Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25038
arat photographs: martin pa Call it the Marathon des Sades. This nearly 229-kilometer footrace through the 120°F+ Moroccan Sahara is a scenic route to spiritual inquisition. In its thirteenth year, the Marathon des Sables (Marathon of the Sands), dreamed up by French photographer Patrick Bauer during his own solo Sahara sojourn, puts participants to the ultimate test: balance between mind and matter. This year 495 people from 26 nations ran in the six- stage marathon 29 March to 4 April. They ran and trekked over flat, arid landscapes littered with huge ankle-cracking rocks, ascended two-kilometer-high stone hills, struggled up and melted down dunes, and stomped through muddy fields that left shoe soles caked in clay-all with a pack on their backs containing every essential, except water, for the entire ordeal. This year's field included a yogi, a blind boxer, Vietnam vets, models, grandparents and a Citibank vice president. Kitelike Mohammed Ahansal from the Moroccan village of Zagora took first place. There are rich and poor but by week's end no class system exists. Leg 1: to discover the . . Leg 2: • . . . Leg 5: �nmQႀ䊉 tmi1ႀ䊉 142 km Leg 6: : . 14 km Marathon des Sables websites perso.wanadoo.fr/marathon (French) www.sandmarathon.com (English) MDS is part flagellation, part adventure. Entrants pay close to $3,000 to compete (the winner gets roughly $4,500). The coin-size medal runners receive at the finish isn't incentive to risk permanent bodily harm, and even death-in 1988 a young runner collapsed from dehydration and suffered a fatal heart attack. The appeal lies in the immaterial. Take for instance Mauro Prosperi, a Roman police officer and 1984 Olympic pentathlon gold medalist, who got lost in a sandstorm during the 1994 race. Missing for nine and a half days he survived by drinking his boiled urine and tearing the head off a dead bat to suck out its juices. Prosperi lost nearly 35 pounds before being discovered by Tuaregs, the Sahara's nomadic people. Since then Prosperi has been back twice more to master the race that nearly licked him.-Robin Postell 12