The 4Deserts Challenge...the WHAT?

Time Magazine called the 4Deserts Challenge the second hardest endurance event in the world. Created by sadistic founder, Mary Gadams, the 4Deserts are four separate 6-day, 250km ultra-marathons across four of the toughest climates on the planet. Runners are self-supported, carrying their own gear and food across the hottest, coldest, windiest, and driest places on earth. Ten years into its inception only two people have ever completed the 4Deserts Challenge in one calendar year. There are close to 25 incredible athletes that have actually completed each of the 4Deserts, however only Paul Liebenberg and the ultra-marathon man himself, Dean Karnazes, have completed all four in one year. As our boy Teddy Roosevelt once said "the credit belongs to those who are in the arena..." so I've decided to step into the arena and attempt to become only the third person to ever complete the 4Deserts Challenge in one calendar year. 

Every year the 4Deserts kicks off in Chile around March with a race across the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert. Parts of the Atacama have not received rain for over 400 years. It's a landscape covered primarily by so much salt, lava rock, and sand that NASA has deemed it the closest resemblance to the landscape of the moon on earth. 

The second desert in the series comes in June in the form of the Gobi Desert in China. The Gobi sits in a rain shadow from the Himalaya Mountains which block any rain carrying clouds from passing over and dropping moisture. Additionally winds that blow in from the Siberian Steppes can make the Gobi as cold as -40F in the winter to as hot as 125 degrees in the summer. Thanks to the recent uprising in Kashgar in western China, this year's race has been farther up the old Silk Road to Urumqi which features a part of the Gobi that the locals call 'The Oven'...I have a feeling it won't be bread that's baking when we're there. 

Thirdly, the most famous desert, the Sahara, makes an appearance in October. Covering more than 3.5mm square miles across the north of Africa it stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. Temperatures in the Sahara can reach a scorching 130 degrees while nighttime temps can drop below freezing. If that wasn't enough, thanks to prevailing northeasterly winds, the desert is prone to sand storms and dust devils....which are tornado looking wind funnels filled with sand. Good for stripping old paint off a house but not for running through. 

Lastly, in November, only three weeks after the Sahara race, comes the apt named Last Desert...Antarctica. Before you argue you should know that yes, Antarctica is in fact a desert as it receives less than 8 inches per year in annual precipitation and most of that is on the coast. While it won't be likely to run into any 'locals' there because there are no permanent residents, it is likely that we will see plenty of penguins and seals. Temperatures in Antarctica can reach as low as -112F, however during the race we won't be likely to see any temps below -40F and more likely will be running during the day in temps around 10F-30F.