The Long March

Believing that the world was in danger of becoming "a homogenous mass," marathon runner Mary K. Gadams set up an adventure company in 1996. The outfit, RacingThePlanet, was designed to "take people to some of the last remaining remote areas" of the earth. But since 2002, Gadams has been asking her clients to do it the hard way — encouraging them to compete in seven-day, 155-mile (250 km) foot races through the arduous terrain, blistering heat and frigid cold of the world's four largest deserts. Known as the 4 Deserts Race, the event takes in the salt plains of...