Alex Cullen: 'Kate Sanderson is my hero'

Kate Sanderson is my hero. I have a few heroes. The usual ones like Nelson Mandela and He-Man but Kate Sanderson is different. A quiet hero who shuts up, gets up and puts up.

I first met Kate at her home on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula. Kate’s 41 and has three rescue dogs. One who was so traumatized by his last owner that he can’t be around men.

I remember looking at her hands that are deeply scarred and reminded me of burnt candles fused and permanently half cupped. Next were her arms which are marked full length with deep patterned scarring from the skin suit that helped heal her.

Her face is smooth in stark contrast to her arms and we don’t see her scarred legs. What remains of her left foot sits in a brace because half of it has been amputated.

These are the injuries Kate suffered after being caught in a bushfire in an ultra-marathon in the Kimberley in WA in 2011.

It still sounds unbelievable. That people running in a 100 kilometre race could be caught in a roaring inferno that dramatically changed the lives of those who survived it.

Turia Pitt and Kate Sanderson somehow did.

The badly burnt pair then had to wait four hours for help to arrive. That’s four hours in the sun, barely alive with Panadol their only way to slightly dull the excruciating pain.

Three weeks in intensive care followed and six months in hospital after that. Kate tells me she doubted she’d get through the endless pain of skin graft after skin graft from her unburnt abdomen to her damaged arms and legs but somehow she did and wasn’t going to let something like this stop her from living the life she wanted to live.

Now, picture this. You can’t stop vomiting and have the runs. You have excruciating blisters and there is next to no skin left on the bottom of your feet. It’s 50 degrees and you’re sunburnt. You’re walking in sand dunes the size of tidal waves and your only food is dehydrated meals and protein bars. You also have limited water.

At night you sleep under a black canvas tent with eight other people amongst 1000 others who have to share six outdoor toilets. There are no showers.

There are scorpions and snakes and you’re here for a week and all this ends only when you’ve run or walked 257 kilometres.

This is a day in the life of an ultra-marathon runner competing in the Marathon Des Sables — which translates to Marathon of the Sands — the toughest foot race on earth through the dunes, mountains and moonscapes of the Sahara Desert.

I witnessed firsthand the pain, anguish, soaring highs, subterranean lows and all-out insanity of those who chose to participate in this sadistic undertaking. It sounds hard enough with two good feet. But try doing this with half of your left foot missing and serious burns to more than half of your body.

Kate is a seasoned ultra-marathon runner and wasn’t going to let her injuries stop her from participating in the most punishing footrace ever devised by man.

The Marathon des Sables was always on Kate’s bucket list despite the brutal conditions and the soaring temperatures and every doctor telling her it was a very bad idea.

They have their reasons. Kate’s swathes of skin grafts means she can’t really sweat and that is how we cool ourselves in extreme heat. If we don’t cool ourselves our vital organs shut down, melt and we die.

Kate’s burns surgeon tried to tell her this and warn her that long stints in 50 degree heat without the ability to cool down could kill her. She heard but didn’t quite heed. Heat chamber training would help but nothing would prepare her for the inferno ahead.

I always thought the Sahara was just one big expanse of sand. It isn’t. It is a beautiful mess of rock formations, dried riverbeds, giant sand dunes, windswept plains and lonely plateaus.

The silence is frightening yet strangely calming, where people actually live and have done for thousands of years.

It’s hot and unforgiving with dust-like fine brown ash that wakes you up in the middle of the night because you can’t breathe. Our driver Saeed told us of a dust storm that blew for three weeks straight.

It is a constant stream of fine sand that limits vision to a few metres and without shelter or protective covering, can blind you.

These terrible conditions greeted competitors on the first day of the Marathon des Sables. And let’s not forget the 12 kilometres of sand dunes.

Ultra marathon runners are sadistic yet chipper. They seem to enjoy pain and enjoy seeing other people in pain and get off on painful things like bleeding, infected blisters and say a lot of things about pain like ‘no pain, no gain’.

But please tell me what there is to gain from pushing your body through 40-odd kilometres of hell, in a country not unlike Mars, in barbecue plate heat, with not a lot of water every day for a week?!

They are schoolteachers, accountants and lawyers who tread a very fine line between tenacity and lunacy and love nothing more than a stinking sweaty jaunt in the world’s biggest and hottest desert.

It is a challenge like no other but for Kate it could cost her her life.

Our producer Thea Dikeos and I, along with our trusty crew Rob Hill and Matt Brown, had serious concerns for Kate. Each day we worried she would falter and fall victim to the terrible heat and wouldn’t finish the long hot walks across the desert.

At every checkpoint along the course we asked ourselves what if she doesn’t finish? What if she overheats? What if she has to be airlifted out?

We waited gazing into the distance and looking for Kate’s red t-shirt asking ‘is that Kate’? And hoped to Christ it was. Most of the time it wasn’t but we didn’t need to worry. This is Kate Sanderson we’re talking about — with 60 percent burns to her body, half her foot missing and a quiet resilience that most of us can only dream of.

Each time we doubted, there was Kate, stoic and strong, not making a fuss, not drawing attention, just walking, focusing and hurting.

On day three of the Marathon Des Sables some of the Aussie runners asked if I’d run it next year. I like running and have done several City 2 Surfs here in Sydney. I find it to be an enjoyable past time that gets me out in the open air and is good for me and makes me feel good.

On day three of the Marathon the runners looked belted but most seemed to be enjoying the experience. How many people get to run a marathon through the Sahara desert? And I thought, yep, with a bit of training, I could do this!

Fast forward to day five and seeing the brutality of this desert race had me eating my words. Those left standing had covered 230 kilometres and nearly 100 people had pulled out.

The medical tent was full of grimacing patients with pus filled blisters and heat stroke. The intensive care tent couldn’t keep up with the stream of broken runners coming through the canopy door.

One woman convulsed uncontrollably and in her dehydrated delirium asked the doctor ‘what is happening to me?!’ She simply had to ride it out and it was awful to watch.

Back in the tent city, people quietly ate their protein bars and drank their tea heated over tiny portable stoves. During the week, I’m willing to bet nobody really slept. The tents didn’t have walls and the wind and the dust got into everything including our camera equipment and every last bit of clothing.

Luckily for us, we had running water and tents with walls but it didn’t stop the dust. No such luck for the runners who had to stay in their stinking sweaty clothes for the entire 6 days of competition.
So no, I wouldn’t do it but I can understand why people would. It’s the sense of achievement and the chance to tell people that you ran an ultra-marathon through the Sahara desert.

On day four of the race, competitors covered 84 kilometres straight. That means these people are running or walking all day, all night and into the next day. So while you’re at work they’re out there. When you finish work, they’re still out there. When you go to sleep they’re out there and when you wake up they’re still out there!

It is a shared experience like no other and it’s the chance to say you braved those terrible conditions and won. Every runner I spoke to said it was the toughest thing they’ve ever done and one even said climbing Everest was easier.

Kate climbed her Everest, twice if you take her injuries into account. At the end of the race I asked Kate in her moment of crowning glory does she feel like a superstar? ‘No’, she replied, ‘I feel like a shower’. Typical.