3/13/2016 – Race Day!
Runner’s Log – Supplemental – 7:41 PM
I have completed the seven continents. And on top of that, I believe I’ve completed the seven continents with sub 4-hour times at each marathon! It’s astonishing to think this adventure has come to a close… and even more astonishing that we still have several days down here in Antarctica to enjoy this magical place.
The race day started with a 6:15 wakeup announcement, letting us know that is was 2.2 degrees Celsius outside and the winds were out of the west at 25 knots, with rain already happening. That’s a bit more blustery than had been forecast by Thom last night… and was only the beginning as the day wore on.
I was nervous throughout breakfast and in getting my gear on, loading my dry bag with various layers and spare wind breaker and pants, as well as another rain jacket. The worst decision I made in packing for this trip was not verifying the waterproof nature of my running gloves… but truth be told, EVERYONE’s waterproof gloves proved to be false advertising.
Meg gave me a handwarmer to toss in just before I sealed up my dry bag. This would prove to be a lifesaver during the run and once again I owe so much to that girl. We loaded up, kitted up, and wandered down to the mud room to get our rubber boots on for the zodiac ride out to the Russian Bellingshausen Station’s shores.
The zodiac ride itself was relatively calm, Dana our driver once again providing an expert ride through the waves. He told us about the Russian church on the horizon, a building designed and constructed in Russia, disassembled and sent over on the Iofee’s sister ship the Vavilov, and then reassembled here. Only later did it dawn on me that this building up, disassembling, and reassembling applied to me as I went through this experience.
Landing on the shores, despite promises to myself NOT to use the provided port-a-john bucket on Antarctica for any reason, I thought at the least I needed to see what the facility was like. It was just as one would imagine a tented bucket on a blustery shore in the harshest of places might be.
We snapped the obligatory but very cool start line pic, Meg and I still decked out in our wet skins.
As other zodiacs pulled in, I finally decided to go all in and stripped to my running gear while also donning my bio-secured trail shoes.
The rain kept falling, the winds kept blowing, and I couldn’t help but think of Thom’s pre-race briefing telling us we could expect better conditions than the Vavilov had the day before. That statement would come to haunt this race.
We went off on our six-loop course for the marathon (or three-loop course for the half) at approximately 9 AM. There are no timing mats, no chips, just a couple of stopwatches run by Marathon Tours and markings for the out and back loops. We all had dropped our water bottles along the start line and most of us carried another bottle to drop at the 1.28 mile “aid station” that we had to individually supply. The rain was falling though quickly it changed to snow and sleet, but only a gentle snow. It all seemed imminently doable at the time, though my waterproof gloves were quickly soaked and making my hands freeze. At some stage along the way, I stripped off the sopping wet gloves and ran holding the handwarmer and that made a huge difference.
Running in Antarctica is how I imagine it would be running in a rock quarry on the moon.
As the day progressed, the rain/snow as well as the winds themselves subsided. But this was a temporary reprieve only. Meg cruised through her half marathon and I was so very proud of her. She rocked the course and looked great throughout.
At the Chinese “Great Wall Station” turnaround, Jacqui was there to cheer us on and I grabbed a selfie with her. She’s great – always supportive, always with an answer even if it’s “let me get back to you on that,” and a master runner herself.
Mark at one point grabbed me and pointed out the penguins along the shoreline who were cheering us on. I was able to snag this quick pic that I think turned out pretty great.
As the loops progressed, the weather worsened. Somewhere around the fourth lap, the winds picked up and the snow and sleet took on stinging properties. It felt like thousands of needles pelting my face for extended periods of time. If that doesn’t sell you on the experience, it got to the point where my sunglasses were so water streaked and fogged up from my own body heat that I couldn’t see out of them. But they were protecting me from the sleet bullets to the face. As I tripped and stumbled over yet another rock on the course, I opted to stuff my sunglasses into my running jacket and just tough it out. (Note: I never actually fell onto my face; I somehow was able to windmill my way into landing on my feet, demonstrating cat-like reflexes… if said cat were crazed and walking on the moon).
On the plus side, I did see some other wildlife – here’s me with I think a fur seal on the course.
And I spotted these two penguins apparently getting ready to engage in a ten paces, turn and fire duel. Was it over a woman? Was it a dispute over politics? All I can surmise is that something went down between these penguins and a score was going to be settled.
This is where things got… hairy? Dicey? Scary? I’m not sure how to describe what happened next. The sleet got worse, the winds approached what I can only assume were gale force speeds. At some point, I was running at my flat out fastest and not making any progress. I was like the hardest working mime trying to convey “walking against the wind” except I was in it for real.
My hand warmer had long since given up the ghost but I kept holding on to it in the hopes of squeezing the very last ounce of warmth out of it. I tried putting my gloves back on and that proved incredibly difficult. My fingers were so frozen that I couldn’t feel if they were going through the fingerlings or not. Eventually I succeeded and used what was left of the handwarmer to regain some movement (so there must have been some warmth left… that or it was just a placebo effect. Whatever the cause, I was able to get some feeling back in my hands for lap 4 and lap 5).
By the final lap, however, I literally could no longer feel my extremities. My shoes had sloshed through puddles and soaked through to the skin such that I might as well have been walking on water at the Holy Land Experience. The water logged shoes had numbed my toes and part of my feet. But I only had one more lap to go and thought it wasn’t worth trying to swap socks or anything. I thought, “oh, well, 2.18 miles times two for the out and back, I can do that…”
There are not photos of what happened next. My hands were too frozen to pull out my camera with its water spotted lens and were definitely too frozen to push the shutter button. But what I can tell you is that the sleet was horizontal, the winds were devastating, and I kept trying to shield my eyes and face with my elbow. It was a slog; mentally, physically, emotionally, a slog.
In the opening laps, I tried to be supportive and cheer on every runner I passed or saw. I think it’s good to support fellow runners – both for them as a boost and for me as something to do other than think about the miles or laps I’m on. It’s the proverbial win-win scenario, something I fervently believe (and because like Jim Kirk, I don’t believe in the no-win scenario). Everyone out here doing this race, or any race of any distance, is doing something amazing. And everyone volunteering or organizing these feats of athleticism and mental fortitude are doing amazing things. There’s few things in this world as positive as a road race.
But as the weather deteriorated, and my hands froze, and my mind forever voyaged to thoughts of anything warm, and as I shielded my face from anything more than a meter around my feet, I never knew if another runner was nearby or I was merely hearing my own footsteps, or if the howl of the wind was playing tricks on me. I do recall seeing Jacqui at my final turnaround being loaded into an ATV, she protesting that she wanted to stay and cheer on the runners but others telling her she needed to get back to the finish line to help the finishers. And this is a good thing as I’ll soon relate.
Somehow or other, I made it back to the water drop. The rule was on our final lap we should pick up our water bottles and carry out our trash from the island. To leave waste was a violation of the environmental protection protocols and poor form. But I had the hardest time finding that damn bottle, despite my arts-and-crafts markings. Mud and snow had caked onto it and I hadn’t used it all race. I was a bit delirious at this stage too, wind blown and frozen. Eventually I did find it and carried it back to the finish… my already frozen hands had trouble gripping the bottle anyway but adding to the difficulties was that the water was now ice cold and only making the hands colder.
The wind and sleet increased if that’s possible. Hours later back on the ship, I heard the captain put the winds at 50+ miles per hour. I believe it.
I rounded the final corner into the finish line and I can only hope that they snapped a decent finisher photo. I was in no position to snap my own selfie or ask anyone to take a shot with my camera.
They put the medal round my neck and handed me a warm drink – might have been cider, might have been coffee, I couldn’t tell as my face was frozen and I had trouble forming words that were intelligible to ask what I was drinking. But it did help warm my core a bit and unfreeze my face. Unfortunately, my hands were more like ice sculpture versions of the kid foam Hulk hands they sell in toy stores. I couldn’t unfurl them, I couldn’t feel them, I was a bit useless.
The doctor shuffled me over to get my dry bag and several volunteers helped layer me up for the zodiac ride back. Jacqui was there and became a human windscreen for me. I don’t remember if it was her or one of the other staff who told me I had come in just under 4 hours. In the back of my head, as several wonderful team members and volunteers helped put on my dry hat and spare sock. They then got me into the wet skins, including forcibly shoving the rubber boots onto my feet. I was as helpful as a newborn babe, unable to walk or talk or use any of my fingers. They got my red One Ocean jacket over me and told me to zip it up to stay warm but I had to tell them I couldn’t feel my fingers at all. They helped me zipper up and get me on my feet.
I had to wait a few minutes for a zodiac to arrive. The winds and weather made the seas extra choppy – white caps and swells were high and rising. It felt like a lifetime to be standing around, the rule about not entering any building on the shore rightly enforced to ensure the Marathon could continue to be run here for years to come. Eventually, I was loaded into Dana’s Zodiac for the return trip to the Iofee. I was a bit worried about getting in and out of the zodiac post Marathon, all the moreso now as I had no feeling in my fingers and we weren’t able to get my dry gloves on more than my knuckles, the fingerlings loose and wavy and therefore not much help in the sailor’s grip to hoist in and out of the rubberized boats.
As I waited my mind reeled at what just transpired, what I had done, and what had happened to me as a person. It was an ordeal, a struggle, and while nothing compared to the race for the South Pole endured by Capt Robert Falcon Scott, I had two stray thoughts tumbleweed through the deserted ghost town that my mind had become in the midst of the Antarctica Marathon.
- Captain Scott upon reaching the pole second to Amundsen wrote in his journal:
- I had just completed my seventh continent… and if it was true I had come in under 4 hours, then I had just completed a marathon on all seven continents in under 4 hours each.
Soon, Paul waved us over saying a Zodiac was inbound. I boarded and so too did several other finishers. Two of them looked especially worse for wear. Jan, who doesn’t speak much English and is an older, seasoned runner, finished soon after me and had two staff members holding him up. He looked pale even by whiteout blizzard conditions. A woman beside me, who I couldn’t identify due to the wet skins and because she had her head down, gazing at the flooded floor of the boat, moaned, whimpered and cried. I don’t know if it was due to exhaustion, the freezing rain, the rising swells, or a combination thereof. But I did make out her queries to me as the boat skipped across the roiling sea, spray occasionally dousing us with frigid salt water. “How much futher?” she kept whimpering and I and Rory, two finishers who seemed frozen but still in good spirits, tried to reassure her and talk about what an amazing job she just did, about how good a driver Dana was, and that we’d be back on the boat soon with hot showers and warm chili. Whenever she asked, I have to admit that part of me wondered, “Is it further or farther? Farther is distance and further is time, right? Both seem applicable in this case…” Some day I really need to learn the difference but this did not seem the right time to engage in that discussion with my Zodiac mates.
We eventually made it to the boat and the gangway process was actually far easier than yesterday’s harrowing disembarkation from Penguin Island. Still, with little to no feeling in my hands, I wouldn’t say it was easy. Jan was immediately taken from the gangway to reception to see the Russian doctor on board; the woman who whimpered was also sent that way. Rory and I were sent to the mud room where another volunteer helped me out of my rubber boots and into my mud and water slogged shoes. I made it back to the room and grabbed a spare hand warmer to slowly try and defrost my hands. Occasionally I would run them under hot water for a few moments, the burning sensation restoring circulation in what I thought was a systematic approach.
As I regained feeling, I looked at my stripped pile of clothes, my dry bag contents soaked from the mad dash to get warm clothes on me and the wet items stuffed back inside so I could board the zodiac home. I pulled out the ship’s laundry bag, not caring what it would cost to get that stuff washed.
A hot shower again afforded searing pain in my hands and feet as the warm water defrosted the extremities and restored the blood flow. Just as I was combing my hair, Meg came back to the room and congratulated me on my seventh continent. We wandered down to the chili buffet lunch and while I ate some fine chili con carne with guacamole, the star per usual for a meal on board was the dessert – a blondie with vanilla crème sauce.
That’s a sweet reward but I suppose the victory over the driest, windiest, coldest continent was the hot fudge sundae and cherry on top of the day.
***
Runner’s Log – Supplemental – 9:31 PM
Due to the deteroriating weather, the Captain of the Iofee ordered the zodiacs to return to the ship. The race was called approximately 5 hours and 45 minutes in. Ten to twelve people didn’t finish their marathon, some mere kilometers from the finish. It’s heartbreaking but the safety of the runners and of the staff has to take precedence.
Thom rightly pointed out that there’s long precedence for races being called due to weather (Chicago for example or Little Rock) that resulted in large numbers of runners receiving a Did Not Finish, as well as DNFs due to terrorism a la the Boston Marathon 2013. It’s a harsh truth but it makes sense. On the plus side, Thom awarded all those runners who didn’t finish half marathon medals and time (and the medals are the same for the half as the full… not even having the date of the run on the ribbon that goes around the neck).
Several runners were so gutted that they decided to finish on their own using the ship’s treadmill. Meg went and got ribbon from the One Ocean team and made finisher tape for each participant who clocked off their remaining mileage. It took a few hours, and some folks ran in place in tandem to a runner on the treadmill. But those that wanted to got a finisher photo and ceremony courtesy of several other supportive runners. It was a huge positive energy vibe that hopefully helped those runners get the best experience possible under the circumstances.
It reminds me again of a final quotation shared with us during the Race to the Pole seminar yesterday:
