Antarctic Marathon by Richard St. John
The Antarctica Marathon! It's a run we never considered doing. After all, why would we leave cold, snowy Toronto and go to an even colder and snowier place to run a marathon? Only because we met many runners who said the Antarctica marathon was the greatest experience. So we fly to Buenos Aires then Ushuaia, the southernmost town in Argentina, and board a ship, along with 108 other crazy runners from many countries.
So how do a bunch of runners handle being cooped up on a small ship with no place to run? As it turns out, seasickness takes away any urge to run. All we want to do is lie horizontal and hope the rocking of the ship will stop. And it's a toss-up as to which is worse - seasickness or seasickness medication. The "patch" prevents motion sickness, but makes you want to sleep all the time, pee all the time, and dries out your mouth - a great state to run a marathon.
The Drake Passage is billed as the roughest ocean in the world. We luck out and have relatively calm sailing. On the other hand, the Bransfield Strait crossing is the roughest the crew has ever experienced - like being on a roller coaster for 12 hours. At one point the ship ploughs through a 40 foot Rogue wave, and we figure it's all over. I'm reading "The Perfect Storm" and I picture us going down in the middle of the Antarctica ocean. I can swim but this event wasn't billed as a duathlon - and your lifespan in these waters is roughly 1 minute at the best of times.
In Maxwell Bay, where the research bases are located, it's blowing way past safety limits, preventing our organizers from taking a Zodiak to shore to lay out the marathon course.
Gale force winds continue so the ship sails into open water, rather than be dashed against the shore. Meanwhile the Marine Expeditions staff give talks on Antarctica, the wildlife, and early explorers like Shackleton.
Finally the storm abates and the Zodiak team brave the blustery waves and make it to shore to lay out the course. We leave them and motor to other islands where we finally set foot on land to explore the remnants of an old whaling colony and wander amongst the seals and penguins. The penguins are great. I could watch them for hours. And smell them from a mile away. To get some idea of the odor, imagine the smell of the men's washroom at the start of a race, and multiply by 10.
Dinner the night before the marathon is, of course, pasta. Then, up at 5:30 ready to run. But the seas are so rough the Zodiaks can't make the short distance to shore. We can see the marathon course, we're pasta loaded and race-ready, but can't get there. More cruising, more pasta loading, and the next day the seas are heavier than ever. The winds are blowing so hard the snow is horizontal. The run is postponed for the second time.
Now we have a dilemma. If we wait and the weather doesn't clear, we'll not only miss running the marathon, we'll also run out of time to go on a last cruise to the Antarctica peninsula to see some spectacular scenery. But if we go on the cruise we'll miss the marathon, the main reason most people came.
The organizer, Tom Gilligan, comes up with a brilliant solution. We'll cruise to the peninsula, and we'll still run a marathon, but instead of running on land, we'll run it on the ship. A great solution, but bear in mind, this is not the Queen Mary. It's not even a cruise ship. It's the "Lyubov Orlova", a 300 ft. research vessel. There is one deck inside and one outside that can be used as running tracks. The decks are measured and after a few calculations, we realize that to run a marathon, we have to run 422 laps on the top deck or 324 laps on the lower deck. Having already carbo-loaded the two previous nights we never want to see pasta again, which is just as well, since the chef has run out.
The start is at 6am. Runners charge down the port side, round the corner at the stern, run up the starboard side, leap over a doorsill, cut through a vestibule, leap over another doorsill, and then start another lap. Usually a back-up of runners trying to get through the doorways means a walking break through the vestibule. It may be a marathon but feels more like interval training. Run fast around the deck, then walk slowly through the vestibule, then repeat 422 times.
We're in Neko Harbour, surrounded by icebergs, and seals, whales and penguins, probably wondering what these crazy people are doing. Most of this is lost on the runners, who are too busy trying to pass other runners to pay attention to scenery. The sun is out (it never really goes away), the temperature hovers just below the zero mark and there's no wind. Shorts, a coolmax top and a light vest are all you need.
Volunteers each count laps for 5 runners. As you run past your volunteer, you shout out your number and they mark off your laps. We can't help thinking they sometimes miss a lap, so we probably run a bit further than a marathon. Every hour the runners reverse direction to even out the stresses.
I'm used to hitting the wall once in a marathon, but here I hit at least a dozen walls - and they're all steel. As you run you wonder what effect running on a steel deck will have on your body. Amazingly, I feel great the next day, with less soreness than usual.
Altogether 92 runners do the full marathon and 16 do the half marathon. Because of all the stopping and starting and tight turns, most of the runners are at least an hour or two slower than normal. I usually run a 3:10 marathon, but here I finish in 4:55. Baiba does 5:06. It's my slowest ever, but also one of the most beautiful and certainly the most unusual. As a group we set a record for running the world's most southern marathon - at a latitude of 64 - 50 -33.
The ship covers 2003 nautical miles around Antarctica without hitting a single iceberg or sinking off Cape Horn. But the miles we'll remember are the 26.2 spent running in circles around the deck of a ship. It goes without saying that runners are very strange people.
The Antarctica Marathon! It's a run we never considered doing. After all, why would we leave cold, snowy Toronto and go to an even colder and snowier place to run a marathon? Only because we met many runners who said the Antarctica marathon was the greatest experience. So we fly to Buenos Aires then Ushuaia, the southernmost town in Argentina, and board a ship, along with 108 other crazy runners from many countries.
So how do a bunch of runners handle being cooped up on a small ship with no place to run? As it turns out, seasickness takes away any urge to run. All we want to do is lie horizontal and hope the rocking of the ship will stop. And it's a toss-up as to which is worse - seasickness or seasickness medication. The "patch" prevents motion sickness, but makes you want to sleep all the time, pee all the time, and dries out your mouth - a great state to run a marathon.
The Drake Passage is billed as the roughest ocean in the world. We luck out and have relatively calm sailing. On the other hand, the Bransfield Strait crossing is the roughest the crew has ever experienced - like being on a roller coaster for 12 hours. At one point the ship ploughs through a 40 foot Rogue wave, and we figure it's all over. I'm reading "The Perfect Storm" and I picture us going down in the middle of the Antarctica ocean. I can swim but this event wasn't billed as a duathlon - and your lifespan in these waters is roughly 1 minute at the best of times.
In Maxwell Bay, where the research bases are located, it's blowing way past safety limits, preventing our organizers from taking a Zodiak to shore to lay out the marathon course.
Gale force winds continue so the ship sails into open water, rather than be dashed against the shore. Meanwhile the Marine Expeditions staff give talks on Antarctica, the wildlife, and early explorers like Shackleton.
Finally the storm abates and the Zodiak team brave the blustery waves and make it to shore to lay out the course. We leave them and motor to other islands where we finally set foot on land to explore the remnants of an old whaling colony and wander amongst the seals and penguins. The penguins are great. I could watch them for hours. And smell them from a mile away. To get some idea of the odor, imagine the smell of the men's washroom at the start of a race, and multiply by 10.
Dinner the night before the marathon is, of course, pasta. Then, up at 5:30 ready to run. But the seas are so rough the Zodiaks can't make the short distance to shore. We can see the marathon course, we're pasta loaded and race-ready, but can't get there. More cruising, more pasta loading, and the next day the seas are heavier than ever. The winds are blowing so hard the snow is horizontal. The run is postponed for the second time.
Now we have a dilemma. If we wait and the weather doesn't clear, we'll not only miss running the marathon, we'll also run out of time to go on a last cruise to the Antarctica peninsula to see some spectacular scenery. But if we go on the cruise we'll miss the marathon, the main reason most people came.
The organizer, Tom Gilligan, comes up with a brilliant solution. We'll cruise to the peninsula, and we'll still run a marathon, but instead of running on land, we'll run it on the ship. A great solution, but bear in mind, this is not the Queen Mary. It's not even a cruise ship. It's the "Lyubov Orlova", a 300 ft. research vessel. There is one deck inside and one outside that can be used as running tracks. The decks are measured and after a few calculations, we realize that to run a marathon, we have to run 422 laps on the top deck or 324 laps on the lower deck. Having already carbo-loaded the two previous nights we never want to see pasta again, which is just as well, since the chef has run out.
The start is at 6am. Runners charge down the port side, round the corner at the stern, run up the starboard side, leap over a doorsill, cut through a vestibule, leap over another doorsill, and then start another lap. Usually a back-up of runners trying to get through the doorways means a walking break through the vestibule. It may be a marathon but feels more like interval training. Run fast around the deck, then walk slowly through the vestibule, then repeat 422 times.
We're in Neko Harbour, surrounded by icebergs, and seals, whales and penguins, probably wondering what these crazy people are doing. Most of this is lost on the runners, who are too busy trying to pass other runners to pay attention to scenery. The sun is out (it never really goes away), the temperature hovers just below the zero mark and there's no wind. Shorts, a coolmax top and a light vest are all you need.
Volunteers each count laps for 5 runners. As you run past your volunteer, you shout out your number and they mark off your laps. We can't help thinking they sometimes miss a lap, so we probably run a bit further than a marathon. Every hour the runners reverse direction to even out the stresses.
I'm used to hitting the wall once in a marathon, but here I hit at least a dozen walls - and they're all steel. As you run you wonder what effect running on a steel deck will have on your body. Amazingly, I feel great the next day, with less soreness than usual.
Altogether 92 runners do the full marathon and 16 do the half marathon. Because of all the stopping and starting and tight turns, most of the runners are at least an hour or two slower than normal. I usually run a 3:10 marathon, but here I finish in 4:55. Baiba does 5:06. It's my slowest ever, but also one of the most beautiful and certainly the most unusual. As a group we set a record for running the world's most southern marathon - at a latitude of 64 - 50 -33.
The ship covers 2003 nautical miles around Antarctica without hitting a single iceberg or sinking off Cape Horn. But the miles we'll remember are the 26.2 spent running in circles around the deck of a ship. It goes without saying that runners are very strange people.