September 01, 2026

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OUT OF THE WATER!

A bright blue sky stretched across Florida's Watersound Beach, a private stretch of sand in the Panhandle accessible only to one nearby community. It was 7 June 2024, and scores of sunbathers splayed on towels or under beach tents. The two sandbars off its shore, at 27 and 54 metres out, were dotted with bodysurfers and swimmers.Among them were Elisabeth Foley, on vacation from Virginia with her husband, Ryan Foley, and their three children--Dominick, 13; Lyla, 15; and Laurel, 17--who splashed happily in the shallow waters of the first sandbar.Keith Harrison, a neuropathologist from Alabama, was also at the first sandbar with his two sons, ages nine and 12, bodysurfing the short waves. They were at the tail end of a weeklong family trip, and for the first few days, the water had been a little murky. But on Friday, it was crystalline, and they planned to enjoy it.Then came the screams. Dr. Harrison at first thought the screams were from kids playing. But as he turned toward the commotion, he saw a plume of blood spreading in the water. He left his kids with his wife and ran toward it. As he arrived, he saw Elisabeth Foley emerging from the water. Her hand and half of her left forearm were missing. Flesh from her buttocks hung in ribbons, and blood poured from her pelvis. Her three children wailed around her. Her husband held her up. A shadowy figure lurked just behind them in the water, keeping strangely still in the crimson-tinged tide. A bull shark. Dr. Harrison grabbed Elisabeth from her husband and started carrying her toward shore as Ryan wrangled the kids. As he clamped his hand around Elisabeth's left brachial artery--the

ACROSS AMERICA, AGAINST THE CLOCK

PEDALLING THROUGH DAY AND NIGHT, it becomes easy to lose track of the hours; shifting time zones only adds to the confusion. The countdown says there are still more than a thousand kilometres to the finish line. Hours later, the number has barely changed. Motorists and pedestrians wave as they pass, others stare--but the cyclist moves on, focused only on the road ahead. Solitude is his constant companion. These are the demands of ultracycling--and precisely what draws Kabir Rachure to the brutal sport. In June, the 35-year-old completed the annual Race Across America (RAAM) for the fourth time, maintaining a perfect record: four starts, four finishes. Even Austria's Christoph Strasser, a six-time winner, never managed four finishes in his first four attempts. And for good reason. As its name suggests, RAAM stretches across the breadth of the United States, covering roughly 4,900 kilometres from Oceanside, California, to Atlantic City, New Jersey. That's still over 1,000 kilometres more than the distance from Leh in Ladakh to Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu--the length of India. But unlike a conventional road race, there are no scheduled rest stations, no predictable rhythm and often no other cyclist in sight. Competing cyclists are scattered across the route and progress is measured hour by hour. Riders maintain an average speed of around 19 kph, while coping with steep gradients, endless flats and blistering descents. Inclement weather, errant wildlife, unruly motorists, rough terrain and mechanical failures are all part of the equation.A trained rider can complete the RAAM in 12 days, but for frontrunners, the real battle is time spent off the bicycle. Riders can stop whenever they choose--the clock never does. "Every second counts, so we have to save time wherever possible. Eating and drinking on the saddle, taking minimal breaks to recover. It also requires the crew to be really efficient, just like a pit stop during a Formula One race," Rachure explains.Rachure's ultra-cycling journey began in India, with a Pune-to-Goa race a decade ago. The objective was simple: finish within the time limit. He missed the cutoff, but his failure gave him a new goal: to train not just to participate, but to perform at his peak and explore the limits of his endurance.But doing so would not be easy. Poor cycling infrastructure around his home in Navi Mumbai forced him indoors, onto a stationary trainer. After his day job as a practising lawyer at the Bombay High Court, he sometimes trained past midnight. A mentor was difficult to find, so the right regimen and nutrition was hard to decipher. So Rachure became both lab scientist and guinea pig, experimenting on his own body."Every aspect had to be understood in detail--how long I needed to train, the calories to be consumed each hour, when to rest and how much, which micronutrients aid recovery. Over time,