In Ray Zahab's world, a comfortable jog is 30 kilometres, a serious marathon is 200 kilometres in extreme conditions -- and an honest test of a man's endurance is the Sahara Desert.
Mr. Zahab, a 38-year-old reformed pack-a-day smoker from Chelsea, successfully completed that test last Tuesday when he dipped his hands into the Red Sea.
It marked the end of a 111-day, 7,000-kilometre marathon across the searing North African desert, from Senegal to Egypt.
"I feel fortunate beyond my wildest dreams to experience what I've done,' he said in an interview yesterday on his first day back in Canada.
"How many people in history have seen what I've been able to see or feel what I've been able to feel?'
Mr. Zahab and two fellow ultra-marathoners, Charlie Engle, 44, of Greensboro, North Carolina, and Kevin Lin, 30, of Taiwan, took part in the cross-Africa expedition as part of a project sponsored by Magellan GPS, a manufacturer of global positioning systems, and National Geographic.
The expedition, which also sought to draw attention to the need for clean water in Africa, was tracked by a documentary film crew that chronicled the runners' unprecedented feat. That documentary, which will be narrated by actor Matt Damon, is expected to debut in September at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The three runners, who first met at an ultra-marathon in the Amazon jungle in September 2004, covered an average of 63 kilometres each day of their Saharan expedition. That's just shy of one-and-a-half marathons -- an official marathon is 42.195 kilometres -- each day, through sandstorms, relentless sun and heat that often exceeded 40 C.
The terrain, too, was a constant challenge. Niger's Tenere Desert had soft sand -- and at times the runners sank up to their ankles with each step. But the men became adept at reading the dunes.
"The way the wind blows the sand, it was harder in some areas and not others,' Mr. Zahab said. 'You had to look for that and stick to it.'
In Mali, the route was rutted by trucks and the berm was thick with burrs. The trio had no choice but to run in deep, uneven tire tracks. 'It was absolutely brutal,' he said.
The idea for the expedition came from an offhand comment Mr. Zahab made to Mr. Engle in November 2004. Mr. Zahab had just completed a 333-kilometre race through a section of desert in Niger and he was still stoked when he phoned Mr. Engle to tell him about it.
"I said, 'Dude, the desert is incredible. Niger, I've never seen anything like that. I wonder if anyone has ever run across the whole Sahara before? Imagine running from one end to the other.' '
At the time, Mr. Zahab had no idea that the Sahara Desert stretched across the breadth of North Africa. Mr. Engle, a television producer in the U.S., said he would see if he could make it happen.
Mr. Zahab didn't think the idea would ever come to fruition, and so in the meantime, he kept running. He had taken up ultra-marathons in 2004 after reading a magazine article about the Yukon Arctic Ultra, a 100-mile race in the dead of winter, near Whitehorse. It was billed as the toughest foot race in the world.
"I thought, 'Sonofabitch, I can't believe people run 100 miles let alone do it up in the Arctic.' So I thought, 'I've got to try this.' '
Until that point, Mr. Zahab's athletic career concentrated on equestrian events -- he had worked as a professional horse trainer -- and mountain biking. He had taken up biking in the late 1990s after his younger brother, John, convinced him to go for a ride in the Gatineau Hills. Mr. Zahab had to walk his bike most of the way: he was then a pack-a-day-smoker with a taste for Guinness.
Every weekend, he was a regular at Ottawa's Heart and Crown pub. But he gave up smoking on New Year's Eve 2000 and cut back some on the Guinness. 'I thought, 'I'll give up smoking, but not the beer. I'm Canadian. It's in my blood.'
After he began to train in earnest, Mr. Zahab went for a test at the Peak Centre for Human Performance. The centre found that, while his oxygen utilization was nothing special, he had a remarkable ability to tolerate lactic acid. He began to enter longer bike races that played to this strength.
"I was starting to see that I wasn't good at those short bursts, like five kilometres,' he said. 'But I could go for a really long time and not get that tired.'
When he heard about the Yukon Arctic Ultra, he ditched his bike for jogging shoes. That was in early 2004 -- and he has been running and running and running ever since.
Yet, on the first day of his cross-Africa odyssey, when he dipped his foot into the Atlantic Ocean in St. Louis, Senegal on Nov. 2, 2006, even Mr. Zahab wondered if he was gunning for a finish line too far. He had only been running seriously for three years. Now he was supposed to run a marathon or two every day for more than three months.
"I didn't know if it was possible," he said yesterday, "but I knew I wouldn't know until I tried. I think ignorance was bliss.'
On a typical day, Mr. Zahab and his fellow ultra-marathoners would wake up between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., eat for an hour, and run until noon. They would break for a few hours to eat lunch and snooze, then run again in the afternoon until they reached their destination. A short day would end at 6 p.m., a long day at 11 p.m.
In the evening, it was a mad dash to go through physiotherapy, eat -- Mr. Zahab sought to consume at least 6,000 calories a day -- and get to bed. The support team included a doctor, physiotherapist, desert guide, cook and drivers. Often, Mr. Zahab would also receive an IV to supplement the Gatorade he consumed in vast quantities. He never drank water because it didn't have any calories.
The IV was the only way to prevent dehydration because he suffered from intestinal problems most of the way. 'One day,' he boasted, 'I had explosive diarrhea and I still did 70 kilometres that day.'
On one of his worst days, when he was violently ill, he did 50 kilometres in Mali. Even on Christmas Day, in Niger, the men put in more than 30 kilometres.
Miraculously, Mr. Zahab suffered only only minor blisters on his feet. He was religious about keeping his feet dry and his toenails trimmed. His shoes were covered in silk to keep the sand out.
The biggest physical challenge was the tendonitis that developed in his achilles and crawled up his shin as he ran across Libya. 'There were one or two days,' he said, 'when I didn't think I'd be able to finish: it was that sore.'
But he kept running through the pain, taking only one afternoon to let his injury heal. He used progressively more painkillers as the run wore on. 'We had to do the miles. Everything was longer, tougher than we thought. You run through those injuries until your body adapts. We had no choice.'
As he ran, Mr. Zahab would chat with his colleagues, listen to his iPod, or relive whole days from his regular life in Chelsea with his wife, Kathy. 'I would run a story in real time in my head and next thing you know, five hours had gone by.
"I tried never to think about the whole distance. It was too depressing. I tried never to think, 'OK, you've done 30 days -- that's a long time to run, 2,100 kilometres -- and you still have 5,000 kilometres to go.' If I had let that sink in, I would have been finished ... Everyday, I thought, 'Run. Just run. Don't stop. Every day is one day less.''
The highlight of his expedition, he said, came in Niger's Tenere Desert, a seascape of undulating sand dunes. 'It's amazing: there's nothing, not a pebble, for 1,000 kilometres.'
When the men reached Egypt, they could smell the finish line. They ran 100 kilometres a day for a week -- 15 hours a day -- and then completed the final 300 kilometres in a 60 hour push with only two hours of sleep.
"The whole time we were out there, I would joke with the guys in the desert when we'd see sand dunes that looked like pyramids. I'd say, 'There's the pyramids. We're almost there.' I knew when I saw the pyramids, we'd be almost done.'
But by the time he reached the Great Pyramid of Giza, near Cairo, he was so exhausted the moment was hard to appreciate. The men walked the final 12 kilometres to the Red Sea due to injuries and exhaustion.
"I was thinking, 'It can't come soon enough. I'm ready to be done. I've accomplished my goal. I'm happy.' '
His wife, his family and friends were there for the finish. He dipped his hands in the water. 'I thought, 'This is the Red Sea. That's it. I don't know if I was expecting glorious beams of light or something. But that didn't happen.''
Instead, he enjoyed a glorious beer and a cheeseburger at a five-star hotel in Cairo.
On his first day back in Canada yesterday, Mr. Zahab said he felt tired but 'pretty good.' He planned to hike in the Gatineau Hills, but nothing more strenuous. Although he intends to keep running ultra marathons, Mr. Zahab said the Sahara was his last great endurance test. He wants to spend more time on his personal training and motivational speaking business.
"There's part of me that felt for a long, long time before doing this, that I need to do something. But I didn't know what it was. Now I feel like I've done it.'
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