The desert terminator

If your last sporting feat was to run 50 marathons in 50 days, how could you take it to the next level? Dean “Ultramarathon Man” Karnazes came up with this: run 1,000km (621 miles) across four inhospitable deserts, through temperatures as high as 40C and as low as -40C, and end up in a blizzard in Antarctica.

It would be the ultimate ultramarathon, and even for Karnazes - an athlete who has been held up as a perfect specimen of physical fitness and examined by doctors in the interests of medical science - it was almost too much. “I’ve never known a challenge like it,” admitted the 46-year-old American as he boarded a boat for home last week in a snowstorm.

Last March, Karnazes was one of a handful of runners hoping to be first to complete the Four Desert Challenge in one year. The Read more>>