From Corporate Job to 100-Mile Runs at 60: How Dean Karnazes Found Freedom in Running
What happens when you walk out of a nightclub at midnight on your 30th birthday and decide to run 30 miles? For Dean Karnazes, it sparked a journey that would redefine human potential and uncover wisdom we desperately need in our comfort-obsessed world.
This is an edited version of my conversation with author and ultramarathon runner Dean Karnazes. If you want to watch the interview, you can find it on YouTube, and if you want to listen to it, you can access it on Spotify.
Ever had that feeling you're living someone else's life? The job's fine. The friends are great. But something's... off.
For Dean Karnazes, that uneasy feeling crystallized in a packed nightclub on his 30th birthday. What happened next wasn't a tiny adjustment. It wasn't a new hobby. It was the kind of radical pivot that transforms everything.
Dean: On my 30th birthday, I celebrated by going to a nightclub with my friends. At midnight, I told them I was going to leave and they said, "Well, where are you going? It's your 30th birthday." I said, "I'm going to run 30 miles to celebrate" about 50 kilometers. They said, "You're crazy. You're not a runner.”
So I walked out of the nightclub and I ran 30 miles that night and, you know, it almost killed me. It was the most difficult thing I had ever done. And then I started becoming a runner after that point. So I got some running shoes and I started
I was jogging home one day and I thought that I was in pretty good shape. And these two guys passed me. And these guys were almost like another species of human. I mean, they were so fit and so trim.
And I thought, I want to talk to these guys to see, you know, what are they doing? How did they get this way? But they just disappeared over the top of this mountain. I thought I'll never see them again. But when I got to the top of the mountain, they were up there doing pushups.
So I tried to talk to them. They weren't very talkative, but finally, I said, you know, are you training for something? They said, it's a race. Yes. And I said, well, you know, how far is this race? And they said, well, it's 50 miles. So about, you know, nearly 80 kilometers. And I said, at once, like, how can a human run 50 miles?
I said, are there campgrounds or hotels along the way? And they said, no, the starting gun goes off and you just start running. And you're done when you cross the finish line.
So I learned about this race and I signed up, went to this race and somehow finished the 50 mile race. And it was by far the most difficult thing I'd ever done in my whole life. And I was in the medical tent at the finish sitting there completely dehydrated. And I saw these same two guys and they were high fiving each other, congratulating each other, saying they qualified. And I thought, you know, what did you qualify for? The insane asylum? And they said, no, we qualified for the Western States, 100 mile endurance run.
And I looked at them, I said, hold it. Did you say a hundred miles? Like twice as far as we just ran? And they said, yes, it's twice as far. And I said, well, you know, what do you do at night? You stop at night?. And they said, no, you just put on a headlamp and you run at night. And I said, how do you eat? And they say, you eat while you run. And I thought that sounds completely impossible. A human cannot run a hundred miles. The last thing they said as they were leaving is, you know what? You qualified as well.
And when they said that to me, I knew that if I didn't do it, for the rest of my life, I'd always wonder, could I have done it?
That impulsive decision wasn't just about running. It was about rejecting the path he'd been sleepwalking along. But the transformation from corporate employee to legendary ultrarunner wasn't overnight. It began with a book, something almost as challenging as his longest races.
Dean: I decided I was going to write a book, and that was kind of the first step. I didn't think I would sell many copies, but I wanted to try the challenge because writing a book is difficult, it's like running an ultramarathon. It's very time-consuming and requires intense focus and dedication.
The book was a good seller"Ultra Marathon Man," my first book. I realized there was power in storytelling about human triumph not just running, but the triumph of doing something courageous, unusual, and bold. And I thought, "You can make a living doing this somehow. I don't know how, but there's enough interest and it inspires people enough that there's some way to turn this into a life."
Let's be honest, quitting your job to chase a dream is terrifying. What if you fail? What if everyone laughs? What if you end up broke, embarrassed, and wishing you'd played it safe?
Dean's journey wasn't a dramatic leap into the unknown. It was something much smarter: a steady bridge from security to his dream life.
Marco: Tell me about that pivotal transition. After your midnight run, you didn't become an ultramarathoner overnight. You continued working your corporate job while gradually evolving into this new person. What specific steps did you take during this transformation? How did you actually make it happen?
Dean: That's exactly right. I started doing side jobs within the running industry. I began working with a footwear company designing trail shoes when trail running was just becoming a new thing. In the old days, most people only ran on roads, like the Rome Marathon. I grew up in California and was very much into trail hiking, so I started helping The North Face design trail running shoes.
From there, the relationships grew, the community grew, and I started finding other avenues to pay the bills. Anyone can do what they love all day, but how do you keep the lights on? How do you make a living? I started getting sponsors, and there was enough revenue coming in from my athletic pursuits that I could work a little bit less. Eventually, I just transitioned completely out of my job and became a full-time athlete.
Marco: After leaving the security of your corporate job, did you ever face moments of self-doubt? How do you handle those moments when uncertainty hits and you question your path?
Dean: I encounter self-doubt every day. I've chosen a path that is non-traditional. Nowadays, it's more common to have a side job, the gig economy is kind of big now. You can drive for Uber, start a podcast. But when I broke away from the corporate world, that was more unusual. This was an era where most people worked for the same company their whole life.
I'm no longer a young man, yet I'm still somehow making a living as an athlete, which is crazy. You hear about tennis players like Nadal and Federer—they're in their early to mid-thirties, and people say, "Wow, it's amazing they've lasted this long." I'm 60 years old with a hundred-mile race in a couple of weeks that I'm training for.
Every day I've got to figure out how I'm going to have income tomorrow. It's a struggle. But I've learned to embrace the struggle—if you run from the struggle, it'll crush you. So to me, I really enjoy the full spectrum of human emotions.
The Struggle Is the Point
We're programmed to seek comfort. Soft chairs. Climate control. Pain relievers. Convenience everything.
But what if comfort is actually killing our potential for real joy?
Dean: I really enjoy the full spectrum of human emotions. I'm doing things now that I've never done before. I just wrote a movie script, and it's really hard to get this in front of people because I've never written a script before. I'm brand new at this, approaching with fresh eyes, and I'm getting a lot of nos, a lot of rejections. It's demoralizing.
But I lean into it and say, "Embrace the suffering, embrace this horrible situation that seems hopeless." Really engage in those feelings of desperation. I know all of us feel these feelings, and many of us think we don't like these feelings—we don't want them anymore. We want to be successful in everything we do.
We all think that the people that we admire are perfect. And you might have thought I was perfect. And I'll tell you what, I have just as many rejection letters as acceptance letters. So I think most people that reach a high level of achievement are just, they're gritty. They're tough, and they can kind of deflect a lot of rejection, or process a lot of rejection and keep moving forward. Anyone who dares is going to get rejected.
I've certainly had some successes, but I tend not to celebrate my successes as much as my failures.
Marco: Why?
Dean: I think success doesn't bring as much reward as failure. Success is the conclusion of a journey, and I think the magic is in the journey itself. We all love a Hollywood story where the hero is beaten down at a point and somehow must rise from the ashes. I think there's just something about that struggle that's fundamental to human nature.
I do a lot of reading of early literature, Homer the Iliad and the Odyssey, and it's all about struggle, longing, and pain. The main character of the Odyssey, Odysseus the translation of his name is "man of pain." Something inside us seeks that struggle more than comfort.
Wait a minute. We're wired to need struggle? That flies in the face of everything modern life promises. But what if Dean's right? What if our pursuit of comfort is actually making us miserable?
The next time you face difficulty, try something radical: don't immediately seek relief. Sit with it. Explore it. Maybe, like Dean, you'll discover that the discomfort you've been avoiding is actually the doorway to your most meaningful life.
Nature, Mindfulness, and Modern Disconnection
Ever notice how your mind goes quiet during a walk in the woods? There's something about nature that cuts through the mental chatter, something Dean has turned into a daily practice.
Dean: Sometimes don't think about anything, just be in the moment in the here and now. We hear a lot these days about mindfulness, and that's not an easy place to get to. But especially when I run, I meditate. And when I say meditate, I just try not to think of anything except for my next footstep.
I don't think about how much further I've got to go on my run. I don't think about past memories. I don't think about the future. I just think about taking my next step and looking around and engaging in the environment and nature and being in the here and now.
We live in a world that's constructed in a very unnatural sort of way. And sometimes if you're so engaged in that, it's dehumanizing. And I think that, especially here in America, most of the people have absolutely no relationship with nature. I mean, that's where we came from.
I think that, you know, in the modern age, in a lot of industrialized countries, we just thought production, business, economy was the staple of happiness. And I think it's created so much loneliness amongst our population.
Most people live in a house. They go out to their car. They drive to the office, they go shopping in a supermarket. They don't ever wander in nature. And to me, that is the most grounding thing ever is to just go for a one or two hour run off on a trail and don't think about anything.
Advice for Finding Your Way
Dean: A practical tool that I tell people is to write your perfect life, just write a script, a paragraph or two about your perfect life. It's freeform, nothing too formal. You can type it, you can write it just with a pencil or pen. But just say: tomorrow, if I woke up and my life was exactly as I wanted it, what would it look like?
Where would I live? What kind of car would I drive or would I even have a car? Would I be married? Would I have kids? What would I be doing? Would I be windsurfing every day? Would I be running? Would I be writing? Would I be making a movie? Would I be acting in a movie?
Just write down exactly what your perfect life would be. And then you at least have a framework of what your perfect life looks like. Because if you don't know where you're going, you'll never get there. But once you have this idea of where your life would look like if it was perfect, you can start moving in that direction.
What happens might surprise you. Dean's son discovered something unexpected about himself:
Dean: I asked my son to do this. He first said, 'I'll be in Hawaii drinking a piña colada or having a margarita. That's my perfect life.' And he thought about it more and thought, 'You know, that's kind of an empty life. I'd be in the Peace Corps, serving an underprivileged country. I'd be in Turkey or Syria right now helping with earthquake relief.'
When was the last time you really thought about your ideal life? Not just career aspirations or financial goals, but the whole picture? Try Dean's exercise tonight. The results might change your trajectory forever.
Embracing Discomfort and Designing Your Environment
Most of us design our lives for maximum comfort and convenience. Dean does the opposite, and that's precisely his advantage.
Dean: A couple of practices I hold is that I never do something that you're doing right now. I'm sitting. You could probably tell I'm on my feet. During the interview, I've been bouncing around.
I encourage you and anyone else who's listening or watching this interview: a couple of days a week, if you can, if you're not driving anywhere or flying anywhere, from the moment you get out of bed until the moment you go back to bed at night, don't sit down. Try this for a day and see how much better you feel.
This approach extends to his entire lifestyle:
Dean: I'm constantly working out through the course of the day. So even before this interview, I did a set of pushups, pull ups, burpees and so forth. So I'm doing these little micro bursts of cross training.
I don't eat anything in a bag, anything that's refined or processed. I like to tell people if I can't pick it from a tree or dig it from the earth or catch it with my hands, I won't eat it. So try to avoid manmade foods. There's a saying: if it comes from a plant, eat it. If it's made in a plant, don't.
On Death and Meaning
Dean: You know, I just say it all starts with a dream. So, like when I ran the 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days, the book you read about—you know, that was just a dream. Like I thought it would be an incredible adventure to see all of America and run a marathon in every state. And how I was going to pay for this? I had no idea. But the pieces, I just started assembling the pieces. And eventually, it all came together.
We all search. And, you know, I think that we all try to find meaning in what we're doing. But in a sense, there is no meaning. I mean, let's face it. You know, in a hundred years, this conversation probably won't mean much to anyone. And in a thousand years, it certainly will not. And in a million years, we'll, you know, we will not matter. And in 500 million years, there'll be no one left on earth, if not sooner, because we'll be so close to the sun that it'll be too hot to live on this planet.
So where do you find meaning in that? I mean, we're just a speck of dust in a vast, empty universe. And I think that to me, it's just the little things. It's the little enjoyments in life that bring the most meaning. So it's hugging your grandma. I mean, she's 90 years old, you know, she's your grandma. You've probably seen a lot of her, but just to hug her probably means so much to her. And it's just the little sort of celebratory moments of life that give it meaning.
Because if you think about it too much, no matter who you are, no matter how important you are, it comes to an end. I mean, even Achilles in the Iliad said, he'd rather be a nobody than a famous war hero in the underworld among the dead. So he realized that you need to celebrate life. And even though he was supposedly this great hero in real life, it didn't do much for him. He should have lived his life a little more fully.
When dealing with loss, Dean finds meaning in how the person lives on within us:
Dean: For me, the person that's gone, they live on within you. So they're now part of you and you'll be reminded of them all the time. And at first it's haunting.
I mean, I lost my sister and I still have scraps of paper, 40 years later, where she had written little notes to me. They used to make me cry. And now they just fill my heart with joy cause I think of her. And so she lives on within me.
On Living in a Prison with the Door Wide Open
Dean: We're our own worst enemy, that we put limitations on ourself because we believe we can't do things. So we live in prison and we never try. So I think, you know, the Greeks have a saying, "o tolmón niká," which means "who dares wins." And I think that's a great statement. I think just by daring and stepping out of that prison, you're a winner, even if you fail.
And I think that's, you know, I think that it's not failure that stops people. In my experience, it's the fear of failure. So I think, you know, that statement is to put aside your fear and open the cage and get out.
Marco: I'm curious, after all your incredible accomplishments, do you still feel that pre-race anxiety when you're at the starting line of a 100-mile ultramarathon? Or has experience eliminated those nervous feelings entirely?
Dean: Yeah, no, I feel anxiety. I mean, even at the start of a marathon, I feel anxiety. And I think that's good. I think once I stop feeling anxiety, then I won't appreciate the experience as much. Because I mean, even with the marathon, there's no certainty, right? I mean, you never know if you're going to make it. I think that's the beauty of the marathon, especially the ultra marathon is no matter how fit you are, no matter what, there's no guarantees. So you're taking a step into the unknown.
And the thing that I've also always noticed is, once the gun goes off and you cross the starting line, somehow the anxiety just goes away, doesn't it? It all disappears. Because you're all of a sudden, you're in the fight. So you're in the here and now, like it's you're making it happen versus worrying about how is it going to happen. So whenever I'm experiencing anxiety, it's always to the buildup of something that you're going to start. And once you get started, that anxiety just disappears.
Life Advice to a Younger Self
If he could write a letter to his 29-year-old self, what wisdom would Dean share? He distills his life philosophy into five essential principles:
Follow your heart: Listen to your heart and gut more than your head
Practice empathy. "Treat others the way you want to be treated."
Embrace the journey. "Remember, life is a journey and not a destination. So enjoy the ride."
Cultivate joy. "Dance more often."
Keep exploring. "You don't get to know thyself by living in your comfort zone all the time. You get to know thyself by daring, risking and moving outside of your comfort zone and trying new things and learning."
Marco: Dance more often, doesn't mean having more fun throughout your life?_
Dean: Yeah. I mean, people have said to me, do you regret spending so much time windsurfing? I was a professional windsurfer and those are five, six, seven, eight years of my life where that's all I did is traveling around windsurfing. I could have been advancing my job or my education or whatever. I could have been earning more money and people say, don't you regret this decision you made?
The problem is, you know, if you're doing the things I just said, then you're not enjoying windsurfing around the world. So yeah, I don't have regrets. I traveled the world windsurfing.
Perhaps that's the ultimate test of a well-lived life: Not accomplishments, wealth, or recognition—but the absence of regret for roads not taken and experiences not embraced.