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Against The Grains
Runner's World SA
|August 2018
When the sand, suffering and self-sufficiency of the marathon des sables was exported from Morocco to the harsh but beautiful Ica desert on Peru’s Pacific Coast, the running adventure of a lifetime was born.
It all started back in 1984, when Frenchman Patrick Bauer
COMPLETED A SOLO JOURNEY through the Sahara on foot, carrying everything he needed. Two years later the first edition of the race his adventure inspired him to create – the Marathon des Sables – featured a handful of runners, but in the 32 years since then it has become a flagship global event, with its 1 000-plus places vastly over-subscribed.
This story is from the August 2018 edition of Runner's World SA.
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