KEY POINTS:
John Gluckman has climbed Everest and crossed Antarctica, but his biggest challenge was cancer.
The Warkworth dairy farmer was midway through his goal of completing marathons on seven continents when a routine checkup revealed prostate cancer.
A day earlier, he had received an invitation to Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, and the trip proved to be his biggest motivator in confronting the disease.
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"I decided I wanted to have surgery, but I still wanted to go to Baffin Island, so it was a race to get it out, and still get fit in time. The doctor said, 'You can't train for six weeks.' I told him, 'The trip's not for 15 weeks - even if I rest for six weeks, that's still nine weeks to train and get fit."'
His prostate gland was removed in early January 2003. Three-and-a-half months later, he reached the summit of the Penny Icecap, the highest point on the island.
The 56-year-old is sharing his story to help the New Zealand Herald-Auckland Cancer Society Christmas Appeal raise funds for cancer research and help families coping with cancer.
Mr Gluckman's approach to cancer may have been slightly unusual, but his message is a powerful one of hope.
"It's not so much what you do, it's what you do with what you've got. Take [cancer survivor] Lance Armstrong winning the Tour de France. It's a great effort. Then take a 95-year-old woman. She breaks her hip. Just getting up out of the chair and walking across the room, for her that takes just as much courage, and it's just as hard.
"Everyone has their own Mt Everest in life."
Mr Gluckman has since achieved his goal, running five more marathons after the surgery.
"I knew I had done a lot of this stuff before, so I said, 'Basically apart from my cancer I'm still in excellent health, I can still keep going, so why not?"'
He is believed to be the only person on official records to have finished a marathon and climbed the highest peak on every continent.
It all started with a race in Borneo in 1990. He heard there of a marathon on Mt Everest - the highest marathon in the world.
"And then while I was running the Everest marathon in 1997, I met someone who'd done a marathon in Antarctica and I said, 'Why not?'
"After I'd done Everest and Antarctica, I thought I'd done the two hardest ones in two continents - why not go and do one in all the other continents?"
A remaining goal is to go into space.
A positive attitude is critical in fighting cancer, he says.
"You just have to think positive, make the most of each day. You'll get over it. I mean, many people make a total recovery and get on with life."
