Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Fortunately, they were able to save the driver. Because I said no to skis
and insisted on running this leg, Scotty, our support driver, refuses to
deviate from the marked waypoints on the six-wheel drive's GPS. Skis
would have given me a bigger surface area and less chance of punch-
ing through the ice. Consequently, to cover 70 kilometres a day of the
distance to the pole, I actually have to run closer to 80 kilometres. A
1.30 am finish.
January 3
I purposely slept in this morning, as the wind was blowing in excess of
100 kilometres an hour. Somehow, though, I still did my 70 kilometres;
I finished at two in the morning. It has been a tough day.
As I ran from Canada through the United States, and Central and
South America, I passed literally thousands of little monuments by the
roadside commemorating the lives of those who had been killed there.
I said a prayer every time I encountered a cross or pile of stones and
felt an affinity with my fellow travellers. Now I'm in the Antarctic, I can
feel the spirit of the great explorers Douglas Mawson, Robert Falcon
Scott and Roald Amundsen and their gallant teams, who risked, and
in some cases lost, their lives exploring this dangerous and remote
icy realm. As I experience the same cold, the pain, the sense of being
overwhelmed by unimaginably huge expanses of ice, I feel at one with
them, without ever daring to compare myself to those brave souls. I've
said a prayer for those long-gone heroes, too.
I continue to make excellent time, despite today's blizzard-like
conditions. For the fifth day in a row, I have completed 70 kilometres.
In a few days I will be able to decrease that figure to 50 kilometres and,
barring disaster, make it to the South Pole by January 17, the 100th
anniversary of Scott's arrival there, which will see me on the January
19 flight back to Chile. Running fewer kilometres will allow me to sleep
longer and recover more effectively.
But I have too much respect for the Antarctic to believe there will
not be mishaps and challenges that could threaten my plan. Looming
to the west are enormous black clouds that promise a blizzard tomor-
row. It's a fact, too, that it will get colder and windier the closer to the
pole I get. As I write this, it is -30 degrees, and the wind is pounding my
face. At times in the past couple of days the wind-chill factor has seen
