“Well this is probably the first time I’ve remembered to floss before a marathon”.

I was noting this major life accomplishment looking in the mirror inside the head aboard the Akademik Sergey Vavilov, a Russian “research” vessel from the Cold War, anchored somewhere between 62º and 63º South. I declared my teeth fit for the night and walked back to my bunk. For the first time in three days our porthole had signs of civilization in it — small specks of light from the Chilean research station on King George Island, where tomorrow we would be attempting to run a very cold, very windy 26.2 miles.

“We” were about a hundred people, who had spent the last three days getting to know each other intimately on the way from Buenos Aires to the Antarctic Peninsula via the Drake Passage, known as one of the roughest seas on the planet. As we left the Beagle Channel and entered the Drake, there was strong chop in the forecast, and I reluctantly backed off my plan to brave the rollers without any meds. I knocked on the door of Alex, my newest friend and drug dealer, who grinned and handed me a tube of dramamine pills.

Derek: “There’s a male, either five or six years old. He’s got an unusual plumage pattern on his body, usually the gray extends all the way up the wings to the body, but on him it kind of arcs its way there on the rear of the wing. Beautiful.” Me: “Wait, where are you looking?”

The next morning I woke up…and then took a nap. I moved up to the bridge to get a sight on the horizon — having a point of reference is supposed to help — and then took another nap, with my head resting against a comfortable metal pole. By lunch I had fallen asleep involuntarily a total of four times, and I swore off the next dose that I was scheduled to take with the meal. By that afternoon the haze wore off, my sea legs kicked in, and I took to scanning the sea for the wandering albatross that Derek, the ship’s ornithologist, could identify with startling accuracy.

By dinner my recovery was complete, and the next day I stuck to the plan of a short run on the ship’s treadmill. It was located in the hull, which maximized its stability but deprived its room of windows, so staying upright meant keeping a close eye on the jump ropes hanging from the ceiling in order to infer which direction we were currently tilting.

The Vavilov was built in the 1980’s to receive sonar communications from its sister ship, the Akademik Ioffe. We were now following the Ioffe down to Antarctica, lagging its itinerary by a day (despite my requests/inquiries to the Russian crew, we wouldn’t be exchanging any messages via the old transmission equipment, which was about 40 cubic feet and took up an entire room). The Ioffe was also carrying 100 people who were, coincidentally, also eager to run 26 miles through snow and wind at the bottom of the planet.

The race directors disembark from the Ioffe on calm seas

We got our first sight of the Ioffe as we pulled into the inlet that harbored the Chilean research station where we would start the race. Soon we saw it jettison one of its Zodiacs, the small rubber rafts that were our means of going ashore. This one was loaded with five people, all clad in the standard issue bright red waterproof outers (“wetskins”). They were the race organizers, and they had spent most of today out on the marathon course as the denizens of the Ioffe completed their race. They looked cold.

Thom Gilligan, the silver-maned race director, was one of the people in bright red wetskins on the Zodiac. His face was also bright red from the wind he’d gotten that day, and he started the pre-race briefing by saying that the race that today had been “perfect” — snow at the start that tapered off, temperatures in the 20’s, and winds in the 30 mph range. Everyone had finished and was back on the boat. Despite pressure from the Polish contingent, Thom was tight-lipped on any times or results — the official results would be combined after both days, and he didn’t want anyone to have any conceivable advantage.

High school cross country jersey, my unofficial uniform since 1999

The briefing cleared out apart from a few stragglers who lingered to talk to our affable bartender Cody. It was early, and I wasn’t ready to sleep yet, so I snuck off to a corner to eavesdrop and gather my own thoughts for the race. I went over my mental checklist for what I’d bring ashore. Running shoes that had been scrubbed and disinfected so they wouldn’t introduce foreign bacteria to the ecosystem. Twelve Clif bloks removed from their packaging so there was no chance of a wrapper blowing away (they’d live naked in my back pocket). And my unofficial race jersey that would be finishing its tour of the seven continents.

Then there was race strategy. Above all I wanted to finish in one, non-hypothermic piece. There were a lot of unknowns with the weather, the course, and the actual race logistics, so with this in mind I planned specifically to not have a plan and just run as I felt comfortable. Which was comforting in itself.

There was nothing left to do but floss. Now I was ready for bed.