Antarctica Marathon – Journey Day One

Where are you from? Why are you here? How many have you done before? Where were they? On the first night of our welcome reception, these were the typical questions we asked each other around our table in Buenos Aires, just two days before we would fly to Ushuaia and then sail to the Antarctica continent and our marathon together. We were around 210 people including around 40 non-runners. Everyone had a story to tell, and many of them were inspiring.

At our (Mike and myself) table, we met Mark, a 24-year old from England. He was raising money for a crippled children’s society and had already secured over 40,000 GBP. Just a young man in a mostly older group, he was scheduled to run the marathon in the North Pole in April 2005. I tried to find out why he was here as we were riding the escalator in Ezezia Airport in Buenos Airport at around 4:30 in the morning. I wanted to hear some profound reason like he was escaping a terrible childhood or admired some famous explorer like Shackleford or Amundson. But no. What I got was a nonchalant response in a typical droll British accent, something along the line of: “I really don’t know … I just had the idea to come and do this, I am a bit adventurous and decided to try this”.

On my second day in BA, I ran into a guy named Ian as I was preparing to start a light training run outside. As usual, I had my iPod and headphones fully ready to run with, and to be with myself during a mostly solitary activity. I never put them on during our 60 minutes together doing our practice 10 kilometers down Avenida Liberatore past Plaza San Martin and turning around in Recoleta. Ian was quite proud that he had started running at age 54 and was now 58. He had divorced from his wife in 1999 and had decided he could either take up drinking full-time or start running. He decided on the latter. A fairly serious runner, he was in good mental and physical shape and had run a number of marathons, mostly in Europe and in U.S. Ian was also my seatmate on our 3-hour flight to Ushuaia.

On the morning we left from BA, we had to place our bags in the transfer area of the Marriott Plaza hotel by 3:00 a.m., breakfast ending and be on the bus by 3:30 a.m. At breakfast that morning, we sat with and met Susanne from New York City. Susanne is probably in her mid-30’s with a pretty face, and she is also (self-acknowledged) overweight. She had run just one marathon before, doing the NY Marathon. Susanne is a political consultant and is chief of staff to a guy who is running for Mayor of NY against Michael Bloomberg and is a decided Democrat. “Why is she here”, I asked, almost expecting an answer around proving she could do it, losing weight etc. Her answer surprised me. She said when she was a little girl she remembered seeing Antarctica on the globe at the very bottom and that it had no cities. Susanne said at the point she decided to go there. She has great fears though about her ability to finish within the 7 hours allotted time and the 3 hour 20 minute cut-off for the half-marathon (21.1 kilometers).

Also that first night we met a 30ish old Asian man in a wheelchair who will do the marathon in his machine. There was another Asian man who had already run on all six continents, lived in Hong Kong, and this one would be his last continent to conquer. Then there were the competitive ones at our table that first night. Young guys in their late thirties with fire in their belly to beat the others. One of them looked at me and said based on my “physique” that I should be capable of doing a 2:40 marathon. I don’t know if I was proud or embarrassed to say that “no, my average time is more or less double that”.

Then there was Wendy and her (for the moment) unhappy boyfriend Ron. It’s my fault really that they are here. Wendy and I met in August 2003 while taking an Executive Program at Harvard Business School outside of Boston. We ended up sitting next to each other the first day (her last name is close to mine and we were seated alphabetically as luck should have it). For some reason before class started, we ended up talking about running. I asked her where there was to run around the campus and she pointed out the 18km track that parallels the Charles River up and down the campuses there. She also ended up giving me some great pointers on running stuff like Body Glide (for sensitive areas instead of powder) and band-aids (to prevent other chaffing and bleeding). I shared with her that I was training for my third marathon in Sydney and trying to do all 7 continents. I told her about the “Last Marathon” in Antarctica and that I had just signed up for it in June. Later she e-mailed me that she had also signed up. We greeted each other that first night and met her husband. I asked him if he was excited about going and I think his words were, “I hate cold”. “Oh”, I thought, “this is probably not a great trip for you to be going on”. But he said that he spent a good amount of his time supporting her as she is a serious runner who has done Marine Corps Marathons and Ultras (those over 50km).

All in all, the people I have met so far are an eclectic bunch as one could imagine. Dominated by Americans, but a fair amount from Europe and a sprinkling of Asians, there are more women than we had expected and more older folks (older meaning older that my current 47). When I complained at the first breakfast about being old, everyone else asked how old I was, and then they laughed saying I was the youngster in the bunch!