Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara
Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara

Video: Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara

Video: Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara
Video: One to watch: Helen Musselwhite, paper artist - YouTube 2024, November
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Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara
Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara

What can a person go to leave your footprints in the sand? Go to the distant lands? Spend thousands of dollars? Walk hundreds of kilometers under the scorching sun of the world's greatest desert? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! It is for this that one of the longest and, perhaps, the most difficult ultramarathon in the world was started - " Marathon in the Sands", to which only the most desperate are invited.

Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara
Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara

Yes, if you decide to seriously test your strength - " Marathon in the sands"will do just fine. What could be more serious than 250 kilometers cross country? At the same time, there is not even a question of running them, as is customary in a marathon: your legs get bogged down in the sand so that even walking is VERY difficult. Ultramarathon lasts 6 days, and is divided into 6 stages, during which walkers exhausted from their burdens print steps on the dunes, dunes, rocky wastelands of the Sahara - the queen of the deserts. Everyone carries food with them, and the organization supplies water. And, by the way, not for nothing: the organizational fee last year amounted to 2,550 euros. Expensive desert water is a significant percentage of this amount.

Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara
Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara

Thus, the daily "norm" is about forty kilometers. But in fact, the distance depends on the terrain: on sand it is smaller, but on stones you can develop a higher speed. In particular, the ultramarathon includes "non-stop" in 80 kilometerswhen the competition continues at night! The only consolation for marathon runners is the coolness.

Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara
Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara

It happens that participants get lost on the track due to wind or weather. One of those unlucky ones, an Italian policeman Mauro Prosperi, in 1994 he wandered in the sands for 9 days, during which he lost 13 kilograms of weight (and, as you understand, he was not a fat man). But he was still lucky: since 2007, 2 people have died at the "Marathon in the Sands" - his heart could not stand it.

Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara
Footprints in the Sand: The Greatest Marathon in the Sahara

In general, it is difficult even to imagine a person capable of walking a full marathon for 6 days in a row, ankle-deep in sand, at a temperature 49.9 degrees! More than a thousand of these people gathered to leave their footprints in the sand in 2010. And even somehow the language does not turn to call them "walkers": they are real fighters. Footprints in the desert sandleft by their soles - evidence of the mighty forces of man, his determination and will to win not even over the desert - over himself, his fatigue and fear.

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