Antarctica Marathon Race Report: Goat South, Young Man!

One afternoon, midway through our trip, I joined other passengers on the deck of the Akademik Ioffe and watched amazed as humpback whales played in the water below. There were two or three alongside the ship, each a good 20 feet long, and dozens more spread out to our left and right, fluke-flipping, fin-slapping, barrel-rolling and thrusting their knobby heads out of the water, those nearest so close, we could look them in the eye. This played out as we skimmed along the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, its coast a seemingly endless chain of rugged mountains and smooth glaciers. We passed icebergs the size of city blocks, ivory white above the water, cool aqua below. The humpback show went on for more than an hour.

Southbound

As I and my traveling companions, Lindi Rosner and Debra Kaufman, prepare to board the flight tonight that will begin our trip to Antarctica, I am fixated on what a novel experience it is to visit the southern continent. The first confirmed sighting of the Antarctic landmass happened only in the 1820s—less than 200 years ago—and it wasn’t until 1895 that  Norwegian explorers Henrik Bull and Carsten Borchgrevink became the first humans (so far as can be proved) to set foot there. The first Trans-Antarctic crossing  was completed a mere blink-of-an-eye ago in 1958. Yet scant decades later, it’s possible for an average schmo lunkhead like me to travel there in near complete safety and comfort—and run a marathon to boot.

A Long, Strange Trip

When I first began running, my friend, Angela Brunson, shared with me a wise maxim for choosing races: “Never sign up for an event where you’ll spend more time getting there, than on the course itself.” In other words, a 10K that’s an hour’s drive from home is too far away. In two weeks, when I walk out my front door and head toward the starting line of the Antarctica Marathon, I’ll be violating Angela’s advice by stupendous proportion.

The journey for me and my intrepid support crew (my wife, Lindi Rosner, and our friend, Debra Kaufman) will begin with a 20-minute car ride from home to LAX. We’ll board a 5-hour flight to El Salvador, followed by a 4 hour flight to Lima, Peru, followed by a 4 ½-hour flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina. There, we’ll meet up with other marathon adventurers and do a bit of sightseeing before taking yet another flight, this one lasting 3 ½ hours, to Ushuaia, at the tip of South America.