I'm more of a "four desserts" person myself...

March 3, 2015 7:24 AM

The 4 Deserts race series is a series of 250km ultramarathons held in the Atacama Desert, Gobi Desert, Sahara Desert, and Antarctica. Competitors are only provided with water, tents, and medical support; they must carry everything else themselves.

The Sahara race was relocated to Jordan in 2014 due to political unrest; the Antarctic race is by invitation only, and competitors must have completed at least two of the others.

Thirteen people have completed all four races within a calendar year, a feat known as the 4 Deserts Grand Slam.

"Desert Runners", a documentary about the race series featuring several would-be grand slammers, was produced in 2013. (Trailer)

posted by Blue Jello Elf (8 comments total)

As one comedian back in the 90s said. Either these people don't have jobs or their jobs are really hard to get to.

One of my co-workers is planning to run this in a few years. She likes to run 50 milers ever few months for fun.
posted by KaizenSoze at 8:00 AM on March 3, 2015

I know someone who did the Gobi one, I wonder if he intends eventually to do the others. (He's a lawyer, which I assume is why he doesn't do four in a year.)
posted by jeather at 8:03 AM on March 3, 2015

Weirdly, I know two people who ran these (they put my organisation as their fundraising charity) and they were basically super-driven professionals. The sort of people who would happily run across a desert.
posted by viggorlijah at 8:08 AM on March 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

I watched the documentary and liked it but throughout the film I had the same thought as above -- I sure would like a job that allows me to train for and run these races. Also, I wish someone would make a documentary about the Barkley Marathons. (checks google...) Nice.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 8:11 AM on March 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

I just learned about the Sahara one recently and it seemed unreal to me. The idea of doing 4 in one year pretty much sounds like these people must be a different animal than me, like not just more in shape humans but actually a different species.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:39 AM on March 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

The long distance trail runners I know are some of the kindest people I've ever met.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:15 AM on March 3, 2015

Oh and btw, they weren't physically different from the usual fairly serious runner - like a 10K runner looks. And both of them had long work hours with crazy travel schedules and just went running in any spare time.
posted by viggorlijah at 9:17 AM on March 3, 2015

Oh and btw, they weren't physically different from the usual fairly serious runner - like a 10K runner looks.

Yeah, it's a bit striking that in the documentary, you see that a small handful of the people participating in these races are not exceptionally fit. One is slightly overweight, another is in his 60s and has health problems. But they are quite strong mentally and can handle heat very well.

And both of them had long work hours with crazy travel schedules and just went running in any spare time.

They must have had a lot of vacation time, though. I see you're not American, and that might explain it. Each of the races is a minimum of a week commitment (the Antarctica one is two weeks), so that's five weeks of vacation just to run the races. That doesn't count other races you might want to do, time off to train, or vacation time for holidays, family trips, etc. All I'm saying is I'm jealous of people who can afford to do that -- unfortunately I don't have close to that amount of time off in a year.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:25 AM on March 3, 2015