“Never before had death felt so alive.”

The temperature topped 120 degrees. Mile-high sand dunes behind him, Ted Archer descended from a steep mountain and continued over an oven-like valley of jagged black rocks. Having run more than seventy miles through Morocco’s Sahara Desert, he came to a troubling realization: he had not yet reached the halfway point.

The event is the Marathon Des Sables, or the “Marathon of the Sands,” a 153-mile self-sufficiency race through the earth’s most godforsaken terrain: dunes, salt flats, and rock gardens. Each year, hundreds of runners travel from around the world to take part in one of the world’s toughest footraces. They suffer from dehydration and malnourishment, tend to blistering feet, and at some point question what it was that they were ever hoping to find out in the desert.

Ted was no different. Each day, he encountered a new set of challenges—getting lost in North Africa’s tallest sand dunes, trying to secure a tent during a 3 a.m. sandstorm, being unable to drink or swallow, colliding with a cactus, and of course excruciating levels of pain and discomfort.

But beyond the 153 miles, the 22-pound backpack that he carried the entire way, the blistering heat, and the pain, he discovered that the real value of the Marathon Des Sables was to be found in the people that he met and the bonds that they formed along the way.

Ted suffered through and savored life with six others in “Tent 77”—Andrea, the self-proclaimed “wine goddess”; Karen, the bubbliest of the bunch; Brendan, the world-traveled writer; Jeff, the “former fat kid turned Ironman”; Michelle, an ultra-marathon champ; and Georgia, an Alaskan who preferred snow to sand.

Along the way, some dropped out. Others were disqualified. All suffered. The event became as much about commiseration and camaraderie as running. But by the end of the event, all was well. The purpose of the journey—to drink of life and better understand oneself—had been attained.