The iceman runneth

The iceman runneth

Mark Scanlon is about to run his fifth marathon in five months

Daniel Carey

IN Aidan Dooley’s one-man theatre show Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorer, the title character recalls that only once during his long service in the Royal Navy did he hear the words ‘I made a mistake’. This week, a small number of people will take part in a marathon on the continent that fascinated Crean. One might be forgiven for thinking that running 26 miles in the Antarctic could be a huge mistake, but the Mayo man among the group can’t wait to get going.
Mark Scanlon’s involvement in the Ice Marathon would be remarkable enough in itself. But this week’s event will be the Attymass man’s sixth marathon in six months. He’s already run in San Francisco, Longford, Sydney, Nairobi and Buenos Aires, and will be in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) in India next month. That will be the final leg of his 777 Challenge, so called because it involves running seven marathons on seven continents in seven months. He’s aiming to raise €50,000 for the Irish Cancer Society, a cause deep to his heart as his father, Kieran, died from the disease.
He was heading to Dublin Airport last Thursday when The Mayo News caught up with him – flying first to Madrid, then to Santiago, Chile, and from there onto the southern tip of South America. The competitors were due to be transported to Patriot Hills in the Antarctic yesterday (Monday) and the race is set for tomorrow, weather permitting. “If the plane can land, we’re sorted!” Scanlon says with a laugh. The Dublin-based runner was in Galway last Wednesday to meet Richard Donovan, the Irishman who organises the Ice Marathon. Donovan had agreed to lend his gear to Scanlon, who was duly presented with a neck collar, balaclava, face mask, ski goggles and a hat – “and that’s only for your head!”
Scanlon has been doing cold weather training in an industrial freezer, and the sight of ‘a guy in a pair of shorts, gloves and a hat running around’ produced raised eyebrows from workers filling orders for ice-cream and frozen food. But he’s hoping the preparation will come in handy.
“I presume it’s pretty much snow and ice all the way,” says Scanlon, “but I’m working on the assumption that they’re not going to let you freeze to death or anything! It’d be bad publicity for them!”
If he seems remarkably relaxed about what’s facing him, it’s possibly because his last two marathons, in Nairobi and Buenos Aires, came within the space of a week. He chuckles ruefully that he ‘thought I was going to die’ after the Kenyan event, and the subsequent few days were ‘just hell’. While in Kenya he had spent time with the Masai tribe and slept in a tent – “an amazing experience, but not a good place to recover after a marathon!” he offers. “I was sunburned badly as well, but I suppose it was my own fault. I didn’t put on any suncream running in Kenya! I suppose I should have seen that one coming! I was bandaged up, I had been bitten by mosquitoes, and I was wondering if I had malaria or not.”
He didn’t, as it turned out, but Scanlon had another marathon to run just days later. He flew from Nairobi to Buenos Aires via London and Sao Paulo. With his luggage and toothbrush checked straight through, he was filthy, his skin was peeling off, and he didn’t even have access to a change of clothes. He got funny looks at Heathrow and spent a sleepless night at Sao Paulo airport. He was feeling slightly sick, perhaps from drinking unbottled water, and suffering the usual post-race pains.
However, arriving in Argentina was ‘like being in paradise’. He had a hot shower for the first time in two weeks, the pain in his muscles eased, and by the time the race came around, he was ready to run anything. “I got to the end of the Buenos Aires marathon and I could have kept going!”
Scanlon has also been drumming up publicity for the cause, most recently by running on a treadmill in Grafton Street, and plans to have more fund-raising events when he returns to Ireland.. He has been keeping a blog on his website www.777challenge.com which makes for fascinating reading. In Sydney, the daffodil suit he wears while running (a nod to the Irish Cancer Society) led to shouts from the crowd of ‘Go sunflower!’ and, rather bizarrely, ‘Go gay pride!’ In Buenos Aires, he was in dire need of a bathroom break, and an argument between a prostitute and a man was temporarily halted as they both stared at him nipping into the bushes. No doubt he’ll have more stories to tell after his trip to the Antarctic.