Dean Karnazes: Failure Doesn't Hold People Back, It's the Fear of Failure - R4R 243

The Running for Real Podcast

Tina Muir

Sports, Running, Mental Health, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2021

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re excited to welcome Dean Karnazes who’s back for his third time on the show. In this episode we explore the hard parts of the past year and how running has served as mental medicine for Dean. He also shares about his background as a surfer and how that influenced his running, about his ethnicity as a Greek, his new book, A Runner's High: My Life in Motion.

Dean Karnazes is truly an ultramarathon athlete. Among his many feats, he’s run 50 marathons, in all 50 US states, in 50 consecutive days. He’s run across Death Valley in the middle of summer, a marathon in the South Pole, and run 24 hours straight on a treadmill in Times Square. Dean is also a father, husband, and author.

“ I think for a lot of people it's not failure that that holds them back, it's the fear of failure. So I'm not afraid to fail. And I'm not afraid to try new things And I'm always curious about new challenges… I mean, writing a book is every bit as challenging as an ultra marathon if not more so. It's just as grueling. It's just it requires the same sort of commitment and discipline.” —Dean Karnazes

In this episode we cover…

Dean’s new book, A Runner's High: My Life in Motion.
We learn Dean was a competitive surfer. He explains that to him surfing is very much like running in that it's somewhat of an art form. “You know you can surf without being in competition. You can run without being in a race, so they're very similar in that regard.”
You can love competitions but not feel the need to compete with other people running. “I think the biggest competition is myself. When I stand at the finish line, if I feel like I perform to the best of my ability, then I'm pleased with my performance. And, you know, you can't control other people. You can't control the environment. All you can control is yourself.”
How running during the past year has served as a medicine and been more essential for our heads than our bodies.
Surrender to whatever is going to happen. Let it happen, you’ll figure this out and find a way through. It’s very much like running an ultra.

Resources + People mentioned (links)

New book: A Runner’s High: My Life in Motion

Dean’s Website

Dean’s Instagram

Dean on episode 081: Is the Fear of Pain Holding You Back?

Dean on episode 150: Running For Good

Thank you to Momentous, InsideTracker, and Beam for sponsoring this episode.

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Thank you to Dean, we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the show.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Running for Real podcast, where each week we bring you a conversation designed
0:10.6	to help you create positive change in your life, community and planet.
0:15.9	It's a collective of conversations about running the climate emergency and social justice.
0:25.8	Coming for real is for the brave, for those with courage and vulnerability, united by
0:30.8	our love of running, we're driving momentum towards some of the really tough challenges
0:35.6	we're facing as humanity.
0:38.4	So come join me, Tina Muir and let's get started.
0:44.4	Hello my friends, welcome to episode 243 of the Running for Real podcast.
0:53.4	Thank you for joining me today.
0:55.4	I'm excited to bring back a guest who has been on the show three times, one of very few
1:00.5	who has been on that many.
1:02.5	And I'm looking forward to sharing this conversation with you.
1:05.1	First, did you go check out the running realized episode that came out with Monday?
1:10.8	Yeah, it would have been a few days ago now.
1:13.2	We were really excited to release episode four of the show.
1:17.5	We have worked really, really hard on this episode and it was a tough one.
1:23.0	It was one that both Nox and I felt pretty, it was very new to us.
1:28.1	We did a lot of learning, a lot of listening.
1:30.7	We were focusing on gender binary and trans runners.
1:35.9	It is obviously a hot button topic in the running space and in the world right now.
1:40.7	And I hope you enjoyed that episode.
1:43.0	It made you think, if you have not listened to that episode, I really would recommend
	...

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