now a North Pole marathon

Any of you run the Nanisivik Marathon is still run? It was run for a
number of years as the marathon closest to the Artic Circle.. Had a
few friends do it in the mid 80's.

http://www.nunavutrun.com/backgrnd.htm

http://tceplus.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0004755

Midnight Sun Marathon:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=travel&res=9F0CE0D81E3DF934A25752C0A965958260

Documentary: Running the Midnight Sun
http://www.nutaaq.com/midnight.html
Ozzie Gontang

Quoted message said:

Any of you run the Nanisivik Marathon is still run? It was run for a
number of years as the marathon closest to the Artic Circle.. Had a
few friends do it in the mid 80's.

Ozzie, good to see you posting again. AFAIK, it is still run, along with
an ultra (2 laps of the marathon course), but is called Nunavut. They
did post 2005 race dates, but I don't see race results for the past
couple years.
http://www.nunavutrun.com/
Also many of the bookmarks that I have seem to be dead, but I believe
there was a writeup about it in Ultrarunning in the last couple years.

The mine at the north (?) end has shut down (about 2000, maybe a year or
so earlier, iirc) so the course needed to be changed. It might be a
smaller race now than when your friends ran it, but not sure.

When I first bumped into it several years ago and I realized it was in
the Canadian High Arctic, a place I've really wanted to visit, but never
managed to get some research going there, I started doing homework on it
(although haven't done any specific homework recently). I've e-mailed a
couple folks about it, one who only did the old route, and one who has
done both (Colin Kingsford, about 10 times combined, iirc). I think it
was/is set up as a "tour" and you get to spend some additional time
exploring.

I think I saw a link to another high arctic ultra race in hardcopy of
Ultrarunning, but haven't followed up on it - or it might have been same
race but different link.

I just got back from a week at a statewide trails conference, so will
look for hardcopy and links when I get a chance. (and got to do some
more snowshoeing on way home)

Dot

--
"Success is different things to different people"
-Bernd Heinrich in Racing the Antelope

Dot said:

I think I saw a link to another high arctic ultra race in hardcopy of
Ultrarunning, but haven't followed up on it - or it might have been same
race but different link.

Northwest Passage 35 mi race - definitely different from Nunavut races:
http://www.canadianarcticholidays.ca/ArcticMarathon.html

Ozzie wrote earlier:
"marathon closest to the Artic Circle"
I think closest to the "North Pole" or "northernmost" is the advertising
feature, since the Arctic circle is hundreds of miles south of the North
Pole (and hundreds of miles SOUTH of these races).

http://fairbanks-alaska.com/arctic-circle.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle

Dot

--
"Success is different things to different people"
-Bernd Heinrich in Racing the Antelope

In article <[email hidden]>, Dot
<dot.h@#duh?att.net> writes

Quoted message said:

Dot said:

I think I saw a link to another high arctic ultra race in hardcopy of
Ultrarunning, but haven't followed up on it - or it might have been
same race but different link.

Northwest Passage 35 mi race - definitely different from Nunavut races:
http://www.canadianarcticholidays.ca/ArcticMarathon.html

Ozzie wrote earlier:
"marathon closest to the Artic Circle"
I think closest to the "North Pole" or "northernmost" is the
advertising feature, since the Arctic circle is hundreds of miles south
of the North Pole (and hundreds of miles SOUTH of these races).

http://fairbanks-alaska.com/arctic-circle.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle

Dot

The website to which you refer us clearly says that it is NOT the
Northernmost Marathon, merely North America's Northernmost Marathon.

--
Ken

Ken said:

In article <[email hidden]>, Dot
<dot.h@#duh?att.net> writes

Quoted message said:

Dot said:

I think I saw a link to another high arctic ultra race in hardcopy of
Ultrarunning, but haven't followed up on it - or it might have been
same race but different link.

Northwest Passage 35 mi race - definitely different from Nunavut races:
http://www.canadianarcticholidays.ca/ArcticMarathon.html

Ozzie wrote earlier:
"marathon closest to the Artic Circle"
I think closest to the "North Pole" or "northernmost" is the
advertising feature, since the Arctic circle is hundreds of miles
south of the North Pole (and hundreds of miles SOUTH of these races).

http://fairbanks-alaska.com/arctic-circle.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle

Dot

The website to which you refer us clearly says that it is NOT the
Northernmost Marathon, merely North America's Northernmost Marathon.

Sorry about that. My brain was in ultra mode at the time since the
link came from Ultrarunning magazine. There's also the question of
updating web pages to account for new races - the Nunavut one (earlier
post) is slow to update things.

BTW, are you aware of any really northern (at least north of treeline,
preferably in dwarf shrub vegetation or something along those lines)
marathons or ultras elsewhere, like Europe or Asia? This obviously has
the implications of land-based, rather than being on ice pack like the
North Pole marathon. I'm just curious.

Dot

--
"Success is different things to different people"
-Bernd Heinrich in Racing the Antelope

In article <[email hidden]>, Dot
<dot.h@#duh?att.net> writes

Quoted message said:

Ken said:

In article <[email hidden]>,
Dot <dot.h@#duh?att.net> writes

Quoted message said:

Dot wrote:

> I think I saw a link to another high arctic ultra race in hardcopy
>of Ultrarunning, but haven't followed up on it - or it might have
>been same race but different link.
>
Northwest Passage 35 mi race - definitely different from Nunavut races:
http://www.canadianarcticholidays.ca/ArcticMarathon.html

Ozzie wrote earlier:
"marathon closest to the Artic Circle"
I think closest to the "North Pole" or "northernmost" is the
advertising feature, since the Arctic circle is hundreds of miles
south of the North Pole (and hundreds of miles SOUTH of these races).

http://fairbanks-alaska.com/arctic-circle.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle

Dot

The website to which you refer us clearly says that it is NOT the
Northernmost Marathon, merely North America's Northernmost Marathon.

Sorry about that. My brain was in ultra mode at the time since the
link came from Ultrarunning magazine. There's also the question of
updating web pages to account for new races - the Nunavut one (earlier
post) is slow to update things.

BTW, are you aware of any really northern (at least north of treeline,
preferably in dwarf shrub vegetation or something along those lines)
marathons or ultras elsewhere, like Europe or Asia? This obviously has
the implications of land-based, rather than being on ice pack like the
North Pole marathon. I'm just curious.

Dot

I have an entry in to do the Svalbard Marathon on June 10th. This also
calls itself the World's most Northerly Marahon. (Which is why I got
interested when I saw your post) The Marathon is at Longyearbyen. A
quick look at the atlas shows it to be further North than Somerset
Island, but as that part of the World gets the Gulf Stream Drift I don't
think it is all that cold - perhaps 40 degrees at that time of the year.

If you want to do it you need to move fast as flights are getting booked
up.
--
Ken

Ken said:

I have an entry in to do the Svalbard Marathon on June 10th. This also
calls itself the World's most Northerly Marahon. (Which is why I got
interested when I saw your post) The Marathon is at Longyearbyen. A
quick look at the atlas shows it to be further North than Somerset
Island, but as that part of the World gets the Gulf Stream Drift I don't
think it is all that cold - perhaps 40 degrees at that time of the year.

If you want to do it you need to move fast as flights are getting booked
up.

Thanks. Svalbard was going to be my guess. We look forward to your race
report! 🙂

My mileage isn't up to those distances yet, but maybe in a few years
(2008 or 9 would be absolute earliest I'd be looking at doing anything
outside the Alaska and maybe Yukon area, if then). Because of travel
times and costs to do anything outside this area, if I do anything at
all, I'm probably leaning more toward a couple weeks of running
somewhere, whether it's multiple races, camp, tour, or whatever, not
sure. My interest is in scenery. 🙂

Dot

--
"Success is different things to different people"
-Bernd Heinrich in Racing the Antelope