In April, Gary Newman was preparing for the mother of all competitions: the Marathon of the Sands in Morocco. The Bethel resident was one of 600 runners who competed in the six-day, 144-mile run across the Sahara Desert.

        He told the Enquirer then: “It's a tough race, I know that. But it's just something I want to do.”

        So how did he do?

        “Well, I did finish,” says Mr. Newman. “Although for some reason, some of us got sick so from day two on (for four more days) I traveled with no food.”

        To make bad matters worse, the conditions for the race weren't what the runners expected. For the first time, heat was not a factor in the usually sweltering desert. It was the wind that waylayed them.

        “The winds blew 30-40 miles per hour and daily sandstorms went on for hours,” says Mr. Newman. “The fifth day it blew all day long. So you're laying in your sleeping bag and the wind is blowing the sand inside the bag and everywhere. It was just awful, the officials said it was the worst conditions they'd ever seen.”

        The sandstorms eventually turned the run to a walk across the desert, including night walks through sand dunes miles high. He lost 20 pounds and dealt with painful blisters on the balls of hisfeet. At least he finished.

        Two Moroccans who are perennial winners repeated as champions. A man from North Carolina came in ninth as the top American finisher.

        While deep in the competition, Mr. Newman made a mental list of food he had to have when he got back to the States.

        “Coke, Bob Evans and steak,” he says. “I drank a lot of Coke and savored each meal.”

        So what do you do as an encore? Think cold.

        “Now I'm training for one in Alaska (near Fairbanks) in mid-to-late February,” says a weathered but wiser Newman. “I've learned a lot from the first one. There are four different races, the longest is 1,100 miles but that one's out of the question.”

        He's opting for one of the shorter ones, either the 130 or 350 mile route. The caveats are that the route must be completed within 72 hours, there's a limit to what you can carry and, like Morocco, the weather is unpredictable. Previous entrants have attempted to use bikes to navigate the terrain only to see them rendered useless by several inches of snow.

        “I might ask my brother (and fellow competitor Steven) to go to Alaska with me.”

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