Marathon de sables - Actual article, no link
First person to run 1,600 kilometres in six desert marathons in one year
edmontonjournal.com
Monday, April 02, 2007
Edmonton marathon runner Sandy McCallum is headed to the record books
after completing her sixth desert ultramarathon in one year.
McCallum, 43, finished the 240-kilometre Marathon des Sables across the
Moroccan desert Saturday. This makes her eligible to be entered in the
Guinness World Records book as the only person to complete six desert
marathons in one year.
“I have set a new world record…and it feels pretty good,” McCallum says i=
n
an entry for her blog on edmontonjournal.com.
“I finished the Marathon des Sables on Saturday with my best time and
placing ever in that race. It is a nice way to wrap up the year.”
She says she ended up in 18th place out of 104 in the women’s category and
260th place overall out of 750 athletes.
She ran the week-long race with a badly sprained ankle and says she is
having trouble walking.
“I cannot tell you how good it is going to be to get home,” she says. “I
have been in Africa for a month…and on the road for longer than that. It
has been a long year of highs and lows…both mentally and physically. It
will be nice to just chill for awhile.”
The race was hit with tragedy last week when a member of the French racing
team died overnight after a long and grueling stage of the race. His death
was discovered when his tent mates tried to awaken him.
“The entire camp has taken the news very hard,” McCallum said at the time.
“You can tell the race organizers are devastated. The entire medical team
was standing by to help out anybody that had difficulty in dealing with the
announcement. The runners were all shocked. I had to cry. It is absolutely
devastating.”
It was her sixth desert marathon since April of 2006 adding up to more than
1,600 kilometres. It was also her second desert marathon in an African
desert in a month. Earlier in March, she completed the 190 kilometre Lybian
Challenge.
Her previous races in the past year were the 221-kilometre Grand Raid Sahar=
a
in Mauritania, Africa, in January; the 240-kilometre Sahara Race in Egypt i=
n
October, 2006; 240-kilometre Atacama Crossing in South America’s Atacama
Desert in July, 2006; and the 240-kilometre Gobi March in China’s Gobi
Desert in May 2006.
A former national reporter with Global Television, she has a passion for th=
e
desert and enjoys competing in temperatures reaching 50 C. In 2005, she
became the first woman in the Western Hemisphere to have raced a combined
total of more than 1,600 kilometres through the hostile Sahara Desert in a
number of races over several years.
Her next challenge will to ride a camel around the Sahara Desert =97 which
would also be a world first.
“Now I can set my sights on my original goal…which is to circumnavigate
the Sahara Desert by camel,” she says. “I would like to be the first person
in the world to attempt the feat…which would take about a year and a bit
to accomplish.”
