For Some, One Marathon Is Not Enough

LONG BRANCH, New Jersey (CNN)-It's 45 degrees and windy, but the man sitting in the tent signing autographs is wearing a tank top and shorts. He has a bandage on his right arm and massive half-moon quads, legs that have carried him nearly 1,300 miles in seven weeks. Dean Karnazes is one day short of running 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days-and he's shocked-not that he's run this far, but that more than 200 people have come to see him. "I am just not freaking prepared for all this," he says as his handlers whisk him back to his hotel to get him ready for finishing his marathon trek in New York City on Sunday.

There is a party atmosphere along the Jersey shore. Two hundred-fifty long-distance runners have shown up to run with Karnazes, but not everyone has gotten his signature or a chance to talk with him. He has to rip himself away. "I just want to go running; it's crazy," Karnazes exclaims. "No one's trained me how to deal with..., I mean, those poor people I feel like I couldn't walk away from. It's this whole other challenge. "I just want to go run."

In a sport where people consider 30 miles a training run and count the number of toenails they've lost as badges of honor, Karnazes is a rock star. He is the Bono of ultramarathoning, a sport made up of races longer than the standard 26.2-mile marathon. It's a burgeoning pastime, helped along in recent years by Karnazes, whose book "Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner" was a New York Times best-seller in 2005. And he's down to eight toenails after taking a nasty spill running through Atlanta, Georgia, on October 27. There aren't many rules in ultramarathoning. It is the wild frontier of sport, and men and women like Karnazes define races at what appear to most to be excruciating distances. So why would anyone do 50 marathons in 50 days or run 350 miles straight, forgoing sleep for three straight nights or race 135 miles through Death Valley, California, where athletes run on the white line to keep their shoes from melting? The answer comes-eventually. He's won a few races but Karnazes will tell you he's not the best ultramarathoner. What makes him a star is that Karnazes sells the sport-and himself. He's a family man, he's affable. He makes you believe this can be normal, and any of us could do it.