Race to put runners on top of the world

Apple Valley, Calif., doctor Vir Nanda is a marathoner 10 times over, pounding over routes from Greece to Arizona. But this year, Nanda is skipping those balmy locales for something a little cooler.

Come Saturday, the oncologist will be one of seven Americans running in the North Pole Marathon. More than 50 extreme marathoners will cover 26.195 miles in snowshoes across a 6- to 12-foot-thick sheet of frozen Arctic Ocean. For fun. At 15 below.

Nanda has been dragging himself out of bed at 4:30 a.m. to train in the Mojave Desert scrub and, on occasion, plodding through his grassy backyard in lightweight snowshoes.

He has shelled out $10,000 for the entrance fee.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience," said Nanda, 52, who will take a Russian cargo plane from a Norwegian island outpost to the northernmost spot on the globe.

Irishman Richard Donovan pioneered the concept in April 2002, running solo in aimless circles at 90 degrees latitude with a global positioning gadget in hand to measure his distance. He was eager to conquer the North Pole after he had one of the top finishes in the first-ever South Pole Marathon earlier that year.

After the run, Donovan realized that his one-man North Pole expedition might have mass appeal.

Nanda read about the cold-weather race in Runner's World magazine and was hooked. After a brief stop in Scandinavia, the doctor will haul a rolling suitcase crammed with $2,000 of cold-weather gear to the Arctic Circle.

Runners will wear three sets of thin polyester shirts and pants and will triple-layer gloves and socks. Nanda's heavy-duty anti-freeze goggles are outfitted with tiny fans that blow hot air to defog them. They fit over the black ninja mask that will cover Nanda's nose and mouth to protect against frostbite.

Nanda, the lone Californian in the race, has yet to try on the bulky get-up.

He trains mostly on Apple Valley's dusty desert roads, running about 60 miles a week, with occasional early-morning visits to Big Bear, in the nearby San Bernardino Mountains, to practice dashing through the snow.

The runners will fly to the marathon's circular route at 89 degrees latitude, about 60 miles from the pole.

The course isn't laid out at the exact North Pole, so that ice breaks and ice floes, which would be perilous for runners and could send portions of the track drifting away, can be avoided.

Contestants will run eight laps of just over three miles each on a solid sheet of ice where Donovan can monitor the group with binoculars and a snowmobile will trail them. A circular track is the best option, Donovan said, because on a straight route there would be a greater risk of encountering a crack in the ice.

Could the frozen ocean split open under a runner's feet?

"Very, very unlikely," Donovan said. "The perceived risks are greater than the actual risks."

Competitors will pile out of the plane, spend a few hours preparing in a heated tent at the Russian base camp, and then start the first of eight laps shortly after midnight, illuminated by 24-hour sunshine.

The group, which includes running champions and newcomers, will then fly by helicopter to the North Pole, for pictures and souvenir bottles of snow.

"Life is experiences," Nanda said.

Next, he said, he plans to tackle the Great Wall of China.