By Lindsay Tate
Six years ago, Ray Zahab smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and drank heavily.
He was only an occasional athlete, until he decided to give up smoking and start mountain bike racing after seeing an episode of the gruelling adventure race, Eco Challenge, on television.
Now this fall, Zahab, as part of a three-man team, will attempt to cross Africa by running 6,000 km across the Sahara Desert.
“It’s going to be insane. In order to do it, it’ll be 80 km a day – two marathons a day – for nine weeks,” says Zahab.
“It’s just so far that I’m hoping my body can hold up.”
Zahab, a 37-year-old Ottawa-area elite, adventure runner and personal trainer, will begin the nine-week journey in Senegal at the end of October. He will be joined by teammates, Charlie Engle and Kevin Lin.
Zahab says they have only raced twice as a team. “We all raced together in the Amazon jungle, that was hectic. There were chest-deep swamps and parasites.”
The team aims to become the first people to cross Africa on foot, solely within the boundaries of the Sahara Desert.
The trek will be filmed and made into a documentary called Running the Sahara, with actor Matt Damon taking the role of executive producer.
Zahab says the idea for the desert crossing and the subsequent documentary came after he and Engle finished a 333-km non-stop race in Niger in 2004 called the Trans333.
“We were both brainstorming and came up with this concept and said, ‘let’s try to run across the Sahara Desert just to see if we can do it.’”
Both men knew the expedition would be extremely expensive.
Engle, a producer for ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, spoke to some of his Hollywood contacts about shooting and selling a documentary about the journey.
LivePlanet, a production company, agreed to take on the project and Matt Damon became involved in the film because of the opportunity to raise awareness about “the African condition and the scarcity of drinking water there,” says Zahab.
In order to prepare for the journey, Zahab, who lives in Chelsea, Que. and trains in Gatineau Park, has been running 160 to 220 km each week.
He also does a combination of strength and altitude training because, as he says, “we won’t be running along a groomed trail. There’ll be boulders and sand dunes, and even mountains to get across.”
Although Zahab recently won the non-stop, 190-km Libyan Challenge, as well as the seven-day, 250-km Sahara Race across western Egypt, he only started racing seriously in 2004.
His first race was the Yukon Arctic Ultra.
He entered and won the race only two months after he began his training. This makes him an anomaly in a sport where most competitors only reach the elite level after many years of competition.
The drive to succeed and to take on challenges like the Sahara crossing, is part of what makes Zahab such an inspiration, says Jodi Bigelow, another Ottawa-area adventure racer and Zahab’s friend.
“In adventure racing, when you do long ones, it’s so easy to get tired and negative and want to give up. It’s a real skill to be able to turn yourself around and get positive and Ray almost exudes that,” says Bigelow.
“If there’s anyone I know that can pull something like this off, it’s him.”
Steve Hay, who Zahab has coached, says Zahab helped him reach the podium in his own races.
“He’s just got so much energy, you just can’t help but listen and want to do the same things that he does,” says Hay, also an adventure racer.
“He’s very inspirational that way, you want to learn from him because he just projects such motivation.”
Hay says although the Sahara crossing will be difficult, maybe even impossible, Zahab won’t quit.
“Anything I know about Ray is that he will not stop running, you’d have to take him out kicking and screaming,” he said with a laugh. If they have to walk for a couple of kilometres they’ll do it – anything to complete the goal.”