The Last Desert: Stage 1

Stage 1: Yesterday morning we finally arrived on the Antarctic continent & immediately departed the boat for stage 1. The zodiac ride out to the island on which we were racing was incredible. Ice bergs filled the harbour ranging in size from small footballs to larger than houses. Penguins were swimming back and forth across the channel popping up and diving in and out of the water as they went. We landed ashore in the middle of a penguin colony. There were 1000's of them. They can't walk properly so they waddle with their arms out behind them and often fall over. We hiked up a very steep hill before RTP decided to hold the stage on a small plataeu half way up the mountainside. The course was absolutely brutal. I head off behind Karno (Dean Karnazes) and we broke the trail for around an hour before he started to pull ahead. I knew i was in good shape and felt I could really push Dean, the question was how much he wanted to win this last one of the year for him. The snow was over 2 feet thick the whole way around the course and when Dean started running the hills i dropped off the pace by 50 - 100 yards or so. The race format was to cover as much ground/ as many laps as possible within 3 hours. The big problem with this format is that you have to keep overtaking people the whole time which is both frustrating for them and for you. The best thing about that is is that you get plenty of encouragement especially from the Team Trifecta boys, Pete Bocquet and the other Brits in the race. Ive no idea how much ground we covered in the three hours but it was harder than any marathon ive done and i was cramping up massively on the walk back down to the shore. It was agony for a while but i took on a lot of salt and redressed the balance quickly. We were promptly informed then that Stage 2 would start almost straight away. You can imagine the general reaction of the racers when shorlty after finishing a brutal run in thick snow that we were told to get the wet gear back on and go again.