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Audible groans emerged from the pack of lead runners as they hit the quagmire. Within a mile, my new silver-and-black running shoes were covered with chocolate-colored goo. At the top of the glacier, we circled a cluster of orange flags—the turnaround point. Descending in a barely controlled free fall, we soon found ourselves in a field of scree—a patch of loose rock common in Antarctica. Most of us gingerly picked our way across the slippery stretch, but Dan Powell, an Ironman triathlete from San Diego, turned his left ankle in the insidious mixture. "I'd never dropped out of a race before and I wasn't going to do it here," Powell said. It took him nearly eight hours to finish.
The Antarctica course was what runners call a "double out and back," meaning we covered the same treacherous ground—two 13.1-mile loops—twice. When I passed Tan on my second loop, his scholarly mien had turned into a rictus of teeth-baring determination; his thick black gloves were shredded from pushing the studded snow tires he had mounted on his wheelchair. He had brought an ax to hack his way up the glacier, but the ice was too soft, and race officials rerouted him off the slope and into the impassable bog. "I was defeated by global warming," Tan would later joke. He completed a half marathon.
Approaching the glacier the second time, I was surprised to hear cheering. A dozen Uruguayans stood outside their base, waving their white-and-blue-striped flag and hooting wildly for each runner. Most of Antarctica's non-humans barely acknowledged us. A Weddell seal lounged on the nearby beach. A trio of Gentoo penguins waddled across the road by the Chilean base. But an Antarctic predatory shorebird known as a skua hovered overhead, perhaps making sure no runner came near its nest. Or perhaps waiting for one of us to collapse. Some runners were fading. Around mile 22, Annie Hotwagner was taking a break at a self-serve water stop. "I got vertigo, pounding across those rocks," she said. Hotwagner, 43, from Saugatuck, Michigan, was running to raise money for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. We fell into a ragged rhythm together, walking uphill, then jogging downhill. With a mile left, she insisted I leave her for the finish.
I crossed the finish line at the Russian base with as much flourish as I could muster, spreading my arms out in triumph and smiling for the camera. "Hold on! The flash isn't working," a race official yelled as the photographer adjusted his equipment. "Let's do it again."
I hesitated. Attempting to re-create your finish in, say, the New York City Marathon—where 300 runners cross the line every minute—would likely result in disqualification or a fistfight. But heck, I thought to myself, this was Antarctica; the participants are stretched out for miles. I jogged back out a few feet on the course and sprinted across the line.
Same arm spread, same forced smile. Same failure to flash.
Alas, even though I don't have an official finish-line picture, the view from the top of the glacier at the bottom of the world is framed forever in my memory. The muddy shoes, I tossed.
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