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The Last Desert Blogs 2012

Roger Hanney

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The Last Desert (2012) blog posts from Roger Hanney

01 December 2012 04:26 am (GMT+08:00) Beijing, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Urumqi

MINDBLASTED AMAZEMENT!!! How do I describe our time in Antarctica so far? Uploading to internet from here is a bit of an issue but as soon as we're back in Argentina I have some great photos of the team, killer whales, other competitors, 2200 metre high snow and ice mountains, meshed layers of low-lying cloud almost touching our heads as we run, and closeups of Jess' first penguin encounter, plus - of course - penguins themselves.

All our gear is working well. First day we ran 13 hours, yesterday was about 9 hours with a rest and sightseeing day in between. Doing this final desert with such brilliantly unique surrounds, awesome crew and organisation, and friends we have made throughout the year is a truly original experience.

The expedition leader is a hardy Scotsman called Kelvin who wears shorts in the face of everything except blizzards. Picture Gerard Butler with giant, hardcore, expedition-leading, mountaineering, orca-punching 25-kg adventure balls, rather than teeny-tiny, designer-label-promoting, actor balls.

Coming back on the rubber duckies yesterday with frozen figures after a day of rolling around a 3-km loop course, one side in sun, the other in Mordor-esque metallic grey, there was near calamity. Our boat-driver unloaded one of the ten runners back on to the main ship, the Plancius, then in a thick Russian pirate commander accent barked 'Abort operation, abort operation!'. Naturally, we thought 'Wuh?!?'.

Just 8 metres away, a lone Zodiac pilot was butting the front of his boat against an iceberg, trying to push it away from the ship. They don't threaten the ship itself, but when its anchor is dropped, they can push the ship, drag the anchor, and damage the ocean floor. Our rubber duckie pulled up alongside and began pushing with its bow too. But suddenly, the Zodiac driver in the first boat revved his motor too hard, his prow accelerated up on to the berg itself and his boat sheared off to the left, tipping sideways at a 30-degree angle. Holding on to nothing other than the motor handle, he was banking sharply backward through space like a sailboarder, precariously hanging over the frozen waters for a breath-holding moment, before miraculously regaining the horizontal plane as he shot toward the open harbour we were skirting.

The line between comfort and cataclysm here is pencil-thin. On the first day, we added one final taste of the 7km out-and-back section of a 13km figure-8 course. heading out with our backs to the high-hanging sun, the day was not much cooler than it had been since 9am. But as we turned to head back, just before 9pm, it was clear that the game had changed. Menacing clouds had risen from nowhere to block the sinking sun. Wind intensity doubled and the temperature felt like it had dropped by 5-10 degrees in a matter of minutes. Fingers numbed and concern grew as some team members dropped behind, seemingly slowed by the cold, rather than accelerating as a means of diminishing its effects.

The support crew and expedition operators who waited for us, the last runners on the course, were awesome. They had us off the shore and on Zodiacs headed back to the Plancius within about 3 minutes of hitting the theoretical finish line. There was no doubt that even the experienced polar crew were wary of the sharp change in climate.

Meanwhile, though, our cameraman, James, has yet to learn 2 things about these events that he has been filming all year.
1. Eat and drink during the day unless you're wanting to be a 5pm martyr.
2. Endurance runners halfway through an event are THE LAST people in the world you should think of telling about your levels of pain or fatigue.
Other than that, he's a fungi : )

Running this afternoon, sleeping on the ice tonight, and hopefully a big final day of racing tomorrow.

Time and climate will tell.....

PS Our Mafate 2 are keeping our feet well-insulated from the frozen ground and long running. The hair-dryer wax treatment I applied before leaving Argentina seems to have worked really well for the waterproofing we needed too.

Comments: Total (1) comments

Diane v

Posted On: 04 Dec 2012 09:23 am

Wonderful read Rog - "The line between comfort and cataclysm here is pencil-thin." - love it! Doesn't seem real to me that you guys have actually been down there, but I'm sure it does to you! :) Massive congrats on your and the team's achievements!!

30 November 2012 03:39 am (GMT+08:00) Beijing, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Urumqi

Ooooh, controversy! The presentation, 'Ice Maidens: Women in Antarctica', just started with James Brown 'Man's World' blaring over the ship's speakers. We've just had lunch after an amazing presentation by Henryk on Shackleton's heroic but ultimately misdirected adventure that began aboard the appropriately named Endurance.

Why are we inside for presentations instead of outside running? Right now the ship's deck is covered in snow, even though the wind has now dropped to a gentle 30 knots or so. The weather isn't so much a threat to runners, as we have a vast array of weather-safe running gear. But at a certain stage, generally around 45 knot winds, the Zodiacs can't operate safely and that means, problematically, no return trip.

The past 24 hours has been remarkable. Yesterday afternoon we had a short run on a short loop, but within a 1.2km circuit our comedic course planners managed to find about 140 metres of elevation gain, bordered on 2 sides by risky overhangs, facing the result of two massive snow shears and overlooking a vast, black mirror of near-frozen ocean harbour bound by 5-storey thick walls of prehistoric snow. The team made a reasonable number of short loops in two hours, but capturing footage for the video record of the Grand Slam was the priority. The ending left a bit to desired as the team became separated which meant an extra lap was abandoned to a temper tantrum.

But ugly clouds pass and bad tastes fade, as we ended the day by returning to the shoreline and sleeping there last night, in bivy bags (waterproof, technical versions of the classic Australian swag) on the shore of the Antarctic mainland, metres from chortling penguin colonies under softly falling snowflakes. Unforgettable, and quite possibly our last underfoot experience if this weather holds.

The captain and expedition leader are pursuing alternative locations with hope for activities on shore somewhere to go ahead, but the runners all seem in a chirpy almost-celebratory damn-near post-finish-line mood. On the one hand, it would be great to have more off-boat experiences in this place of persistent beauty, and of course Jess wants a 13-hour run : )

On the other hand, Born to Run's Ron Schwebel is down with what may be a bacterial infection or some nasty virus. He might be Born to Run but right now he Needs to Rest. How the next 15 hours will unfold is, as seems a matter of course down here, uncertain and largely beyond anyone's control. Will this effect his Coast2Kosci start next Friday? No idea, but right now 'contagious' is a very dirty word.

Once again, we experienced penguins up close yesterday. While they wandered around us and through our groups, or scudded underwater like ultrasonic torpedoes, 'testosterone problems' - namely, an excess - saw a number of runners and race directors almost-nude up and take a 'polar plunge'. With water at roughly zero degrees, they're still looking pretty refreshed today.

Hopefully pictures will tell a better story when we have the bandwidth to post them, at www.facebook.com/hokaoneoneaustralia or www.facebook.com/teamborntorun or on my own fb or my blog at www.runeatsleeprun.com. The singular primitive and elemental purity of this forgotten world has touched everyone here, resulting in either bliss or suffrage. There's no effective means other than a Vulcan mind-meld to convey the bond we now share with many of the people here with whom we have run and adventured this year.

And no representations can really express the heart-bursting wonder that surrounds us. Only a visit to Antarctica can likely explain a visit to Antarctica.

Comments: Total (0) comments

24 November 2012 10:41 am (GMT+08:00) Beijing, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Urumqi

It’s been a star-studded trip so far on board the Plancius, headed for Antarctica. Yesterday, Day 2, we met Liz Hurley, Russell Throw, Barf Simpson, Heave McQueen, and even still-motion all-stars Wallace & Vomit. My all-natural approach to zenning seasickness away without help from stuck-behind-the-ear scopolamine patches lasted until about 10am, by which point the alternating view of big sky and big swells had done its work as I hopped off the icebreaking boat and boarded the porcelain bus.


Everything’s hunky-dorie now though. We’ve had the talk about how to board the rubber-duckies for our first trip ashore. We’ve vacuumed our bags, clothes and shoes for stray invasive seeds and dirt contaminants, the first day’s racing over 14 hours ona 13km figure-8 looped circuit on King George’s Island has been fully explained, gear lists for carrying and stashing have been circulated and WE JUST CAN’T WAIT!!!!


This trip is just dreamtastic. It seems like every couple on the boat has been housed in a spacious and fully-appointed suite. WIN! While our teammates have been sent back to school camp. HA! : ) Sorry guys!


It’s such a reunion with some our favourite new friends from throughout the year. Whatever their first language is, we all understand the excitement of the unknown evident in everyone’s face. Alina and Alistair (Mary’s man) are missing but otherwise the core team of Riitta, Sam, and Mary from RTP are here which is also very cool. Hiro’ from Japan is missing, so too Japanese Spiderman but he’s here on my t-shirt. Also great to meet new faces like Wendy & Gary with their own amazing stories of endurance to share.


Whales were sighted yesterday, so too dolphins. Various Antarctic birds have been circling and racing the ship since yesterday. They feel a bit like a welcoming committee. Oh yeah, and Joel – where are you dude?


The next 14 hours might pass slowly as we wait to head ashore for a 14-hour run, weather-permitting. Or it might all go superfast, as we hope that our level of preparedness will match the brand new challenge before us. I also hope our ski-waxed Mafate 2s will keep the water and frost out. Nothing fun about wet, cold toes in alpine conditions.


There wasn’t much shooting done in the few days we had at Ushuaia. James (cameraman) had big plans for each day but ultimately only got a bit of filming done. I’m about to go out on deck n swirling blusters of shortlived snow to chat with him about what an incredible year this has been for Team Born to Run (www.borntorun.com.au) and especially what it says about living with type 1 diabetes that I’m here with my running mates ready to bag the Grand Slam in one corner of the harshest and most unforgiving and rarely-encountered wild environments on Earth.


Now it’s all dreams and expectation. In 28 hours it will be substantial and real. Nothing’s done until it’s done and so it’s too soon to say how we’re going to cope this time, but let’s just say that tomorrow we run with penguins. BRING IT ON!!! WOOT!!!!!!!


Iceberg Style.

Comments: Total (2) comments

Alina B

Posted On: 25 Nov 2012 01:50 pm

Hey Roger - Thanks for the shout out (does that count as a shout out?)! I definitely feel like I'm missing out on Heave McQueen and Barf McBarf-o-rama. I second Pauline re your blog posts - looking forward to hearing more! Nice work on the suite, by the way. Does it come with a hair dryer? Cheers, Alina

Pauline Rocket

Posted On: 25 Nov 2012 12:08 pm

Oh goodie. Roger is back to blogging again. I look forward to hearing your wonderful words of the Antarctic and to knowing how many of those 13k figures of 8 you have done. How will James gat around on the snow to film you guys? Bring on the penguin stories... P xx

22 November 2012 02:28 am (GMT+08:00) Beijing, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Urumqi

Woot! Seasickness and penguins, here we go! Check out www.facebook.com/rogerhanney or www.facebook.com/teamborntorun for photos of our time running about Ushuaia. More later!

Comments: Total (1) comments

Julie Howle

Posted On: 24 Nov 2012 10:31 pm

Good luck, have fun, and avoid frostbite!