The Last Continent

I was vacationing in Yellowstone Park in the summer of 2016, when a stranger who had observed my family wearing sweat-wicking marathon finishers shirt asked me if I had considered running a marathon on all seven continents. Within days, I had added my name to the wait list of those who wanted to run the Antarctica Marathon. I enlisted my radiologist friend Raghu Vikram to join me in this misadventure: after all he had with his example inspired me to run a 50K, a 50 miler and then a 100 miler within four months in 2014-2015. We were both relieved that the Antarctica Marathon was in the then distant future of 2019. To hold our spot we deposited $300 each with Marathon Tours, and then promptly forgot about it.

I proceeded to combine a family vacation to Australia in 2017 to run the Gold Coast Marathon and a college reunion in Africa in 2018 to complete the Victoria Falls Marathon. All that was left was the Last Continent.

In the summer of 2018, I was contacted by Marathon Tours to provide them with the payment for the upcoming race in Antarctica. Unfortunately, Raghu had joined the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Managements MBA program in the meantime and was now unable to take any time off his insanely busy schedule to spend 3 weeks in the Antarctic tundra.

It was either forfeit the money, or find out if there were any other takers for this misadventure. I posted details of the event in the Houston Desis Whatsapp group which consisted of alumni of the 150 miler Houston to Austin bike adventure that we had started years ago. Wihin literally minutes of posting, I was inundated by eager takers interested in the trip.

The first one to respond was Sumanth Donthi who at 6′ 6″ was both the tallest and the fastest Indian distance runner I knew. He had run a near 3 hour marathon in qualifying for Boston. It was easy decision to offer the spot freed by Raghu to Sumanth.

Sumanth only realized what he had lucked into when he met other participants of the 2019 Antarctica Marathon and found out that some of them had been waiting for 6 years to this opportunity. This would be Sumanth’s first Marathon outside the United States.

For me, Antarctica was the Last Continent standing in the way of joining the “exclusive” club of the 700 odd people who had completed a full marathon on 7 continents.