Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
39 kilometres a day to cover the 1100 kilometres—and then we must
fly out of the pole on January 26.
I'm going to flog my guts out to finish the South American leg but
to do so will have to run between 105 and 110 kilometres a day. That
may be beyond me. If it becomes obvious that I cannot do it, Greg says
I must stop running wherever I am and fly to Punta Arenas to arrive
there on December 29 to rendezvous with Eric, the cameraman and
the vehicle and fly out. Then, after completing the Antarctica section,
I must fly back to exactly the same spot at which I stopped running,
which looks like being 2000 kilometres north of Tierra del Fuego, and
finish the leg, 75 kilometres or so a day for around 22 days, to Ushuaia
in Tierra del Fuego.
This plan makes me angry and frustrated, because it has been my
aim to run from pole to pole continuously, without backtracking. It
has been about moving forward every day, with no days off. But if this
messy anticlimax is how it has to be, then so be it; I can only take sol-
ace in my original mission, which was to raise funds for clean water,
which I'll have done, and to make Brooke and Dillon proud of their
dad, and I will have accomplished this too.
What keeps me running are my dreams of having my life back, of
being with my loved ones in my beautiful Australia . . . Coogee Beach,
mango smoothies . . . of not having to run these insane distances every
day, of reuniting with friends, of maybe reading a newspaper or watch-
ing TV, or enjoying some other simple pleasure that I once took for
granted but never will again. But really, I just need my kids to be proud
of me. It doesn't matter a damn what the rest of the world thinks.
I have no idea how much money I've raised. With the Red Cross
offices that have received donations so disconnected and far-lung, I
suspect I will never find out for sure.
I finished the day resting in the back of the van, listening to Cold
Chisel with Bernie.
