In Ray Zahab’s world, a comfortable jog is thirty kilometers, a serious marathon is two hundred kilometers in extreme conditions, and an honest test of a man’s endurance is running through the Sahara Desert—all of it. Zahab, a thirty-eight-year-old reformed pack-a-day smoker from Chelsea, Quebec, successfully completed that test in February 2007 when he dipped his hands into the Red Sea. It marked the end of a 111-day, 7,000-kilometer marathon across the searing North African desert, from Senegal to Egypt. Running for My Life is the story of a man’s journey from a world of partying and hard living to a world of eco-challenges, epic long-distance races, and championships. As a young man, Ray Zahab almost lost himself to excessive drinking and smoking. Then, on New Year’s Day 2000, he caught a glimpse of where his partying would lead him and decided to turn his life around. Running for My Life is a brave and bold autobiography that follows Zahab’s travels down...