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Eric Pohlman spent two hours and forty minutes one recent Sunday on the treadmill at the gym preparing for the McMurdo Marathon. Doing a steady 10-minute mile, it was a relatively easy 16 miles. But he knows race day conditions outdoors won’t be a walk on the beach. Then again, maybe that’s exactly what it is.

“I’m preparing myself for a 26.2 [mile] run on the beach, because it’s like running in sand, except it’s freezing cold,” said Pohlman, a hazardous waste management technician at McMurdo Station. Pohlman will test his theory on Jan. 8 during the annual marathon. Last year, a dozen runners attempted the marathon or half-marathon. The race is nearly as popular with cross-country skiers, with seven people opting to glide their way across the Ross Ice Shelf in 2005.

One of the skiers was Mary Holozubiec, the only one to finish the 42-kilometer route, in a time of three hours and 39 minutes. This will be the third time the McMurdo retail materials worker will ski the race. She also ran the full marathon in 2001 on a calm, crisp day in 3:38. “Skiing to me is just like a long outing,” she said. “It’s a chance to get out for a longer period of time.”

Weather is a key factor in any race, but perhaps never more so than in Antarctica, where wind and blowing snow can quickly turn any run into a slog. Like last year. “It was full-on dumping [snow],” said Rachel Murray, recreation department supervisor. “It was like sand.” Holozubiec recalled that the wind was howling so fiercely on the leg between Pegasus and Williams airfields that the runners bunched up in a sort of phalanx, with each one taking the lead for a short while to help others conserve energy. “It was so windy that they ran in drafting style,” she said of the 2005 marathon. “The thing about the marathon is that it’s very condition dependent, both for running and skiing.”

Dan Simas ran the full marathon that year, persevering to finish the race in just under five hours. This year’s goal is to improve his time by nearly an hour, possibly a modest goal for a college tri-athlete who had never run a marathon before last year.

“I didn’t train,” said Simas, a utility tech at the Crary Science and Engineering Center. “I just decided to do it. I had done all the other races that year.”

This time the 23-year-old Californian is putting in some extra hours to better last year’s time of 4:56. The winning time in last year’s marathon was 4:14 by Lance Anderson. “I’m hoping to break four hours,” said Simas, who plans to do an ironman competition in California in the off-season.

Participants’ race experiences run the gamut from novices using 14-week online training plans to runners with multiple marathons behind them. Pohlman puts himself squarely in the first category, saying he only wears out his sneakers while in Antarctica as a strategy for staying in shape. It’s also a way to run from boredom, he said. “You don’t get much chance to get out and stretch the legs,” said Pohlman, 34. “So I just run down here, just to do something.”

Facing his first marathon, Pohlman’s goals are modest: To finish in less than five hours without stopping or leaving his breakfast on the side of the snow road. He said he’s made a point of telling friends about his plans to race, hoping the peer pressure will keep him motivated. “If I had done it secretly, I probably would have quit by now,” he said.

Holozubiec said she’s run about nine marathons, including the McMurdo race. She and her husband, McMurdo lead janitor Peter Tucci, decided in 2000 to try and complete marathons on all seven continents. The idea came while she was leading a bicycle tour in Alaska. One of the clients had come to the state to do his 49th marathon in the 49th state. That kind of goal was appealing. However, doing fifty marathons seemed a bit much, but “seven continents, that’s easy, and we can knock off the hardest one first,” Holozubiec said. So far, she and her husband have notched off marathons in Antarctica, Australia and North America. They have tentative plans to do South America next year. “I mainly run trails,” added Holozubiec, an outdoor enthusiast. “I run because it’s fun, and it’s a way to stay in shape.”

The McMurdo Marathon isn’t the only such race in Antarctica, but it’s the cheapest to enter. A Boston-based company runs a marathon and half-marathon tour to the South Shetland Islands off the Antarctic Peninsula. The price for that trip starts at about $5,000. McMurdo race participants pay no entrance fee, enjoy free snacks, and full marathoners get free race T-shirts.

The history of the marathon, of course, dates back to ancient Greece. The name comes from a legend about a Greek soldier who ran from the town of Marathon to Athens to announce the defeat of the Persians in a great battle. The story goes that this messenger died shortly after reaching Athens with the victorious news (despite the fact that the International Olympic Committee estimates the distance he ran at only 34.5 kilometers).

The marathon entered modern history in 1896 with the first Olympic Games in Athens. For nearly 30 years, the distance was arbitrarily fixed according to the individual route. In 1896, the distance was 40 kilometers, but in 1908, it was 42.195 kilometers, which happened to be the distance from Windsor Castle to the Olympic stadium in London. Finally, in 1924, 42.195 kilometers (or 26.2 miles for Americans) became the international standard.

Karen Joyce and Nancy Ford, started the McMurdo Marathon in 1995. Scheduling conflicts that first year kept the field of contestants small — just the two of them running between Scott Base and Williams Field Skiway. Joyce recalled the conditions that day were extremely windy.

“My God, it was an awful day,” said Joyce, the IT manager at Crary. Today’s McMurdo Marathon begins at Pegasus White Ice Runway, runs to Williams Field Skiway, then to the Scott Base transition. But it’s not over yet. Runners and skiers must turn around and return to Williams Field, finishing back at the transition area. If you’re doing the half-marathon, you forego the roundtrip back to Williams and start the race about five kilometers short of Pegasus.

Joyce said she doesn’t like the current route because it’s “devastatingly” hard to reach Scott Base only to turn back again to Willy field when there’s the refuge of a warm van beckoning. The 50-year-old runner says she’ll stick with the 16-mile option, running the full distance from Pegasus airfield to the transition area. “I don’t know how anybody has the iron will to [do the full marathon], with the course being set up as it is these days,” said Joyce, who’s run upwards of 20 marathons.

The marathon is not only tough for the participants. It’s one of the most logistically challenging events put on by the McMurdo recreation department, according to Rachel Murray, the rec supervisor. “Supporting the marathon takes a lot,” she said. This includes monitoring five water stations to make sure supplies aren’t blowing away in the wind or that the water hasn’t frozen. A van continuously patrols the route, carrying warm beverages, ensuring the participants are OK, and helping with gear as runners heat up and shed layers. Back in the days before iPods, Murray said the support van would carry extra batteries for the runners’ Walkmans as they lost power in the cold. “We have to be driving constantly,” she said, “but it is a favorite to support just to see the racers at the end.”

Via the Antarctic Sun (link to site then PDF download)

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