Day 52: Strive For Impossible and Redefine It

When a person seeks to strive for the impossible, they may redefine it. For years, Dean Karnazes has been redefining what is possible. I met Dean for the first time a few years ago while he was running Badwater. Ray Sanchez was also running the race, and as his crew, we would set up along the road. For a day and a half running heroes would leap frog their support vehicle running to redefine impossible waiting for them at the top of Mt Whitney and the finish line.

He was kind and engaging. He focused and battling the heat. His book The Ultra Marathon Man is a must read for any person seeking to redefine their impossible. But now Karno is up to it again, this time with Regis and Kelly

"Runner Dean Karnazes is about to set out on what he calls "without a doubt the most intense endeavor I've ever undertaken.”

For a guy whose running resume includes 50 marathons in 50 days in all 50 states, that's saying a lot.

But running a mere 26.2 miles every day for less than two months is nothing compared with what he's setting out to do Friday from Disneyland. His plan is to run from California to New York, a trip of nearly 3,000 miles that will require up to 14 hours daily and an average of 50-60 miles a day.

And he's doing it on live television. The nationally syndicated show “Live! With Regis and Kelly” will be tracking his progress all the way, starting with a live sendoff during Friday's broadcast. A bus carrying a production crew will follow Karnazes, enabling the show to check in with him almost every day." - LA TIMES FULL ARTICLE

Some think he is crazy. I think he is committed to redefining whats possible.

What do you look at as impossible? What distance dwarfs reason to you? Are you seeking to lose some weight and are choked by the thoughts of what could never happen?

OR what could happen?
How far could you run? 5K, 10K, a Half Marathon? A full? Is there an Ultra in you?
Does the fear of the impossible scare you?

Redefine your life. Redefine whats possible. It starts with a single step.

Step off,
jas

Day 51: Runners You Need to Know: Diane VanDeren

FIXING DIANE'S BRAIN
BY BILL DONOHUE
For nearly 17 years, until she was 37, Van Deren suffered from epilepsy, enduring hundreds of seizures, sometimes as often as two or three times in a week. With each seizure, she lost consciousness for about a minute. Usually, her body just went limp as she stared off into space. But there were also the two dozen or so grand mal seizures she suffered, when her muscles radically contracted and her legs and arms flailed uncontrollably. With each seizure came the distinct chance that she could die. Rather than risk death, she did the next best thing: She let doctors drill a hole into her skull.

In 1997, Van Deren underwent a partial right temporal lobectomy. Doctors removed a portion of her brain that was the focal point of her seizures. The surgery ended her epilepsy; Van Deren hasn't seized once since the operation. But the surgeon's work created a blind spot in the upper left part of her vision. And there is also the residual neural damage from the seizures. She cannot track time well; she is always running late, and she has almost no sense of direction. Her memory is weak—she can't recall where, exactly, she took her honeymoon—and when she's confronted with excessive sensory noise, as she is now, at this clamorous starting line, she gets weary and irritable. Sometimes Van Deren needs to lie down and nap for hours.

She is an ultramarathoner with extraordinary limitations. In races she must cover hundreds of miles, and yet often has no idea how long she has been running—or where she is going.

Still, Van Deren's surgery may actually have aided her distance running. "The right side of the brain, where Diane had surgery, is involved in processing emotion," says one of her doctors, Don Gerber, a clinical neuropsychologist at Craig Hospital in Denver. "The surgery affected the way she processes her emotional reaction to pain. I'm not saying Diane doesn't feel pain, but pain is a complex process. You have a sensory input, and then the question is: How does the brain interpret that? Diane's brain interprets pain differently than yours or mine does."

Gerber's assessment is controversial among neurologists, and all that's certain, really, is that Van Deren has almost primordial gifts of endurance. In February 2008, in the Canadian Yukon, she won the Yukon Arctic Ultra, spending nearly eight days pulling a 50-pound supplies sled 300 miles and through temperatures that plunged to around 50 below. The next winter she covered 430 miles. And once, in Alaska, she trudged 85 miles through snow on a sprained ankle after stepping in a moose hole.

What would your running be like if you didnt know how far you had run or how long you had been running. Add to it, an inability to feel pain, and you have Diane who runs and runs and runs.

In the end, it makes you ponder how much is possible and how much our brain seeks to impede that process.