Place in the world

What can't man do....

Run through Sahara more than personal challenge, ESPN.com: Three runners embarked on an epic journey to run across the Sahara Desert, not only for the challenge but also to raise awareness of some of the most impoverished nations of Africa. Three runners -- Charlie Engle, Ray Zahab and Kevin Lin -- ran for 111 days over 4,300 miles through six countries (Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya and Egypt) and lived to tell their tale. Engle took time to share stories about this incredible journey with ESPN.com contributor Graham Bensinger. ...

When we did the math, we realized that we need to really cover 40-50 miles per day, every single day. It became obvious we couldn't physically train our bodies for that type of stress. What we really did was try to go into the expedition as healthy as possible. Of course, we did a lot of running, hundreds of miles a week in preparation. It was much more of a mental exercise than physical. We weren't going very fast, but we were running 14 hours per day, every single day. It was much tougher on the mind than it was on the body. ...

The average day is very monotonous. We're up at 4 a.m. I was the taskmaster, although Kevin referred to me as the monster. Part of what I did as the expedition leader was focus on getting us going every day. We'd start running at 5 a.m. and take a break around noon for some lunch and even a quick nap on the hottest days. We'd start running again at 2:30 p.m. and not stop until 9:30 p.m. We'd get five hours of sleep and get up and do it again. There wasn't a lot of variety going on in our lives at that point. ...

One of the things that really motivated us was the fact we decided that water was our real focus during this expedition. That sounds obvious for runners, but what I mean by that is we actually aided in setting up a NGO [nongovernment organization] called, "H20 Africa." The goal was to help bring attention to the problem of clean water in Africa. In particular, bring attention to the problem in the Sahara Desert. It was very motivating for us just to run through these towns and villages and see people that were happy, well-adjusted and family-oriented. But almost every place we encountered lacked access to clean water. We're hoping that in phase two of this expedition, happening now, we're able to bring attention to that and solve a few of the problems over there.

Q: I recall reading a story from Don Webster's blog. You all encountered a 7-year-old boy whose parents left him alone for a couple days, with very little food and drink, while they went to search for water. It seemed stories like that were common.

A: Very common. That little boy was incredible. I have children of my own, Brett and Kevin, who are 12 and 14. I couldn't imagine leaving them anywhere in the world. I couldn't imagine leaving them in the house for two or three days by themselves! Just picture this 7-year-old boy who is out there in the desert in his nomadic camp. He's fending for himself while his parents are off with the camels on a two-day journey just to get enough clean water to bring back to camp to last for a week. Then, the process starts all over again.

Photo of Kevin Lin, Charlie Engle, and Ray Zahab pacing their route down a straightaway on the Trans-Saharan Highway in Mauritania by Don Holtz at Running the Sahara.