numbers of the faithful.

We’re to increase the number of believers and not just grow the institutional church. Every Christian should understand the difference.

 We need an orthodox view of the Bible and salvation and eternal life, but cultural differences will always exist. There is plenty of room for that in God’s Kingdom. But something like the Nicene Creed for a statement of principles should form the basis of our collective faith.

The “We” in the ‘we have a new pope” refers to the world. The pope is basically a world leader. I thought an African pope would be the best selection. They take a traditional view on marriage and oppose the LGBT influence in the culture. I’ve seen a few social media posts from this guy they selected, Robert Prevost. It’s typical anti-Trump and anti-Vance stuff. It’s early stages so far. Probably it’s not fair to slap a label on the guy just yet. But if he’s a typical Left-wing Cardinal, then it’s further proof that the Catholic church is focused on all the wrong issues.

Pope Francis talked about climate change more than the persecuted Christians in China. He made a morally reprehensible deal in 2018 with the Chinese Communist Government. The CCP gets to appoint bishops to posts in the country, while the Vatican can overrule the choices. Francis cut the legs out from under the loyal church in China. At the same time, he turned it into a place for CCP stooges to advance.

One line of thinking has it that church leaders should stay out of politics. But everything today is political. The scripture should be our guide in all worldly affairs. But most of the work of feeding the poor and winning souls for Christ is done at the ground level. In an imperfect age, the best we can pray for is that all Christian leaders put a spotlight on those issues first, while holding fast to the inerrancy of scripture.

The best version to date for what a Christian church should be is found in Acts 2:46-47 “So continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”

Large institutional churches aren’t necessarily a bad thing. But where they’re focused on boutique (secular) issues like climate change and mass immigration we should ignore their direction.