Page 2 of Runner 13
SEVEN YEARS LATER
The Ultra Bros Podcast
Hot & Sandy Edition
Jason:
Welcome, trailblazers, to this very special edition of the Ultra Bros, as we start our coverage of Boones’s newest race, Hot & Sandy.
Mac:
Hmm, kind of sounds like a weather report to me. Hot & Sandy.
Jason:
That’s part of his trademark – why his races are nicknamed ‘the Ampersands’. There’s Big & Dark through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Long & Windy in Denali National Park. But this one is a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile self-sufficient stage race through the Sahara Desert in Morocco and it sounds totally bonkers. Boones is back, baby!
Mac:
OK, OK, back up a second – we already have the Barkley, the Ultra X races, Badwater, UTMB. Heck, the Marathon des Sables has held the title of ‘the world’s toughest foot race’ for years, to the point that even finishing is a badge of honour – and it kinda has a lock on the Sahara. So what’s got you so amped up about this race in particular? Fill our listeners in on why this is different – and why they should be glued to this coverage.
Jason:
With pleasure, mate. Look, the difference between those races and this one? Boones. This guy doesn’t just blaze the trail, he fucking razes it to the ground. His mission has always been to push the boundaries of what is humanly possible. How far will you go? That’s the question he asks all his runners.
Next, you don’t ‘enter’ a Boones race. He handpicks you. Exclusive invite through the post, all very hush-hush. Then there’s always a twist during the race itself – in Big & Dark, Boones makes you fill containers with different soil to prove you’ve been in the right places, so you have all these runners on their hands and knees basically pushing dirt into these tiny vials in the middle of the trail.
Mac:
