Overcoming heat, kidnap threats, land mines and border snafus, three runners from Taiwan, Canada and the United States have completed their six-nation, 7 300km cross-Sahara ultra-endurance marathon in 111 days, a Taiwan newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Taiwanese Keven Lin (30) who used up 11 pairs of running shoes, Canadian Ray Zahab (38) and American Charlie Engle (44) all endurance marathoners, completed the run at 4.30pm (2.30pm GMT) on Tuesday at the mouth of the Suez Canal in Egypt, the Apple Daily reported.
In an interview with the paper, Lin described the hardships he and his two companions endured during the journey, which began on November 2 2006.
”Unless one has travelled, one does not know how large the world is. Unless one has taken risks, one does not know how precious life is,” he read from his diary.
Film footage from the run is being made into a $9-million documentary — Running the Sahara — by US actor Matt Damon’s production company Live Planet, which sent a crew to chronicle the run.
The film, directed by James Moll, will be launched in September at the Toronto International Film Festival, and will also be aired on the National Geographic Channel.
The race took them through Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya and Egypt.
The trip was originally planned for 85 days over 6 500km but detours to avoid being kidnapped by armed rebels in Mauritania and land mines in Libya. A visa delay at the border into Libya added days to the journey, Lin said.
Hitting the road at 5am every day, they ran an average of 12 hours with a mid-day nap, and could refresh themselves with food and water every five hours.
The night before they reached the destination, Lin — after 11 pairs of running shoes — was too excited to sleep and finished the last leg in 36 hours.
Lin, a student at the Graduate School for Sport of the Chiang Kai-shek University, began to run ultra-endurance marathons in 2002.
He has taken part in ultra-endurance marathons across the Sahara, the Gobi Desert, the Atacama Desert in Chile and the Amazon.
Lin will return to Taiwan to a hero’s welcome on Saturday. – Sapa-DPA