Stories from the Road to the Finish Line

There's no place like home.

Sure, Europe's beautiful and Africa's exotic, but Dean Karnazes wouldn't trade it for his view of Mt. Tamalpais.

The famed Ross supermarathoner has run on all seven continents and competed in 50 states in 50 days, but he's always impressed by the views and trails in his own backyard.

"I still come back to Marin as the best running on earth. There's a natural beauty here," Karnazes said. "Something a lot of us take for granted until we leave here and come back is the air quality is so good. We have the breeze coming off the ocean to clean out the air."

Karnazes, 48, is back home before embarking on his next adventure, an attempt to run in every country in a world tour. For now, he's celebrating the success of his third book Run! 26.2 Stories of Blisters and Bliss. The book, released in March, appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list.

"The book is a bunch of short stories about running and life," said Karnazes, who sought input from friends and family for the book. "A few chapters were written by my wife about what it's like to live with an endurance athlete. It's upbeat, with some quick takes. However, there's an over-arching story thread of a friend of mine who became a runner."

Karnazes will be at Book Passage tonight at 7 p.m. with Jim Axelrod, who is on tour promoting his new book In The Long Run.

"Every runner has a story," Karnazes said. "Most people start running or take it up again after some event in life, some adversity or hardship, maybe an addiction. They switch one addiction for a healthier addiction."

Axelrod, the CBS White House correspondent, was inspired to run the New York Marathon not by one single event in his life, but by an overwhelming feeling that his life wasn't going the way it was supposed to.

"I'd drop everything and run off to Iraq to be embedded with a combat troop at a moment's notice while my was wife seven months pregnant. Why? Why would I get my ticket punched and leave my wife with three kids.

"I rethought a lot about how I was approaching life. My work blinded me and consumed me. I had climbed pretty high on the ladder of success. I had accomplished a lot of the goals I set as far as work, but I wasn't the happiest guy in the world. … I was knotted up between my ears and my heart was knotted up. The road gave me a way to untangle those knots as I was running."

Axelrod ran in high school, but unlike his father, he was never serious about it. That changed three years after his father's death. 

"A friend of mine sent my father's New York Marathon times to me when I was on the campaign trail. I looked at the times and I'm the same age he was and I bet myself I could run faster," Axelrod recalled. "That's when I started wondering how I got so far afield.

"I measured my life by someone else's yardstick. I was blindly competing with my father who was dead for three years. He was a charismatic guy, a big presence. He was successful but he wasn't happy. I think, like a lot of people, I set my star by my father. Everything I'd done was in relation to my father."

Axelrod was like most busy professionals, 45 years old, 30 pounds overweight and out of shape before he started training for his first marathon. 

"When I was running, it felt like my body was oscillating with all the fat. I couldn't run three blocks at first," Axelrod said. "Getting in shape was a neat process. Every time, I'd run a little a bit further than before. It was no more complex than lacing up my running shoes and breathing hard."

In that moment, Axelrod discovered something important.

"It's not about climbing the rungs. It's about enjoying the walk in the park, because this is the only walk in the park we get," he said.