From the frozen bottom of the world to the tropics, 45-year-old San Franciscan Chris Edell and 59 others ran a marathon every day for a week.
It’s called the World Marathon Challenge. It brings participants on a whistle-stop tour of the planet, running 42.2 kilometers at every destination. Each participant pays almost $50,000 for the privilege.
Chris Edell at Ultima Basecamp in Antarctica. Photo: World Marathon Challenge/Runbuk
The itinerary
This year’s 60 participants met up in Cape Town, South Africa on January 28. Runners were responsible for finding their own way to the starting line.
From there, they fly over the Southern Ocean in a windowless “old Soviet jet.” The temperature was -10˚C when they landed. Edell recalls thinking, “Holy shit, I’m in Antarctica now.”
His awe didn’t stop him from running a successful marathon. The need to keep warm was likely motivational. In less than five hours, he was back at the starting line in Ultima Basecamp. Not long after that, he was back in Cape Town, enjoying the warm weather and preparing for race number two in Perth, Australia.
After that, it was onto Dubai for the “Asia” leg, and then Madrid. But number six, Edell said, was the hardest: Fortaleza, Brazil. Having trained in the cool, foggy hills of San Francisco, Edell struggled with the humid heat of Fortaleza. The fact that he’d run 211 kilometers in the past five days didn’t help. It took him a half-hour longer than any previous race to finish, but he did finish.
Back on American soil for the final race in Miami, Edell got his second (seventh?) wind. He described the pain of the last race as “incredible,” but he pushed on, bolstered by a growing certainty of success.
This map shows the whirlwind tour of the world which competitors took. World Marathon Challenge/Runbuk
Pain is the point
Chris Edell trained for two years to prepare for the World Marathon Challenge. His running had started as a simple hobby, a way to stay fit while working a desk job in the tech industry. But it escalated over time, and eventually, he was running 56 to 160 kilometers every week.
The hardest part of the 7-7-7 challenge wasn’t the running; it was the recovery. Time normally spent relaxing and recharging involved frantically jetting to the next racetrack. Competitors changed clothes in airport bathrooms and took advantage of long international flights to catch whatever sleep they could.
But the point of a challenge is, of course, to be challenging. For Edell, the goal of his extreme hobby is to have “dominated the inner voice” by prevailing through pain. One must imagine that medieval flagellants had a similar mentality.
But even for Edell, once is enough. Although it gave him a long-lasting emotional high, doing it twice, he averred, would be “totally unnecessary.” So he does draw the line somewhere.
