Int Unit10 Lesson10c
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Francisco José Sosa RealInt Unit10 Lesson10c
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Francisco José Sosa RealIntermediate Student’s Book
Life 10c Page 123 READING TEXT
Diane Van Deren
On 15 February 2009, Diane Van Deren was one of a dozen runners taking part in
the Yukon Arctic Ultra, a 700-kilometre race across frozen tundra in the middle of
winter. Not a single woman had ever completed it. With temperatures of 30 degrees
below zero and only seven hours of daylight each day, it’s probably the toughest
race in the world. But, then, there is no woman like Diane Van Deren.
Twelve years earlier, Van Deren, a former professional tennis player, had a kiwi-
size piece of her brain taken out. It was part of the treatment for the epilepsy which
she suffered from. The operation was successful, but she noticed a strange side
effect: she could run without stopping for hours.
At the start of the Arctic Ultra, icy winds froze Van Deren’s water supplies, so she
had nothing to drink for the first 160 kilometres. She kept going by sucking on
frozen fruit and nut bars. On the eleventh day, the ice beneath her feet cracked open
and Van Deren fell up to her shoulders into a freezing river. She managed to climb
out but struggled to continue. Her soaked boots had frozen to her feet.
Yet somehow through it all, Van Deren remained positive. This was perhaps helped
by another curious by-product of her operation. ‘I have a problem with short-term
memory. I could be out running for two weeks, but if someone told me it was day
one of a race,’ she jokes, ‘I’d say, “Great, let’s get started!”’
On 26 February 2009 – exactly twelve years after her surgery – Van Deren crossed
the finish line of the Arctic Ultra. She was one of eight finishers – and the first and
only woman.
epilepsy (n) /ˈepɪˌlepsi/ an illness affecting the brain
by-product (n) /ˈbaɪˌprɒdʌkt/ a result which was not planned
Life John Dau
In 2001, John Dau boarded a plane to New York. It was the beginning of one trip
but the end of a journey which had taken him more than half of his life. In 1987,
aged thirteen, Dau had fled his home in southern Sudan, running from the soldiers
sent to destroy his village. He met up with a small group of boys like himself and
together they walked for weeks to reach a refugee camp in Ethiopia. ‘I was barefoot
and wearing no clothes; at night the desert was so cold. We thought about our
parents all the time,’ remembers Dau. The boys had no food and nothing to drink.
‘We chewed grass and ate mud to stay alive.’
Moving through hostile territory, the boys walked by night and slept by day.
Eventually they reached the camp, where Dau spent the next four years. As one of
the older boys, Dau led and took care of a group of younger children which
eventually numbered 1,200. But Dau was forced to run again when the camp came
under threat. Along with 27,000 other boys, he set off to walk back to Sudan. To
get there they had to cross the Gilo River. ‘Rebels were shooting at us, so we had to
dive into water infested with crocodiles,’ Dau recounts.
Thousands of boys were eaten, drowned, shot or captured, and only 18,000 of them
made it into Sudan. But the area was soon attacked, so Dau and the other ‘Lost
Boys’ of Sudan set off south again, this time to a camp in Kenya. By now, Dau had
walked more than 1,600 kilometres.
Ten years later, Dau was one of a handful of ‘Lost Boys’ sponsored to study in the
USA. A new kind of journey was about to begin.
refugee camp (n) /ˌrefjʊˈdʒiː kamp/ a temporary home for people who
