North Pole Marathon 2010: The Characters

Richard Donovan, the organizer, and ultra-athlete extraordinaire with Victor Boyarsky, the legendary polar explorer. When we were snowed in, Victor gave a presentation on his 1990 Antarctic expedition : 6500km in 221 days, the first west-east crossing of Antarctica on foot.

David Attenborough. I told him that my 9-year-old daughter could care less that I had run the North Pole marathon. Telling her I met the guy who created Planet Earth, would really impress her. He's a hero.

Vadim Prudnikov

Vadim is an expedition leader, and a PhD in mathematics. He was a spectacular host and gave an amazing talk on the ice station and history of polar exploration.

Jamie Cuthbertson was stunning, as was Alex Pavanello, the triathlete who guided him. They finished 15th out of 25 and inspired all of us. Jamie lost his sight in an explosives accident while serving as a Captain in the Royal Engineers. He has an athletic resume that makes us all look lame: Marathon des Sables, Trans 333, a 150-mile trek in the Gobi Desert, London Triathlon and Glasgow Marathon.

Sara Olliphant

Sara is 15 and has already done marathons on 6 continents. She sings, and played a mean soccer game when the marathoners took on the Russian ice-station staff. She'll be the youngest person to complete marathons on all 7 continents and at the North and South pole, when she takes part in the Antarctic marathon in December 2010.

The four women in the race: Ivana Pilarova from the Czech republic, who has run 68 marathons; Yours truly; Julia Tizard, a PhD who runs operations for Virgin Galactic (and ace card player) and Sara Oliphant.

And then there were the lunatics ....

Mark Fell and Brent Underdahl

Brent is an multiple ironman triathlete. Mark has run Ultra marathons in the desert and Antarctica. They decided the North Pole marathon wasn't hard enough, so they challenged each other to drink a shot of Vodka on each of the 11 laps. They did, and still finished in the middle of the pack.

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Rik Vercoe raised an extra £750 for charity by running naked at the pole.... He also came in second in the race.An ultra-marathon and marathon runner, Rik has run the London Marathon three times, and ran the Polar Circle Marathon in Greenland. A keen SCUBA diver instructor, he has made 1400 dives in 30 countries and has written 6 diving guide books.

Andrei Rosu is a Romanian banker and wanted to be the first person to drum at the North Pole.