Nigel Clark (2 North 1991) is just back from completing a marathon in the Arctic along with four friends. Here is his account of a remarkable few days and some vital fund-raising for Great Ormond S
treet Children’s Hospital.
The trip was an incredible, unforgettable experience. Having been delayed for two days in Spitsbergen due to a metre wide crack appearing in the ice run way at the polar camp, we eventually set off for the North Pole last Friday morning. The Russians that run the camp fly in initially with helicopters (with fuel to get there only!) and then build the runway from scratch with bulldozers that they parachute onto the ice! They then had to extend their broken runway at one end and to the side once they had decided that the crack was stable.
We walked past Prince Harry as he went to get on the plane we had just arrived on (still no invite for the wedding), after he was delayed because of the runaway crack following his few days with the Walking with the Wounded soldiers on their incredible trek.
We eventually started the marathon at 10pm on Friday evening after all the runners had arrived. There is 24 hour sunlight, so running a midnight marathon just added to the randomness of it all. Starting temperature was about -25 and fell to -32 after the first couple of hours. Thankfully it was sunny and only a light breeze.
The rumour that it was going to be like running on sand dunes unfortunately turned out to be entirely accurate. We ran 14 laps of just under two miles each, initially about two thirds was reasonably firm and the rest soft snow, but as the race went on it just got more and more churned.
It turns out that goggles do not steam up in the North Pole, they just freeze up. So you take your goggles off and then your eye lashes freeze up.
Anyway, it was an utterly amazing and unique and emotional experience, even if brutal in parts.
From our team, Ben and David finished the marathon in 5h 34 mins in joint 6th place , I was 8th , 7 minutes behind in 5 hours 41 minutes, Andre was 11th and my brother, Chris, who tore his calf the day before we flew to Norway was an astonishing 13th in 6 hours 20mins (he’s been on crutches since we arrived back and I suspect he might have won it if he’d had 2 legs). The winner from Hungary did it in 4h 54mins, the slowest was over 9 hours and all 27 participants finished.
Your support and great generosity spurred me and the team on through the race which is certainly the toughest physical challenge I’ve ever done – still I can’t rest on my laurels as Becks will be going through labour with Clarky no.2 in a month’s time and I wouldn’t dream of pretending it was as hard as that! The Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital is hugely grateful too, so a massive thank you once again. With the memorial fund, the race sponsorship, offline donations and a few related things, the total should end up being around £180,000 which is just phenomenal.