Ultramarathon Man (19 page)

The plan was for the DC-3 to drop us off a marathon's distance from the Pole. As we landed on the spot, something seemed amiss. The plane fishtailed, erratically lurching and skipping. The pilot yanked up on the controls, and suddenly we were airborne again. We eventually landed on a flat expanse of crunchy snow 28.5 miles from the Pole. Nothing was ever mentioned about the incident, though I had a feeling that more had gone on than the flight crew let on to. At least we were safely on the ground.

It was eerie to think that possibly no human being had ever set foot where we were now standing. The polar plateau suspends reality; it's the most remote, most desolate, most inhospitable place on the planet. We had landed at 11,000 feet above sea level, but the effective elevation was closer to 13,000. The air is bone-dry, making Antarctica something like a huge desert—a frozen Sahara, where the temperature was -35 degrees Fahrenheit when we arrived. Nothing lives there, neither animal nor plant. Even the hardiest bacteria would have difficulty surviving. We were completely cut off from all other signs of life. It's as close to being on the moon as you can get while still on planet Earth.

We got busy erecting a small city around the plane. It would take us several days to acclimate to the elevation. At 4.8 percent body fat, I was certain I'd never adjust to the cold.

 

 

 

We got
the tents set up. Then came the waiting. The hours crawl by when day and night look the same and when the landscape in every direction is flat and opaque white. A couple of us attempted a training run, but we scarcely covered a mile before turning back for fear of hypothermia and frostbite. Running on the frigid, crusty surface snow felt like tramping barefoot through a Freon marsh of styrofoam beads. Even with waterproof running shoes and neoprene socks, the cold cut right through to our feet. It would have been suicide to keep running in these conditions without greater protection. The experience scared the hell out of me.

Brent had written earlier, “I don't think folks really understand what it will be like trying to posthole twenty-six miles to the Pole.” Damn straight. We could barely cover two miles, let alone a marathon. Our level of fitness would be supremely tested, no getting around that, but we needed to figure out a way to keep our feet from freezing if we were to have any chance of making it. I began experimenting by stuffing three Grabber Mycoal “shake-and-bake” heating pads—the kind used to keep ski boots warm—inside each shoe, two below the toes and one on top. It helped, a bit. They're advertised as staying warm for six hours, though in Antarctic conditions they gave out in half that time. Still, that was three hours that your toes didn't turn to icicles.

The sunny days and sunny nights bled together, the featureless landscape producing a sense of vertigo if you stared out at nothing for too long. I continued training, trying to maintain my fitness—and spirit—but the situation became more desperate and depressing with each passing day. We'd been stuck on the ice for three weeks now, hoping for a break in the weather that didn't seem like it would ever come. The stakes were getting progressively higher, each day away from family and work taking an increasing psychological toll.

And it wasn't just me who was feeling the strain—the group was increasingly fraying. The confinement of small tents, a single frozen bucket for a toilet, and nothing to do all day were wearing on everyone. Counting the flight crew, there were thirteen of us living in a tent the size of a small dormitory room. Gear and food were strewn everywhere. A small camping stove was kept going round the clock to melt drinking water, resulting in a damp condensation that dripped from the ceiling and created little frozen puddles on the floor. We needed to get on with this event soon. If only the weather would cooperate; but, unfortunately, Antarctica didn't have a history of cooperative weather.

The pressure on Doug to get things under way must have been tremendous. The cost of having a DC-3, flight crew, guides, and a physician all sitting idle was surely exorbitant. Adding to the strain, we had gotten the word that a group of Pole taggers were waiting in Patriot Hills for us to get the DC-3 back. These were folks that had paid a lot of money to be taken to the South Pole; they weren't the kind of people that were used to waiting in line, and we had the only plane that could get them there.

Doug remained focused and composed, but we could sense that if this marathon didn't happen soon, it wouldn't happen at all. With each passing hour, the costs mounted and the morale among the group slipped.

Our single contact with the outside world was an Iridium satellite phone. Reception was sporatic, but I managed to get through to my wife. I sat in the cabin of the DC-3, which was cold as a meat locker, and told her we were safe but were running a couple of
weeks
behind schedule. She was characteristically supportive as we spoke, and I could hear Alexandria and Nicholas in the background asking, “Is it Daddy? Is it Daddy?”

“How is everyone?” I asked through the static.

“We're doing fine,” she assured me. “But the kids miss you. I miss you, too. Is everything all right?”

“I think so. Doug and the guides are competent, but there's a lot that's beyond our contol. And running a marathon in these conditions is going to be scary, if it's even possible at all. No one's gone more than a mile away from camp yet.”

“Please be safe,” she said.

I just bit my lip. There was no way I could offer any assurances on that one.

I asked if she wouldn't mind contacting my office. “I'm sure they'll be happy to hear an update,” she said.

Thankfully, I had an understanding boss. I'd just about burned through all my accrued vacation days, and it wasn't looking like I'd be home anytime soon.

I told Julie that I loved her, and she wished us all well. “Be careful,” she said.

“I'll do my best. Hug those kids for me, and I'll see you all soon.”

The guilt and loneliness of being away from my family and job gnawed at me like never before. The stakes were getting higher with each passing day. There were responsibilities—as a father and co-worker—that I needed to uphold, and I was stuck in Antarctica, trying to run a marathon. I longed to get this event under way and return home. In one piece.

The dreariness of the situation weighed heavily on me. Though stressing about it wasn't going to change anything, we weren't going anywhere. So I called my training buddy, Christopher Gaylord, for a little levity. We laughed hysterically at the grimness of my predicament. I told him about the exploded beer cans lying on the floor of the plane, with the frozen froth clinging to the walls like spray-on insulation; about trying to brush our teeth with frozen toothpaste that wouldn't thaw unless you slept with the tube in your mummy bag; and about our delightful meals, “cooked” on a small camping stove that could barely get the water warm enough to heat our dehydrated rice, meat, and vegetables. They were soggy on the outside and crunchy in the middle. The particles that weren't cooked fermented pleasantly in our stomachs.

“The air inside our tent doesn't smell like roses,” I said.

“Maybe you can float the tent home,” Gaylord said, “like a big helium balloon.”

It sure would beat running at this point.

 

 

 

After more
days of waiting, the weather finally yielded enough for Doug to decide it was time to attempt the marathon. Small yellow mile-markers had been set up along the way by a party that had left from the Pole on snowmobiles and worked their way out to us. We were supposed to follow these markers (when we could see them). The gun went off, and the race was on.

We didn't get very far. Not two hours into it, the visibility shut down and conditions deteriorated. The race was quickly called off. It was another harsh disappointment and a sobering learning experience. Two of the runners, Don and Ute, had covered fewer than 3 miles in that time. At that pace, it'd take them over seventeen hours to finish the marathon. They'd likely succumb to exposure first.

After the first race attempt, in an e-mail sent via satellite from our tent, Don described the situation like this:

 

The experience left him apprehensive. “This is going to be brutal,” he wrote, and concluded soberly, “Finishing a marathon in these conditions could be more dangerous than I bargained for.”

Something had to change. That demoralizing first attempt convinced the group that our whole concept of the marathon had to be radically rethought. The ferocity of the conditions demanded it. Don and Ute decided to run a half-marathon instead.

That left only three of us running the marathon. Then Brent announced that he would be using his snowshoes. “I know my limitations,” he said. He was an experienced runner and snowshoer, so I was inclined to trust his judgment.

Then Richard approached me in our tent and asked if he could borrow my snowshoes. Did this mean that what we had decided upon in Patriot Hills was out the window? That the race was off and all we were trying to do at this point was complete the endeavor in any way we could? Safety had become the primary concern.

“Sure, man,” I said, digging out the snowshoes from the bottom of my bag and handing them to him, “whatever it takes.”

After the conclusion of the event, in a message to a buddy, Brent put it this way: “Once we arrived at the polar plateau, it was decided the run would not be a race, but an expedition run in which all team members agreed to stay together for safety reasons. Everybody made sacrifices in order to make it happen. It was a total team effort.”

Even though he wouldn't be running the full marathon, Don remained upbeat. “Ute and I would fly to the Pole and do a half-marathon that could be easily monitored,” he wrote in another satellite e-mail from our tent. “Brent and Richard would wear snowshoes, Dean would wear just running shoes. The three of them would have to stay close together, expedition style.” He must have been disappointed that he wasn't doing the entire marathon, but he showed valor in choosing to concede on the side of safety.

Doug and one of our guides, Kris, would be supporting our marathon efforts on snowmobile. Given the savagery of the conditions, we were instructed to stay within eyesight of one another so that we could be safely monitored. The plan was for me to run my ass off and, I hoped, stay up with the guys wearing snowshoes. It didn't sound entirely like a “team” effort to me, but I was willing to give it my best shot. This was probably our last chance; if we failed here, we would likely be forced to abandon the effort and return home without finishing anything.

I knew I'd have to push very hard from the onset, so as not to slow the group down. My calculations were that I could complete the course in five to six hours wearing snowshoes. Without them, I wasn't sure how long it would take, or if I could even make it.

The group left the tent like men on a mission. But we only made it to the edge of camp. The snowmobiles wouldn't start. The carburetors apparently hadn't been adjusted to the higher elevation of the polar plateau and the engines wouldn't turn over, or were frozen, or had voodoo spirits infesting them, or whatever . . . the damn things just wouldn't start. It was another delay as the flight mechanic began inspecting the internal workings.

Eventually he was able to jury-rig the starter, and he got the engines turned over. How long they would run for, and if they would restart if they stalled midway through the marathon, was anybody's guess. We wanted to get this thing going and were getting reckless. I could sense Doug's unease. This was a man who had high standards where safety was concerned.

What transpired during our second attempt at a marathon is largely a frigid blur. Luckily, much of it was captured on videotape. As Brent and Richard were busily adjusting their snowshoes and getting them strapped on, I stood bouncing and shivering in the freezing temperatures trying to stay warm. “I'm freezing,” I said to the group. “I'm going to start moving.” I knew with their snowshoes they'd have no problem catching up.

“Me, too,” Richard said, having affixed the snowshoes and joining in with me. “God help us all.” Those are the last words that were said before we began trudging forward into the pallid abyss, heads down to deflect the incomprehensible cold.

Since this was the second, and likely last, attempt at the marathon, Doug was hyper-astute in making sure everything was going well at an early stage. Scarcely a mile into it, he was already inquiring about our progress, asking Richard if the snowshoes were helping. “Yeah,” Richard said to the camera, “it makes a difference, all right.”

That was good. Our initial prospects of completing the event this time around looked more encouraging than they had the first time. Now it would just be up to me to keep up with the group in my running shoes, which was no small chore.

I'd started out briskly in hopes of regenerating some of the internal body heat that was lost while standing idle at the start. Running hard helped to warm my core body temperature, but no amount of effort could keep my feet warm. Without the platform of a snowshoe to land on, I kept dunking my foot directly into the frigid ice pack below the surface where the temperature was a uniform -54 degrees, and I was forced to stop along the way to change the heating pads in my running shoes. Replacing the three pads in each shoe was costing time, and I'd quickly lose body heat when I stopped, but it was a necessary evil. Without fresh heating pads, frostbite was inevitable.