A lot of running purist frown on such spectacles. I have to say I
lean to the "purist" posture on this stuff. The "dumbing down" of
running/marathoning. For example...this guy's hell bent on spectacle
and not on cutting a 3 hr. marathon. my opinion. to each his/her
own.
http://www.jsonline.com/sports/etc/feb05/303718.asp
By GARY D'AMATO
Oak Creek - They're letting anyone into the Seven Continents Club these
days.
Marathon
Photo/Jeffrey Phelps
Jeff Turner wears medals from marathons he has run in on all seven
continents. The Oak Creek runner aims to repeat the feat.
Quotable
It's probably a $15,000 to $20,000 commitment to do all seven
continents. You can do some of the trips for $800 and others, like
Antarctica, cost as much as $5,000.
- Jeff Turner
Just a few years ago, only a handful of people had run in marathons on
all seven continents. Now, there are 119 members worldwide and the club
is growing.
So Jeff Turner of Oak Creek wants to distance himself from the pack, to
use a running term. He intends to join the elite of the elite: marathon
runners who have raced on all seven continents twice.
"We've had only one other person do it," said Thom Gilligan, founder of
the Seven Continents Club.
On Feb. 26, Turner is to join 189 other globe-trotting runners in
Antarctica for the appropriately named "Last Marathon." It will be
Turner's second race at the bottom of the earth, where the trail
hazards include bone-chilling cold, drifting snow and gale-force winds,
not to mention the occasional territorial fur seal and the vulture-like
brown skua.
The marathon route on King George Island loops through Russian,
Uruguayan, Chilean and Chinese scientific research bases, through icy
streams and up and down ominous Collins Glacier.
The Boston Marathon, it ain't.
"I ran there in 1997 and it was my first international marathon,"
Turner said. "At the time that was probably the toughest conditions I'd
run in. There are no roads. The trail was really, really muddy so leg
turnover was hard. You feet would stick in the mud. It was icy in
spots.
"One time when I was crossing a creek a skua kept dive-bombing me. I
guess I must have looked like death warmed over."
The 49-year-old pharmacist wouldn't describe himself as a
thrill-seeker, though he has reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro
and hang-glided off a cliff in Rio de Janeiro. In Australia, he even
tried Zorbing, an extreme sport in which participants ("Zorbonauts"😉
roll down a hill inside a giant ball.
"I like to challenge myself," Turner said.
So much so that he's knocking off two continents on this trip. Eight
days after running in Antarctica, he'll toe the line in the Fin del
Mundo ("End of the World"😉 Marathon in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, the
southernmost city on earth.
He figures, what the heck, it's on the way home. Besides, in 1997 it
took Turner exactly 100 hours to get from Antarctica to his bed in Oak
Creek. Another marathon might break up the travel monotony.
The double-dip will give Turner five continents the second time around,
leaving just Africa and Australia. His goal is to get them in before
2007 so he can say he's done all seven continents twice in a 10-year
span.
As hobbies go, this one is on the expensive side.
"It's probably a $15,000 to $20,000 commitment to do all seven
continents," said Turner, who works a part-time job to cover his
marathon expenses. "You can do some of the trips for $800 and others,
like Antarctica, cost as much as $5,000."
At 5-foot-8 and a sturdy 170 pounds, Turner doesn't look like a
marathon runner and he'd be the first to admit his times aren't close
to world-class. His best time in 34 marathons is a respectable 3 hours
12 minutes but he typically covers the 26.2 miles in about 3:45.
Few runners, however, can match his sense of adventure.
Turner has run marathons on the Great Wall of China, in sweltering
95-degree heat in Singapore and through vineyards in southern France.
He competed in what was billed as the first athletic event of the
millennium, a marathon in New Zealand that started at sunrise on Jan.
1, 2000.
On his first trip to Africa he ran a marathon in Tanzania just 12 hours
after completing a five-day climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
"Actually, it was my best international marathon," Turner said. "I
think the mountain climb helped my marathon because my body was so
efficient at exchanging oxygen after being at altitude.
"I finished second overall, but it was a small marathon. There were
only about 100 runners. That's my only trophy."
During that race, Tanzanian runners joined the leaders at the
half-marathon mark to carry their water bottles the rest of the way.
Turner was in fourth place at the time and his Tanzanian companion
coached him, telling him when to lay back and when to make a move on
the leaders.
"He coached me to a second-place finish," Turner said. "And the amazing
thing was, he never took a drink of water until I was two kilometers
from the finish line and he saw I had water to spare. He ran almost a
half-marathon without drinking a thing.
"The guy was running in beat-up old shoes, too. I crossed the finish
line, took off my shoes and gave them to him. He was so excited."
Turner ran track and cross country at Milwaukee Tech High School but
drifted away from running after college. In 1989, he started working
out again to lose weight and was talked into entering the Lakefront
Marathon by other runners at a health club.
"I was saying, 'Anyone who runs in marathons ought to have his head
examined,' " Turner said. "I signed up just to see how far I could go.
If I dropped out after 10 or 15 miles, so what?"
To his surprise, he finished the race and was hooked. He hasn't missed
a Lakefront Marathon since and other than a nagging case of plantar
fasciitis has never been seriously injured.
Turner has no plans to stop running once he completes the seven
continents a second time.
"There are marathons in Spain, Italy, Paris and London in four
consecutive weeks," he said. "Some year, maybe after I get my seven
continents in this time around, I'd like to take a month's vacation and
go do that."
He'd also like to qualify for the Boston Marathon again, having run it
in 1993. And then there is the challenge of running on all seven
continents a third time.
"I'm actually seriously thinking about doing it again," he said. "We'll
see how the finances go."