After seven days of running across 250 kilometres of Chilean desert, 34-year-old Torontonian Mehmet Danis crossed the finish line last Sunday to claim first place in this year's Atacama Crossing, a gruelling endurance race staged in one of the driest places on Earth.
Reading details from the race report (37 C temperatures, sand dunes, towering cliffs, torn shoes), it's easy to suppose that the 82 competitors from 20 countries were just hoping to finish. But for a trio of male leaders, it was an epic cat-and-mouse scramble fought over six stages.
After two days of racing 77 kilometres up and down rose-coloured hills at a 3,000-metre altitude, Captain Danis – a dentist in the Canadian Forces – was in second place. With five days to go, he had an hour to make up between himself and Australian leader Damon Goerke. Capt. Danis picks up the story from there:
I could not have [Goerke] beat me again [in a stage], because the separation would just be too great. So I had to at least tie him. On Day 3 I broke away from the pack after the first half hour and I led the entire way. I beat him by about 20 minutes. So I brought his lead down from one hour to 40 minutes. And that's the day where he showed that he was getting a bit tired.
Eight racers had already dropped out from the heat and exhaustion. But the worst stage was yet to come on Day 4: the dreaded salt flats.
They're the worst thing I've ever run on in my life. You're not going to believe it when I explain it to you. Imagine a crusty sheet of ice. Then you're trying to walk on it and it'll crack. Underneath it you'll have a salt layer, like road salt. It'll be wet, and underneath that it'll be a river current.
It's the density of coral – it's very hard. Then all of a sudden you'll hit a soft spot and your foot will go down to the knee. This happened to me about four or five times, where my foot got soaked right through the sock in salt water. You can imagine salt water on blisters when you're trying to run a marathon. Thank God that's only about four kilometres of the whole thing.
Then another good 10 kilometres of the hard stuff, where it's too jagged for you to be able to put your foot through the peaks, so your ankles are just constantly twisting left and right.
Capt. Danis won that 42.8-kilometre stage, shaving another six minutes off the ailing Australian's overall lead. By Stage 5 – an epic 73.6 kilometres spread over two days – he still had 35 minutes to claw back.
I was thinking, I'm going to have to make my move early in this stage. Although it's a long stage, I thought I really can't wait too long into it because that's just going to give him more hope. Everyone was feeling each other out. No one made a move for the first hour. And then I broke away from the pack, and one guy followed me. It was the guy from Switzerland [Marco Gazzola]. [He] and I broke away from the rest of the pack for a while, and the Australian did not follow. So I thought, basically, we've called his bluff. But because I was in front, I couldn't tell how far I was in front. I had no way of knowing. So I just kept running and running and pushing harder and harder, pretending he was still with me. And the only person I could see was this guy from Switzerland.
