Dan LaMorte: between running and comedy lies obsession

The comedian talks as much about death and almost dying as he does about creation and progress.

When I spoke to Dan LaMorte at the tail end of 2025, life was coming at him. His grandfather was dying, his wife had left him, and he was back living with his parents in New Jersey, but the comedian still had a smile.

“It’s the holidays,” he says wryly, “Which makes it feel like I’m in a bad Hallmark movie.”

Amazingly, this isn’t all he’s had to remain a positive guy about. Dan LaMorte is a runner, you see, and the worst thing to happen to a runner is anything that stops you running. (Ask me how I know.) Over the past couple of years, he’s violently broken his ankle and was in the ICU after a serious scare with his heart. All this after losing almost 200lbs / 90kg after a hospital visit in 2018 saw him diagnosed with a fatty liver.

That 2018 diagnosis led to Dan starting running in 2019, with his first ultra in 2021 – a fast move into the sport.

“That’s probably why I’ve gotten hurt so much along the way,” he laughs. “You really can’t fake your way into it. Especially coming from a body that was 355 lbs.”

I introduced Dan as a comedian, and that’s his day job. He started performing stand-up as a 19-year-old, back in 2014 or so, having blown out his arm. No good for a baseball pitcher college athlete. At first, he thought about the parallels between comedy and baseball, but now he considers how comedy and ultrarunning align.

“You’re alone on the mound – kind of like just you onstage. If you mess up, it’s on you. Now I’ve been an ultrarunner for longer than I was a baseball player, so I compare stand-up more to ultrarunning. It’s so interesting how the years change and you gravitate towards different things, and you learn how to latch meaning onto it in each direction.”

Dan goes on to talk about how it’s the process rather than the big show. How we all see the headline comedy show or 100-miler documentary or the before and after pictures, but there’s so much more to it all.

“What’s the in-between. My story is not really the guy who succeeded right away. It’s so much more than the picture. It’s gradual, it’s not linear, it beats you down. That’s why I love [running ultras]. People have no idea why I do it. It’s almost killed me three times.”