Dean Karnazes Maintains His Pace Through Phoenix, Arizona

Several transcontinental (or transcon) runners have now chimed in on their thoughts about
Dean Karnazes' attempt to run 3000 miles across the country this spring. When thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, we had a saying for that kind of talk, "You hike your own hike." Anyone who has put one foot in front of the other and gone from sea to sea has endured their own limits, regardless of their support or lack thereof. Witnessing any attempt like this is always of interest to me, so when I saw that Dean was coming through Phoenix this past Sunday, I had to check it out.

His crew set up a 5k fun run at Tempe Town Lake, the second in a 12 part series across the country to raise awareness for Dean's cause. I'm not sure what I was expecting really. A big bus, to be sure. A few crew members and a banner tied to a railing somewhere. Boy, was I off. Two identical tour buses, two pickup trucks, a minivan, a few mountain bikes, two pacers who run and bike with Dean, and a personal physician. In the unseasonably warm days Dean ran through to get to Phoenix, his crew had him taking up to six ice baths per day to keep cool. It may sound posh, especially compared to my own solo trip with a ten pound hip pack and almost twice the mileage on trails. But my impression of the day wasn't filled with resentment as can be tempting when someone else yells Bingo and you already had a row.

I really feel for the guy. He's got events lined up all across the country with paid participants. A network is counting on him to maintain a schedule and arrive on time, not get sick, injured, burnt out, or excessively needed at home. His sponsors want to make sure their products and names are getting their money's worth. It really looks like a difficult combination of an X-Games commercial for a cooking show about rice. There's lots of hype. There's support from the public. There's a willingness from corporations to see what their return will be. And amidst all that, at the center of that excitement, there's a guy jogging 6 miles per hour trying to cover 40 or so miles each day. The excitement would be fun. I'll admit that but I don't envy the pressure. Nor the schedule. He's able to spend about as much time taking in his surroundings as a 10 year old spends reading birthday cards. That's not his fault. To make the whole thing fit into a 75-day commercial, he has to keep going.

To put some perspective on this, he covered almost exactly the same distance from Anaheim to Phoenix in one-third the time as I did from Reno to San Francisco. Granted, I was running trails over the Sierra Nevada Mountains and wearing all my gear but I could also slow down and take a light day if my body needed it. That is a luxury even the well-equipped Dean doesn't have. I return to my A.T. phrase, "You hike your own hike," and there's no doubt that Team Dean is certainly doing his trip in his own way. It's big, it's loud, and it's getting loads of attention.
And for that I'm happy for him.


Speaking of loud, I wasn't going to mention this, but since Regis described his colonoscopy in detail on today's show, I thought he "opened the door" so to speak on this one. It just so happened that when the prep team outfitted the buses with vehicle wrap, they somehow managed to accidentally put the handle for the lower luggage bin directly over the veteran show host's fly, so that one is tempted to look up and say to the oversized likeness, "Turn your head and cough" every time a cooler of ice needs to be brought out. I'm sure the drivers Mark and English will have to perform that ritual more than a few times on their identical twin buses over the remaining 65 days on the road.


I'm thrilled that so many people are tuning in to follow his progress and boast that they are starting their own fitness program. Anything that can be done to get people using their bodies again for transportation is a good thing in my view. Maybe some people will see him and decide to train and run their first 5k. Maybe some will say, "You know what? Gas is $4 a gallon now and I think I'll just dust off the bike and get that bread and butter with my daypack."

Which takes me to what Dean didn't get to take in on his weekend visit to Phoenix. In my ongoing training for this summer's 500 mile, 10 day run across Nevada on the Pony Express Trail, I again pushed the mileage for a double weekend long run. Saturday I hit the hills and ran 26 miles on South Mountain, the nation's largest municipal park. Running the National Trail, which spans the entire park, I covered 13 miles of mostly ridgeline until hitting the road which took me to a ranger station to refill my water. Heading up the Holbrook trail, I again rejoined the National Trail, then a side trip to Hidden Valley, Fat Man's Pass and back to the parking lot. It was 4+ hours of minimally developed desert, mountaintop vistas, and steep climbing.

During the run, I decided to try my cell phone and Gorilla tripod. I set it up on some rocks and sign posts and shot video of myself as I ran by. In a few cases, I convinced passing hikers to take video for me as I ran by. It was a lot of fun, didn't take too much time and was a great conversation starter to chat with others out for the day. At home, I quickly edited the thing and posted it. Check out the short video of the marathon trail run.

I was knackered when I got home. Not only was it a few miles further than my last long run, it was almost all off road and quite hilly. The canals around here are great for racking up the miles but you feel the slightest incline after a few weeks of flat.

Sunday I was to repeat the miles but first I attended the 5k above. I got to meet some of the road crew: Jonathon and Brittany

Both were very nice and excited to meet me when I introduced myself to them and presented them with a copy of my book to read during down time on the road. After the race, Jonathon got a sound byte from me giving some encouraging words to Dean from one ultra runner to another.
I needed to get some miles in so took off for a 22 miler which included an extended exploration of the river channel west of the Town Lake dam.

It sounds as though Dean's crew has an approximate route for him to follow but he's not doing well with the exhaust fumes and perhaps the traffic. One day they experimented with putting him on a utility service road which didn't seem to go well - much more elevation gain and loss there, likely causing them to reconsider trying alternate routes again, and another trade off for having to abide by such a stringent schedule. I expected the path along the river channel to be accessible for as far as I could go but it was only 2 miles before I was glad I hadn't blindly recommended Dean take this route. At times, the path merely stopped at a wooden survey marker followed by tall desert weeds. Not to be messed with. At least four times there were chain link fences forcing pedestrians off the levee and down the steep embankment into the bottom of the deep dry river channel, like a modern day Native American buffalo hunt. About the time I was approaching Sky Harbor Airport, I think I attracted the security personnel as a white airport police truck drove slowly alongside me from a half mile away. Back up on the levee I had to duck-crawl under an overpass as the path hadn't been lowered enough for a grown person to walk upright underneath. Then a tributary sliced into the levee and I had to scramble back down the 30 foot bank to rock hop across the flowing green water. These are all obstacles that don't go well with someone who needs to make 40 miles, come hail or high winds. On my way back to the car I came across something else Dean might have missed: a chicken in downtown Phoenix, in the parking lot of a Circle K, across the street from another Circle K. I wasn't on a tight timeline so I stopped in to ask about this. The owner bought one of the stores, I was told, then bought the neighbor which was a Mobil and converted it to another store of the same brand. "And the chicken?" I asked. "Our security."


And then there was the drowning owl.

So far this winter I've only been blogging about my long weekend runs. I figured they'd be the source of the most engaging content. But tonight's late night recovery run was one for the books, so bear with me as I continue.

I had finished the dishes and lunches for school, helped get the kids to bed and had already taken my aging German Shepard mutt for her 2-mile run. After dropping her off at the house, I headed out again for an additional four miles on our nearby canal. I love running the canal at night. I almost never see anyone. It's my own rec room. The incoming flights are stacked sometimes 8 deep as they make their final approach into Sky Harbor. The gurgle of the canal. The occasional leap and flop of giant chinese carp called white amur.


As I padded softly down the dark bank of the canal, with George Winston playing comfortably in my earbuds, I heard a distinct splash that was slower than that from the fish. At first I thought it was a duck or a great blue heron, startled by my approach. But I could tell the movement was almost lethargic, even in the dark. Flipping on my headlamp, I could only see the shape of it, but my first reaction was that it was an owl. Do owls ever go for a swim? I'd never heard of it. If they did, I very much doubted they would use their wings to swim, as this was trying to do. When I dropped the dog off earlier I had grabbed my cell phone, not because I was expecting to need help for myself, but I just had a feeling I would encounter someone else who did. I called my wife, who is all-knowing, powerful, smart and insightful. She told me it was probably going to die and to leave it. I next called a co-worker from my school. I especially called her because her dog had recently passed away and I thought she'd surely root me on in my quest to save this owl. "He's a goner," she said, agreeing with my better half. It would wing-paddle across the canal to the concrete bank but because they were so steep, it couldn't climb up. A few times it was able to get mostly out of the water but then kept falling back in. All the while I kept my light shining on it, trying to think of what to do. When I first came upon it, it swam to the other side of the canal. I was over a half mile from any access point to cross the canal and get closer to it. I tried calling animal control: closed. I knew better than to get into the canal myself. For one, there are a lot of hazards in there such as bicycle frames, cinder blocks and stray shopping carts. Also, it was possible that this bird was sick and might attack if it felt threatened. But I couldn't leave it there to fall back into the water all night and aimlessly drift downstream. Something had to be done. And at 10 pm I went for it.

I first hooted a few short (what I considered to be friendly) hoots. I'll point out that I've never taken a hooting class before but I've read a book to my daughters about owling many times. When I hooted at him, he changed direction and swam closer to me. I took this to be a good sign.

Under a mesquite tree was a long fallen branch that had many twisty branches coming off of it. If I could lower the branch into the water, perhaps I could get him to climb up the branch. Not wanting to scare him back to the other side of the canal with my enormous woody staff, I carefully edged it closer to him until I was about 5 feet away. Then I set the branch down, resting it on the edge of the bank with the longest tips sticking into the water below. Perhaps if I backed off, he would advance to the branch and climb up it. I waited from afar. I turned off my light. I hooted, just for good measure. Nothing. Then I decided to move the branch closer to him. To my surprise, he didn't move. He let me put the branch under him. then as I started to pull the branch up I could tell that he wasn't getting it and soon was drifting back downstream again. This time, I used the branch like a deep fryer basket and tried to scoop him up out of his liquid demise. This time, he held on with one talon. As I got him closer to the concrete bank, he stuck his beak out and held himself in place with his beak, bracing for the branch to get pulled up higher. We continued this for the 4-6 feet it took to get him to the top edge of the bank and just as I was cresting his body over the lip of the edge, he fell off and tumbled back down into the water with a splash. I was devastated. It was worse than the time I caught the biggest large-mouth bass on an end of year 6th grade fishing trip, only to have it flop out of my hands and three feet across land back into the lake.

I'll try again, I thought. Using the branch, I scooped him up again in the water. This time I trusted he was hanging on for life, literally. I dragged him up the rough concrete bank, trying to lift the 15-foot long branch so as to not hurt him too badly as he was being dragged. Closer and closer to the top he inched with the branch. Then, over the lip of the bank. I'm pretty sure I heard the Trinity Church break out in the Hallelujah Chorus when that bird finally came to rest on solid ground.

He looked up at me. I hooted again. Still not wanting to get too close to him for safety's sake, I decided to leave him there, hoping that the night breeze would dry his feathers and at least give him a fighting chance to recover from whatever got him into that mess.

I was an hour late in getting home, but I got there my way, and that is what's important.