iPad2 + Netflix streaming + Amazing Documentary = fun treadmill run

Ran my treadmill again today.  Twenty minutes or so is my threshold before I require some kind of external stimulus; the treadmill is just too mind numbing otherwise.  So, when hopping on for an hour, as I did today, I typically watch something on my iPad while cranking out the miles.

I finished watching Running the Sahara today (I watched the first forty-five minutes of it during yesterday’s run), a documentary on three runners, Charlie Engle, Ray Zahab, and Kevin Lin, that ran from the west coast of Africa, clean through the middle of the Sahara, to the shores of the Red Sea in Cairo, Egypt.  While the term ‘epic’ is horribly overused these days, there are few other words that can aptly describe the voyage these guys undertook.

111 days, more than 4,300 miles.  That’s over 164 marathons, back to back, without a day off, for almost 4 months.  Extreme heat, sand storms, fatigue, illness, injuries, politics, and emotional duress all play into the challenges that these runners push through.  While it’s unfair to hope that a movie spanning less than 2 hours can adequately capture the enormity of their journey, it actually does an admirable job.  The cinematography is amazing and I felt the editors did a good job of picking key moments throughout that give the viewer a sense of the challenges and triumphs these guys experienced.

There’s a real dearth of running movies out there, so I’m glad I found this one.  Give it a watch and let me know what you think.