Ultramarathon Man

by Dean Karnazes

  Boy, did I know defeat. There was really no defeat more devastating than running oneself into the ground short of the finish line. I’d gone head to head with the world’s toughest footrace, and lost. Despite my greatest efforts, Badwater had pounded me into submission.

  It was pure, unadulterated defeat. But what I came to realize on the drive home was that I’d loved every second of it.

  Alive and back home after Badwater with Julie and Alexandria

  Chapter 12

  Frozen Stiff

  Only those who will risk going too far can

  possibly find out how far they can go.

  —T. S. Eliot

  The South Pole January 2002

  After failing at Badwater in 1995, I went back the next summer to seek redemption. This time around I trained even harder, bracing my body for the punishment I knew it would encounter along the way. The pounding was no less severe than in the first attempt, but my body and will surmounted the abuse this time, and I made it. However, succeeding at Badwater didn’t satiate my hunger for adventure; it fed it.

  I embarked on a search-and-enjoy mission, throwing myself at any extreme endurance test that could be devised. If it required strength, stamina, and a lack of better judgment, I was game. I scaled Yosemite’s infamous Half Dome, swam across the San Francisco Bay, did triathlons, adventure races, and twenty-four-hour mountain-bike rides. I climbed mountains, snowboarded down mountains, and surfed the massive liquid mountains off Northern California, Maui, Fiji, and Tahiti. And I continued to run like a wildman: running, to me, remained the purest form of athletic expression. It was the simplest, least encumbered sport there was, and the definitive measurement of raw stamina.

  Another favorite sport, windsurfing

  Over the course of the decade, I managed to amass nine more Western States Silver Buckles. Scattered about the house were now dozens of medals, plaques, and trophies, and there was a massive steel sculpture for bagging the coveted Outdoor World Championships, a week-long, multi-sport event that included trail running, mountain biking, windsurfing, climbing, and a triathlon. Of course it’s cool to have mementos like these, but I didn’t have them on display in the living room or haul them out for family get-togethers or cocktail parties. Some were in closets, others were buried in drawers beneath piles of running socks, and most were in boxes in the garage. It wasn’t acclaim I craved, but adventures that involved out-of-body experiences, intense pain, nights without sleep, and a supreme sense of accomplishment.

  Hardly a month would pass when I didn’t enter a 100-mile, 100-kilometer, or at the very least a 50-mile race. When there wasn’t an organized ultra-endurance race happening, I’d do marathons just as training runs. My body reached a level of fitness that defied all sensible limitations. On the weekends, I could easily run all night and spend all day playing with Alexandria and our newly arrived son Nicholas, and I did so regularly. During the week, I trained early in the morning and late at night, because I worked nine-to-five. My resting heart rate hovered in the 30s, about the same as Lance Armstrong’s.

  As fewer and fewer organized events offered the kind of challenge I was after, I improvised by running from our house to the starting line of many races, timing my arrival to coincide with the gun going off. Once I ran from our house in San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge to the start of the Miwok 100K in the Marin Headlands, a distance of about thirteen miles, and then managed to finish the race a respectable 4th overall, winning my age division, among an elite field of racers. To celebrate, I went windsurfing afterward.

  No challenge was grand enough. Until a renowned mountaineering expedition leader, Doug Stoup, proposed running a marathon to the South Pole.

  Antarctica, after all, is as low as you can go. The mercilessly cold climate and shifting frozen terrain there set the standard by which all other extreme adventures must be measured. How fitting that Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 to 1916 expedition to be the first to cross Antarctica, one of the greatest survival stories of all time, was in a ship called Endurance. It’s also sobering to remember that the Antarctic ice floes crushed and sank the legendary vessel before it got very far. Antarctica is the place where the strongest and bravest men pit themselves against the most pitilessly extreme elements on the planet, testing every shred of their perseverance and stamina just to stay alive. And the Shackleton drama played out along the more temperate fringes of the continent.

  What may have been the most epic race of all time, a contest to reach the South Pole, took place deeper on the continent, at the geographic bottom of the earth—the polar plateau—where conditions are far more extreme. In 1911, Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian, and Robert Scott, an Englishman, vied for the glory and honor of leading the first expedition to reach the South Pole. Amundsen got there first, then made it out before the harshest weather hit. Scott arrived a scant month behind him . . . and never returned. The members of his ill-fated expedition would later be discovered frozen solid. The lowest temperature ever recorded on the planet was not far from where their trip ended. It reached an astounding -128.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Yes, the South Pole would be a fine place to run a marathon. There was only one problem: nobody knew if it was possible.

  Base camp, Antarctica

  Five other athletes and I decided to take up the challenge. We would be the first group in history to attempt running a marathon to the South Pole. People had skied and used snowshoes to get to the bottom of the earth, but no one had ever run there. We would be the guinea pigs, the experimental crash-test dummies. To us endurance types, this was naturally very alluring.

  There were plenty that doubted it could be done, and conventional wisdom said it would be impossible to run a marathon to the South Pole. But Doug Stoup didn’t live by conventional wisdom. He found three experienced mountaineering guides and one medical doctor willing to accompany us.

  My flight to the southern tip of Chile, where I met my fellow travelers—the athletes, the guides, and the doctor—took twenty-one hours. Then we all boarded a windowless Ilyushin cargo jet for the final leg of the journey. It was gloomy and stark in the jet’s hold, with exposed wiring that snaked everywhere, and the ceaseless roar of the engines was deafening. The small Russian crew moved around casually, as though they were used to it. Five teeth-rattling hours later, we made our descent into Patriot Hills, Antarctica: Base Camp.

  Patriot Hills lies more than a thousand miles into the frozen heart of the Antarctic, yet it’s still some 600 miles from the South Pole. A desolate little outpost of fluttering tents and plastic waste barrels, it hunkers between the jagged white peaks of the Ellsworth Mountains to the south and a vast, open snow-plain to the north. It was below zero when we arrived, and gusting icy winds peppered the group as we staggered out of the jet’s hold.

  Those severe blasts of frigid air are an almost constant condition at Patriot Hills. The outpost huddles defense-less and vulnerable in the direct path of the savage glacial airstream (officially known as “katabatic” winds) that roars remorselessly down from the polar plateau. The winds originate from the intense high-pressure cell that’s permanently clamped over the South Pole. It’s the steep drop of altitude and pressure between the polar plateau and the surrounding lowlands nearer the fringes of the Antarctic continent that causes the winds. As they race down from the higher polar elevation, the winds build in ferocity until they’re nearly at gale strength by the time they rocket past those desperately flapping tents.

  The six runners, three guides, and medical doctor ducked into one of these and were greeted by Doug, who would be the leader of our expedition to the South Pole. Besides being a renowned mountain climber and extreme skier, Doug was also an avid runner.

  “Welcome to summer camp,” Doug said with a smile. Seeing us huddled and shivering, he quipped, “Think it’s cold here? Just wait till we get to the Pole. It’ll make this place feel like the Bahamas.”

  The man was built like a Viking. He had piercing blue eyes, a concrete chin,
and bazookas for arms. Under his beanie was a mat of bushy blond hair framing his face like the mane of a lion. He looked like the kind of guy who wouldn’t be rattled by a raging whiteout in the remotest place on earth.

  We runners sat there freezing our butts off, wondering how we were possibly going to run 26.2 miles in these conditions. There were two other American runners, Don and Brent; two German runners, Raphael and Ute; and one from the Republic of Ireland, Richard.

  Originally there was talk of up to thirty athletes participating in the event, but in the end it was just us six. Getting a small group to the South Pole is an expensive proposition, and the South Pole Marathon was likely a financial break-even proposition, at best. The expedition company handling logistics for the event, Adventure Network International (ANI), was the largest commercial enterprise bringing travelers to Antarctica. Besides us marathoners, they hosted climbers, meteorite hunters, and Pole taggers (people who simply flew to the South Pole to have their pictures taken next to it), some of whom were paying in excess of $35,000 to be there. Presumably the costs of the marathon could be absorbed by the many other groups ANI serviced. It’s not uncommon for an organized running event (such as a 10K or a marathon) to lose money the first year and then recoup the losses in subsequent years. After all, this was the “inaugural” South Pole Marathon, which suggested it would be an ongoing event.

  We runners all looked shaken by the savagery of the weather as Doug calmly addressed the group, reassuring us that the winds would soon ease and then we’d be off on another flight carrying us to the spot where our marathon would begin—26.2 miles from the South Pole.

  A week later, we were still hunkered down at Patriot Hills. The weather hadn’t let up one bit. No possibility of flights in or out.

  We were going stir-crazy. Finding things to do in Patriot Hills was no mean feat. Just leaving the security of your tent was a trial. We spent a lot of time zipped up inside our goose-down mummy bags, urinating in pee-bottles. When we climbed out, we dressed in shivering stages, laboriously adding layers of protection against the bitter cold. They were not, to say the least, ideal running conditions. Far from it: running on Antarctica was perhaps the toughest physical challenge of my life.

  No matter, I ran. It was bright daylight round the clock, so I sometimes went running at 2:00 A.M. as though it were high noon—there was little discernible difference. As challenging as it was to run in the soft snow, I kept it up all week, trying to harden myself for the upcoming event. I experimented with different layers of clothing and used specially designed waterproof running shoes to keep my feet dry. Using snowshoes would have made it easier, but I was hoping to complete the marathon without them. People had snowshoed to the South Pole before, but no one had ever run there.

  The experimentation was essential. There was no precedent for running a marathon to the South Pole, and no one knew with certainty whether it could be done. I brought along every imaginable outdoor accessory, including a pair of top-of-the-line Tubbs racing snowshoes just in case it was impossible to run without relying on them. What I learned while training is that it wasn’t impossible to run without snowshoes, just a lot tougher.

  As the days mounted, Doug eventually organized a group training run in which everyone participated. It was only a 5-mile run, but it was difficult. We all ran in running shoes, and the snow was soft and yielding, making it demanding to keep a steady pace. It was a small taste of things to come. From this first experience of running any appreciable distance on the frigid, soft snow, I got the feeling that this “race” might ultimately be an exercise in survival more than anything else.

  The next day, Brent, who was from Wyoming, began training using snowshoes. Richard borrowed a pair for the first time and realized the benefits. A controversy erupted. The snowshoes offered an advantage, and only Brent and I had them. We met as a group, and the consensus was that the use of snowshoes not be allowed during the marathon. This made sense. After all, only two of us had them. But more important, we wanted to be the first party ever to run a marathon to the South Pole. We hadn’t come all this way to repeat history. I considered the matter settled, and packed away the snowshoes for good.

  The days dragged on. A couple of the guys found a diversion in constructing a snow cave, and Richard spent the day adorning the interior with crude cave drawings of runners and wild animals. Two of our guides, Kris and Bean, started skiing and snowboarding the local peaks, and I soon found myself stealing away with the pair on snowmobiles, spending the afternoons carving up the nearby slopes.

  My tolerance for the cold steadily improved. The snowboarding kept me active, and I continued to run. But even the frigid conditions at Patriot Hills wouldn’t prepare me for the environment 600 miles away at the South Pole.

  One day, the weather finally broke. We dashed into a modified Douglas DC-3 that quickly took off for the Pole before conditions could shut down again. We’d been delayed by more than a week at this point and were elated to be heading toward the start of the marathon. Only five runners were left, however. Raphael had decided that the risk of getting stuck even longer at the South Pole was too great, and he remained in Patriot Hills, awaiting the next flight home.

  Flying around the Antarctic is treacherous. Modern avionics are of limited use in these parts; there’s simply no aeronautical infrastructure, so pilots fly by old-fashioned Visual Flight Rules, or VFR. Basically, this means that if you can’t see the ground, you can’t land. And if you can’t land, you’ve got to head back to where you came from . . . assuming you’ve got enough fuel to make it back. There’s no shortage of mangled and burned-out aircraft wrecks on the continent.

  As we were preparing to take off, I saw the co-pilot making the sign of the cross on his chest. It suddenly struck me how dangerous this whole endeavor was. Things could go terribly wrong in an instant, and the consequences could be grave. I never dwelled on danger; I focused on the task at hand. But it doesn’t take a lot of introspection to admit that an element of risk, of serious physical harm, existed in almost all of the extreme adventures I undertook and was indeed part of their appeal. Because of the elements and the remoteness, this South Pole marathon attempt was the most dangerous yet.

  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 runn
ing 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.