Oshawa dentist runs 250 km through Sahara Desert
Earlier this month, Dr. Mehmet Danis was one of thousands of people who took part in the annual Run for the Cure.
But the Oshawa dentist didn't run 1 km or 5 km through Lakeview Park with other local participants -- instead he spent six days covering 250 km in the Sahara Desert.
"It was beautiful, it was scary, it was a roller coaster ride," says Dr. Danis, 37, who finished the Sahara Race in third place out of more than 150 competitors. "I pushed myself to the limit."
Dr. Danis -- who recently bought a dental practice on Simcoe Street North in Oshawa -- was talking to the office staff about ways to give back to his new community when they suggested taking part in the annual CIBC Run for the Cure on Oct. 2.
He says it was "serendipity" when he realized the popular breast cancer fundraiser fell on the same date as the Sahara Race.
Dr. Danis started gathering pledges for his unique version of the run and soon the dental office team had raised $4,000 for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.
"It's personal for me, my mother is a cancer survivor," Dr. Danis says. "I know how frightening it is."
Defusing stress related to his mother's illness was what got him interested in running marathons in the first place.
Dr. Danis had never run a marathon before when he decided to try a 250-km run across the Gobi Desert in China. People said he couldn't do it -- he proved them wrong by finishing sixth and raising $4,000 for the United Way.
"I think you should have unreasonable expectations of yourself," he says simply. "If you don't you will never accomplish more than people expect of you." There have been other triumphs since that initial victory, including a first-place finish at the 2009 Atacama Crossing in Chile and becoming the first foreign national to win the U.S. Military Bataan Memorial Death March.
Dr. Danis says he's thrilled with his recent showing at the Sahara Race, a gruelling event that started in Egypt's historic Valley of the Whales and ended at the Pyramids of Giza.
Participants ran 40 km a day for the first four days and 85 km on the fifth day, before wrapping up with a short 2-km victory run to the pyramids on Day 6.
Dr. Danis trained intensely before the event, running one to six hours every day and even fitting in short 45-minute jogs on his "rest" days.
But it's tough to truly prepare for running in the desert.
"It's like running the opposite way on an escalator," Dr. Danis says, describing what it was like to make his way through the powdery sand. "And it was unimaginably hot, by 11 a.m. it was 40 or 50 degrees."
Participants had to carry their own equipment and food throughout the race, the only things provided to them were water and a tent to sleep in at night.
Dr. Danis kept his energy up on a diet of freeze-dried spaghetti and "sports beans" -- jelly beans fortified with electrolytes.
"There were times when I thought I couldn't finish, that happens with every race," he says "You have to push yourself to the point of complete breakdown."