Antarctic Marathon

Things are chugging along here at McMurdo. Still enjoying the nightshift, or night-walking as they call it. As my pal cargo Burke says, you never sleep as a night-walker, you just take naps b/c you're always trying to stay awake when you should be sleeping to do daytime stuff.

We had a nightshift morning bar the other day where we all go to the bar at 7am (our equivalent of 7pm) and have burgers and beers, and then we played some pretty intense bingo. I ended up winning one round (a 20 dollar gift card to amazon), but actually tieing b/c cargo scheflo also won at the same time, so we had to have a ping pong off to see who got the prize, which I ended up winning. On night shift we've been playing a lot of ping pong after work with our group. Very fun!

1-22-12

Today was the antarctic marathon. Furthest south marathon in the world. You could either ski it or run it, and I decided to ski it b/c since my only running training had been the 5k and the 10k, I decided not to risk getting injured, though several of the shuttle drivers did run it without training. The race was out on the ross ice shelf on the road to pegasus, something I've driven quite a lot of and of course know quite well. I ended up getting 3rd in the marathon ski, finishing in a time of 3 hours and 2 minutes. The course, unlike most other marathons (I assume) as empty with hardly any people around of course. But we did have some awesome fans like cargo monica, shuttle jerod, and shuttle dave driving around in our truck cheering us on and then cargo burke, sci-co Jenn, and UT Matt heckling us and displaying funny signs like "you're not winning" "are those tears in your eyes" "you should just quit". At mile 23, those guys gave me a coors light that I chugged...surprisingly it gave quite a lot of energy! Also had a place called the 1/2 way house (1/2 way on pegasus, but mile 6 and mile 18 of the race), fleet ops had a big bbq at the aid station complete with burgers, brats, fried bananas, and beer...and of course a couch. It was tempting to partake, as several people did, but I knew if I sat down I wouldn't get back up. But I made sure to visit it after the race. A burger never tasted so good! Going out towards pegasus on the 1st half was the easiest b/c the wind was at our backs so it was warmer and you got a little push. Turning around was brutal b/c the wind and cold were in your face and it's like skiing uphill to go into the wind. But this is where I made my move. My skis (rentals) are not as good as the people that brought their skis down, nor is my form and technique, so with the wind 6 people were in front of me. But into the wind, I was able to power through and use my arms (these skinny runner types don't have strong arms) and get back into the race and into 3rd! At the beginning of the race, I think more people were worried about how to dress than the race itself. It's hard b/c if you sweat too much it will freeze and you'll be cold, but if you don't bring eough layers, the wind will get you. Regardless, at the end, everyone had frosty hair and frosty beards. Shuttle Bobbick, Shuttle Nate, Shuttle Eric, and Shuttle Linah all ran the full marathaon. I was the only full ski marathon runner of the shuttles group. Shuttle Mel (1st place), Shuttle Elisha (2nd place) and Mail Steph were the ato/shuttle folks that ran the 1/2 marathon. Of course since the marathon was during the day people's day, it was our middle of the night, so we all pulled 36 hour days without sleep. Shortly after we finished the marathon, us night-walkers had to report for our 12 hour shift.

1/24/12
Saw two molting emperor peguins today while driving. They were cute, and we were lucky to see them out on every run!