ALBERTA EDITION
REPORT NEWSMAGAZINE, MAY 14, 2001

Near Death in the Sahara

Sandra McCallum becomes the third Canadian woman to complete ‘the most gruelling foot race on earth’ By Fox Hill

With temperatures soaring to 131 degrees Fahrenheit, 38-year-old Sandra McCallum of Medicine Hat, Alta., ran a marathon last month – right through the middle of the Sahara Desert. Along with 700 competitors from around the world, she was dumped in the desert, handed a compass and given a week to cover the nearly 150 miles to the finish line. Although the starting pistol was fired on April Fool’s Day, this was no joke. Over the 16 year history of the Marathon des Sables (Marathon of the Sands ), one man has died and another been lost in the shifting, sizzling dunes for a week. The only items provided along the way by the race organizers are an open-sided black burlap Berber tent and a strict nine litres of water per day. The competitors must carry backpacks weighing up to 30 pounds containing the dehydrated food, snakebite kit, sleeping bag, flare, whistle and knife considered mandatory for surviving the torture test.

Formerly a Calgary television reporter, five-foot-seven, 115 pound Ms. McCallum obtained financial sponsorship two years ago and devoted herself full-time to preparing for “the most gruelling foot race on earth.” Participating in last year’s event, she was forced to withdraw with only 62 miles of desert remaining when dysentery and began hallucinating. At that time she vowed, “Never again.” The lure of the desert proved strong, however, and she rededicated herself to this year’s effort.

Her hometown of Medicine Hat, 150 miles southeast of Calgary, presents a unique training opportunity: just over the border in the southwest corner of Saskatchewan are the Great Sand Hills with 750 square miles of drifting dunes. “It’s like a big playground,” Ms. McCallum smiles. “I can go there and run in the dunes like a kid, rolling in the sand. I just love the desert so much. I think that really helped; you don’t fear, or have uncertainty about it. The more you love it, the more you embrace it, the easier it is psychologically.”

In addition to running 100 miles per week, she does weight training, cycling and pool running. In preparation for the intense heat of the desert, Ms. McCallum trained for a month on an exercise bike in a sauna, although it was still not as hot as what she was to face. In March she flew into legendary Casablanca in the North African country of Morocco where she became acclimatized, eating only canned food brought with her in an effort to avoid last year’s crippling dysentery. Finally, a flight to Quarzazate (WAH-zuh-zot), 150 miles further south, followed by a two-hour bus ride into the desert and an hour bouncing in a military truck, brought her to the location of the race, kept secret from all competitors until the last minute. “Some competitors could scout out the terrain, and knowing exactly what to expect each day, train accordingly. I guess that’s part of the hardship they want you to go through,” she says.

Hardship, according to organizers, is perhaps the reason that an increasing number of athletes each year are willing to plunk down the $4,000 plus airfare for the opportunity. “It satisfies a normal and understandable need to know that there is, within each of us, the ability to rise above pain and self-doubt, breaking through boundaries which very few ever attempt to break,” proclaims the website (www.sandmarathon.com). As Ms. McCallum, “an airforce brat who was raised all over,” explains, “I get an adrenaline rush from pushing myself to the limit. Something in me feeds off it. I have no idea where it comes from. Maybe I choose not to figure it out.”

The first two days of the race, 15 and 21 miles each, saw competitors running through deep sand, with dunes as far as the eye could see in every direction. The extreme heat with humidity close to zero made dehydration a serious problem. Runners were strictly limited to nine litres of water per day for drinking, cooking and bathing, receiving their allotments at checkpoints which also offered the only respite from the sun. “They would have one or two tents, not nearly enough for all the runners coming through, so you’d always have people clinging to the sides of Jeeps, looking for any bit of shade.”

Ms. McCallum knew that in a race like this, sand is the enemy of a runner’s feet. “You have to bring runners two sizes larger than your feet to accommodate swelling from the heat and blistering.” To keep out the sand, she wore gaiters, as a mountain climber would to keep out snow. This worked out well and Ms. McCallum fared better than many. “ I still have badly blistered feet,” she reported the day after returning to Canada, “ but not like some runners whose feet were like one massive blister. The doctors there used razor blades to cut away the flesh of injured runners’ feet, poured iodine over them and patched them up; they looked like raw hamburger. Some of these guys were shrieking in pain, which is the last thing you want to do because the French doctors mock you. You go ‘Ahhh!’ and pretty soon there’s a whole chorus of ‘Ahhhs’ going around. I learned my first year, A: don’t go to the medical tent and, B: if you do, just grit your teeth. You can’t bemoan anything. Just deal with it and go on.”

The beauty of the desert struck Ms. McCallum. “You see gorgeous red sand against the blue sky, with black lava-rock mountains in the background. At times we crossed these huge slabs of stone, and as you look down, you can see fossils embedded beneath your feet. It’s beautiful. You’re overwhelmed by how insignificant you are in the vastness of the landscape. Some days you run in a straight line forever, trying not to look up and see how big it is, then in the middle of nowhere, you’d see this nomadic family herding goats or the odd camel, and wonder, how do they survive?”

On the third and fourth days, participants started running all day and through the night non-stop. “It was fantastic, the stars were brilliant, and it was almost a full moon, giving a bluish cast to the scene. I was with two German runners when the wind picked up, and rather than blowing the sand high into the air, it stayed low to the desert floor, blowing the sand along like fog rolling in from the sea. It was the birthday of one of the Germans, and as we ran through this eerie moonlit scene, three strangers in the middle of nowhere under the stars, I sang him happy birthday. It’s something that will always be with me.”

It was the last leg of the 62.5 mile stage that Ms. McCallum “crashed,” stricken with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and uncontrollable shaking. She barely made it into camp to seek medical attention before losing consciousness and requiring three bags of IV fluids. “I made a big mistake of spending a bit of extra water pouring it over my head – it just feels so good when there’s no breeze – when I should have been drinking it.” She recalls a runner whose dehydration was so severe that he was, “surrounded by medical staff, all cramped up looking like a corpse with rigor mortis. He looked to be at death’s door. It’s sobering and it reminds you to be careful.” After four hours’ rest, however, Ms. McCallum mustered the strength to go on. She found herself reduced to thinking only of the “next step, and then the next, and so on, for hours.”

Despite her illness, stopping to be sick every 15 minutes, and hunger, Ms. McCallum completed the final 40 miles. 44th in a field of 70 women and 441st in a field of 612 overall; the third Canadian woman ever to complete the race. “ In a way, it was anticlimactic,” she laughs. “I’d imagined it every day that I trained, and when I crossed the finish line, there was the frenzied greeting by the media, and the organizer puts a medal around your neck. I had some friends waiting for me with a cold bottle of orange Fanta soda, and I wanted that Fanta more than the medal at that point.

“But the whole experience of the race was fantastic. All the racers come together to share the same passion. It gives me a sense of living on the edge; you take your body, mind, spirit as far as they will go, and then a little bit further.” Ms. McCallum is now considering the next race, The Desert Cup, 106 miles non-stop through the Jordan desert in November. “When I was in the desert I would have said, ‘There’s absolutely no way,’ but now I’m feeling better, and well, who knows…?”