Iron Man by Duane Beeson

Dave Kuhnau conquers deserts on four continents

It was day four of a seven-day, 155-mile race in the driest desert of the world, the Atacama in Chile. Dave Kuhnau ’92 and his two partners in Team Illinois had already run the equivalent of a marathon each of the first three days at altitudes as high as 13,000 feet. A 50-mile run awaited them tomorrow.

Carrying 25-pound backpacks in 110-degree temperatures, Kuhnau, Joel Burrows and Joel’s wife, Nancy Fudacz-Burrows, took over three-and-a-half hours to cross 10 miles of salt flats. Their feet sank into the flat’s surface—sometimes all the way up to their shins. The radiant heat reflected off the surface of the ground and bounced from the bills of their caps onto their faces.

In the scorching, arid conditions, with skin starting to crack, Kuhnau had developed bronchitis. His sinuses were overproducing, and fluids were running down his throat.

“My lungs were burning, Nancy and I were out of water, and eventually the dehydration got the best of us,” Kuhnau remembers. “Our bodies could hardly move and we started to get disoriented. I just wanted to quit, and I stopped to lie down on the salt flats—like somehow that was a good idea.”

Fudacz-Burrows walked toward Kuhnau and kicked his backpack. “Get up, we’re not done,” was all she said.

Kuhnau would later say of the Chilean desert, “When God was trying to think of a suitable place for the devil to call home, Atacama came in second.”

New Road

Kuhnau’s journey to Atacama began six years earlier, in 1998, when he weighed 265 pounds and realized he needed to improve his health. His first 5K road race was in October 1999, and six months later he ran a marathon.

Ambitious in his career as a business technology consultant, he brought a similar intensity to his exercise regimen, completing seven marathons within the next year. Kuhnau has now run 21 marathons, more triathlons than he can count, and four Ironmans (which consist of a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike race, and 26.2-mile run).

Kuhnau met the Burrows during recreational runs along Chicago’s Lake Michigan shorefront and later ran in two Ironmans with them. When they asked Kuhnau to join them in the Atacama Crossing, the first event in the 4 Deserts series of endurance races, he agreed with a simple, “Sounds cool, sign me up.”

“The more I read about it, I thought, ‘What did I get myself into?’ At that point, once I was committed, I felt I couldn’t let two other people down,” he says.

Running Hot

Kuhnau’s commitment to his teammates was the reason he got up from the salt flats and kept moving forward in the Atacama Crossing. And that commitment, coupled with his desire to push his physical and mental limits, led him to sign up for the next desert race, China’s Gobi March, nine months later.

Armed with experience, more off-road training and expert advice from trainers and nutritionists, Team Illinois won the Gobi March with a time of 42 hours, 13 minutes, defeating four other teams.

Five months later, Kuhnau and his teammates were back in competition, this time in the Sahara Desert of Egypt. Running in the most oppressive heat yet—the thermometer consistently hitting 135 degrees—the athletes endured sand storms, vipers and scorpions. Again, Kuhnau’s team won, completing the distance 90 minutes faster than they did in China.

While it took some time for Team Illinois members to decide to enter the second and third races, they already knew when they finished Sahara that they would run the final event in the endurance series. The Last Desert race would feature temperatures opposite what they endured in the first three, as the setting was Antarctica.

Undying Commitment

Adventure racing pushes every physical limit imaginable, Kuhnau says. He loves the challenge and the knowledge—borne of experience—that he can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

“He possesses an iron will that does not know the meaning of the word ‘quit,’” says Joel Burrows of Kuhnau. “In his darkest moments, he is able to find a rallying strength to lead him back to conquer the task in front of him. He emboldens those around him to work at a higher level than they may have thought possible.”

Kuhnau’s perseverance and boldness to go after his dreams were among the characteristics he shared with his sister Tamara ’89—along with a love of travel. Close friends growing up, he admired her strong faith in God and vivacious approach to life.

In 2000, Tamara was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Her brother immediately suggested she come to Chicago to hunt for advanced treatment centers, and he volunteered to research new medicines and programs for her. She chose a different path, nutritional and herbal treatments, eschewing the options of chemotherapy and radiation.

That conflict led to a strain in their relationship, and for five years the two avoided extended conversations. Kuhnau was called home to Iowa a week after Thanksgiving 2005, less than two months before the Antarctica race was to begin. Tamara was dying.

As he sat by her bedside, they reconciled, and she asked if he would train her to run a marathon. She told him of a dream she’d had about running a marathon with him and their father, a paraplegic since a workplace accident in 1981.

“Tam, if you get out of this bed, you and I will run a marathon together,” he said.

She died five days later.

Dream Team

The Last Desert race was open only to those who had completed the first three events. With a ground temperature of zero and winds up to 60 mph, Antarctica brought new challenges to Team Illinois and the other 12 athletes. The bulk of the race was a 100-mile stage spanning up to three days, part of which was run during a blizzard.

Several hours before the blizzard struck, Kuhnau stopped at the edge of a cliff. Overlooking a harbor, he beheld a beautiful view of penguin rookeries and icebergs floating out to sea. Kuhnau took a small bottle from his backpack and released some of Tamara’s ashes into the air.

Eighteen months after Team Illinois won The Last Desert, which Kuhnau dedicated to his sister, he fulfilled another aspect of her dream. Pushing his father in a custom-made titanium wheelchair, Kuhnau completed Milwaukee’s Lakefront Marathon in 4 hours, 12 minutes—while carrying more of Tamara’s ashes.

“My dad finally understood the joy of doing this,” he says, “especially when we came down the finishing chute and everybody was there cheering. He was all smiles.”

Higher Aspirations

The views of endless sand dunes and indescribable sunsets, the camaraderie of shared agony and triumph with competitors from around the globe, the adulation and welcome received from Chinese villagers—these are just a few of the fond memories Kuhnau carries with him from his desert races.

“People say I’m crazy, but for what I’ve experienced, I’d rather be crazy than to have never done it and be called normal. It fuels the fire for the next one,” he says.

The next one could be the X-Alps.

“I saw a National Geographic show—only a handful of people have done the X-Alps race,” Kuhnau says excitedly. “You start in the middle of the Swiss Alps and you paraglide off the top. The race is 500 miles long; you have one support person. You paraglide as far as you can get, then you pack your chute up and run to the top of the next mountain and paraglide again. It’s a 10- to 12-day race, finishing in Monaco.”

He’s already looking into paragliding lessons.