Age Grouper: ICEtrekking and a Race to The Pole

Amundsen: an endurance athlete of a different caliber!
South Pole and back: 1,860 miles round trip.

Roald Amundsen would be proud. I had the distinct pleasure of portraying the guy in a recent local production of Ted Tally's Terra Nova @ Riverwalk Theatre's blackbox. Even though the show is over I still carry the character with me at odd times, like last night when I went running with my new ICEtrekker Diamond Grip traction slip ons. In Michigan if you run outside during the winter, there are times when the pavement has ice that you can't see or is covered by snow. I put these on my shoes and ran right across some icy spots on the sidewalk and in the streets but there was no slipping. No indication that I was even on ice whatsoever. They are amazing. Since it wasn't overly icy out, I could also test running on bare pavement and the ICEtrekkers didn't feel weird at all. They live up to their advertising. Even though Amundsen used skis and dogs to get him to the South Pole 100 years ago, if he were training for an Ironman today, I'm sure he'd endorse these things (actually if Falcon-Scott had used them it might have turned out differently for the Brits). Also, as it happens when I blog, I sometimes Google two search terms I might not ordinarily think of together otherwise, such as the two words: Marathon/Antarctica. Well what do you know, there IS a marathon on the seventh continent. In fact there are two! The one I want to do would cost me around $12,000 dollars to do, so I may have to wait until the kids are out of college to seriously contemplate doing it. Maybe I'll start a new blog when I'm 59, and do the Ice Marathon when I'm 60. For that I won't need a Norwegian accent.

"You feared life had passed you by, that you couldn't keep pace with the younger men. And yet, you see -- it's the younger men who are falling by the wayside, and you who are still strong. You thought it was a kind of death at the Pole -- yet I tell you, you were never so alive as now, and the moment you were born for is here...Live it well."

http://www.terranovaatriverwalk.blogspot.com/