Dubai resident Max Calderan will set off on a 340km trek across the desert from Saudi Arabia to the Omani border early Friday morning.
An extreme athlete since he was a teenager, Calderan will go through severe periods of dehydration and sleep deprivation in order to become the first man to cross the Tropic of Cancer on foot.
The Italian national is an experienced endurance runner and has completed an array of gruelling challenges, including running non-stop for 90 hours over 437km in Oman and was the first man to cover 200km in 48 hours across Oman in 2007 – where temperatures hit a high of 56 degrees. During Ramadan in 2012, he ran 250km across the merciless Sinai Peninsula in Egypt while fasting.
A man who can put his body through ruthless challenges like this is no ordinary person, and this is something that has taken years of conditioning as Calderan continues to test his physical and mental boundaries.
“I said to my mum in 1974, that when I’m older I will be the first man to cross the desert because here it was written that it is impossible,” Max told Sport360. “As for me, nothing is impossible. We are men. We are humans. We came from nature. Why is it impossible? Why? There is no reason.”
“It’s a matter of remembering who we are at the origin. We cannot be scared about anything from nature. Why are we no longer able to do it? Only because we have been conditioned by what we read in books or from other people.”
His latest expedition will start over the UAE border in Liwa and bring him across the desert to Oman where he is expected to finish on March 21.
One of Calderan’s biggest accomplishments in the punishing summer heat was a 360km expedition across Saudi Arabia in 75 hours where temperatures reached as high as 58 degrees.