By Rick Kupchuk, Surrey Leader Staff Reporter, May 21, 2006

In a span of two decades, Roy Chen-Campbell has felt lows and highs a majority of people won't experience in a lifetime.

The high was completing the Marathon des Sables, a superhuman 250-kilometre run through the extreme heat and coarse sand of the Sahara Desert, last month. It came 20 years after a broken neck left him unable to walk, wondering if he would ever regain full use of his legs.

A native of England, and now a Fraser Heights resident in North Surrey, Chen-Campbell suffered his catastrophic injury while playing professional rugby in New Zealand. Doctors claimed it would likely restrict him to walking with extreme difficulty for the rest of his life - at best.

"To go from professional sports to that, you can't get any lower," said Chen-Campbell, now a teacher's assistant at Pacific Academy middle school. "The next step from there was basically suicide. I was in depression for two years. You get to the point where you're counting the pills, how many it takes just to end it. You cut out the whole world, your friends, your family."

For two years, he was either bedridden while in traction, or wearing a cumbersome halo brace to keep his head upright during rehabilitation. Then there were the numerous operations which fused the vertebrae in his neck.

"I needed assistance just to make a step, I had multiple doctors tell me I would never run again, let alone walk normally without a limp," he said. "I would go from one doctor to another doctor, and they would look at the X-rays, and they would show me the damage. They said I would never run."

But they didn't know Roy Chen-Campbell, who after months of depression, suddenly decided he wanted to get the most out of the rest of his life.

"One day, I just snapped out of it. It was like day and night," he said. "I opened my drapes, which I hadn't done for two years, and the sun came in. I saw dust everywhere and I thought, "this is what I missed.' So I got into a phys ed program."

He not only regained the ability to walk, he eventually started running again. And roughly 13 years after the mishap on the rugby pitch, and extensive rehabilitation and training, Chen-Campbell was lured back into sports. A man of faith, he credits "the grace of God" for his recovery.

Although he is forced to run with a slight limp due to weakness on the left side of his body, he began competing in half-marathons in 1999. He worked his way up to full marathons such as the Vancouver Marathon, and was soon running, swimming and biking in triathlons, and eventually major international ironman competitions such as the Ironman Canada in Penticton in 2001 and the Hawaii Ironman World Championship in 2003.

But they were nothing compared to what Chen-Campbell decided to put his body through last month in Morocco.

The Marathon des Sables is a true ultra marathon. The 250 kilometres is covered in six stages run over seven days, daily runs ranging from 35 to 80 kilometres over huge sand dunes or rocky surfaces, while battling sandstorms or temperatures in the mid-40s.

Click here to see an actual video footage of the marathon in Sahara Desert (5.2 MB .mpg file).

Competitors carry their own supplies while running, which include all their clothing, a sleeping bag and food. Only the tents and water are supplied by race officials.

It wasn't long before Chen-Campbell realized he was in the most difficult race on the planet.

"Stage one is normally a day where they ease you into it slowly, and give you only 20k," Chen-Campbell said. "This year, it was 29k with some nasty hills. The humidity was about 20 per cent, usually it's in single digits. They kept the water rations the same, nine litres a day. That alone made it real nasty.

"The first day, they had a huge number of people dropping out, I think it was 140. It's usually 20-25. One had a heart attack, they were literally dropping in front of you or beside you. You're running along and you see a guy fall, and you know he's done."

He survived that first day, as well as the second.

Things got much more difficult on day three.

Chen-Campbell continued with the race, trying to ignore the sand that was getting into his shoes and grinding away at the blisters on his bleeding, swollen feet, while trying to stay hydrated in the hot desert heat.

Saying the rules of the competition say water left by runners withdrawing from the event is "fair game," he stopped by medical tents at checkpoints.

"I was so desperate for water, I had to figure out something to do," he said. "My strategy was to go into the medical tent and look for abandoned water.

"I must have stooped to an all-time low. There was one guy on IV, he had an oxygen mask on him. And I asked him, 'are you going to be using that water?" The doctor threw me out of the tent, but I was in survival mode."

Chen-Campbell drew inspiration from the e-mails sent to him by the students of Pacific Academy, delivered at the end of each day.

"It was like being in the military, they would give you e-mails, or read you the Bible passages sent by the kids," he recalled. "During the race, we had an Internet station set up. But I was only able to make it twice, because I was in so much pain."

Day five was another memorable one - for the wrong reasons.

"I was on a desert road, no one around. I could see the sky getting darker, and asking 'what is that,' then you feel the ground tremble," he said. "A sandstorm hit, easily more than 50-60 km/hour, it came out of nowhere. First thing you do is put your goggles on - you always have them nearby - and I remember thinking, 'this is going to hurt.' "

Chen-Campbell pulled out his sleeping bag and climbed inside, and waited out the storm which lasted for an hour.

"It rocked you like a roller coaster," recalled. "And I fell asleep, I was so exhausted. Then I got out, cleaned up, and hit the road again. There was only one choice - to keep going forward."

Eventually, Chen-Campbell neared the finish line on the sixth and last day of the run, walking over sand dunes as high as 1,300 metres which drained what little energy was left.

"I got close to the finish line, and all the guys from my tent were forming a tunnel-type thing for me to go through, and the race organizer was there with my medal. I put my head down and was going to say a prayer, but I fell like a big oak tree a metre short of the line.

"I woke up and there were all these TV cameras, and people asking what I needed. I muttered 'water, water,' got up and walked across the line."

Chen-Campbell was the 570th person to cross the finish line, finishing in a time of 59 hours, 56 minutes and 16 seconds. Of the 731 competitors who started the Marathon des Sables, 585 finished it. His time was irrelevant - Chen-Campbell was pleased to be among the finishers.

"I know for sure was the only thing that got me through that race was the grace of God, giving me the strength," he said. "I know I could never have done it myself."

"I'm blessed with my life," he said. "I'm just on a high."