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Ray Zahab was a pack-a-day smoker with no direction. Then his younger brother handed him a reason to go outside — and inside a decade he had run 7,500 kilometres across the Sahara Desert, broken the world record for the fastest unsupported trek to the South Pole, and launched a charity that takes teenagers on expeditions in some of the world's most remote corners, free of charge.

In this episode, Ray takes us from that first unlikely race — the Yukon Arctic Ultra, 100 miles in the frozen Canadian north, the first foot race he had ever entered, which he won — through to the philosophy he has built across 40 expeditions in places including the Gobi, Atacama, Death Valley and Baffin Island. He also speaks, with quiet defiance, about the incurable illness he was diagnosed with while in the middle of planning his next expedition — and why that only made him push harder.

Chapters

00:00 From pack-a-day smoker to ultra runner
01:21 Growing up on a horse farm — and how adventure found Ray
03:25 Winning the Yukon Arctic Ultra at his very first race
05:57 Running the Sahara — 7,500 km across Africa in 111 days
07:02 Expeditions over racing — why Ray stopped competing
08:27 Water crisis awareness and the Ryan's Well Foundation
09:12 Founding Impossible to Possible — free expeditions for young people
11:38 Youth expeditions: dinosaur digs in Utah and footprints in the Atacama
13:59 How young people join i2P — and Ray's role on every expedition
16:15 Gobi Desert solo — beauty, nomads and a random Korean explorer
17:33 Ranking his hardest expeditions: Atacama vs Gobi vs Death Valley
19:18 Planning an expedition — water, resupply and a year of preparation
20:56 Daily life on the Sahara — sleep, food and surviving the elements
22:38 South Pole 2009 — breaking the world record almost by accident
25:40 Team dynamics in the Arctic — and how to survive disagreements
26:54 Breaking through Arctic ice: two minutes in a subzero river
29:43 Mongolia: meeting a Korean explorer in the middle of nowhere
34:00 Baffin Island through chemotherapy — turning the throttle up
36:17 Living with an incurable diagnosis — maximum performance right now
37:52 You have one life: talk yourself into it, not out of it
38:44 Call to Adventure — Baffin Island, the Atacama, and your own backyard
41:08 Pay It Forward — getting young people into the outdoors
42:30 Where to find Ray Zahab

This is a conversation about what happens when you stop talking yourself out of things and start talking yourself into them.

What You'll Learn:
• How Ray went from a horse farm in Canada to winning the Yukon Arctic Ultra — a 100-mile race in the frozen Canadian wilderness — as his very first foot race
• Why running across the Sahara with Matt Damon's documentary crew led him to create Impossible to Possible, a charity giving teenagers free expeditions around the world
• The moment he broke through Arctic ice and was swept into a subzero river current — and the piece of gear that saved his life
• How to navigate Antarctica without GPS: using the sun's angle, shadow direction and prevailing wind to stay on course for 700 miles
• What it is actually like to cross the Gobi Desert solo — and why Ray considers it one of the most culturally beautiful places he has ever been, not one of the hardest
• How Ray continued leading expeditions through six months of chemotherapy, and why an incurable diagnosis made him raise the bar, not lower it

RAY ZAHAB | Explorer, Ultra Runner & Founder of Impossible to Possible
Website: rayzahab.com
Instagram: @rayzahab
Charity: impossible2possible.com
Guiding company: CAPEC1 [CHECK: verify CAPEC1 website/link]
Royal Canadian Geographical Society: Explorer in Residence

ABOUT RAY ZAHAB
Ray Zahab is a Canadian explorer and ultra-distance runner who transformed himself from a pack-a-day smoker into one of the world's leading expedition athletes. He is best known for co-running 7,500 kilometres across the Sahara Desert — documented in the Matt Damon-narrated film Running the Sahara — and for setting a Guinness World Record for the fastest unsupported trek to the South Pole. He has now completed 40 expeditions across the world's most extreme environments, from Death Valley to Baffin Island. In 2008 he founded Impossible to Possible (i2P), a non-profit that sends young people aged 16–21 on fully funded expeditions and links them live to 70,000 students in 14 countries.


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The Adventure Diaries Podcast also covers a broad spectrum OF topics withIN the fields of Adventure, Exploration, Micro-adventure, Survival, Mental Resilience, Conservation, Scotland, Hiking, Solo Travel, Cycling, Nature, Storytelling, Mountaineering