KEY POINTS:
NEW YORK - It's billed as running's greatest adventure but participants in the eighth Antarctica Marathon described it as their greatest challenge after completing the harsh 42.2km course on Monday.
A group of 200 runners slogged across mud and glaciers to take part in the extreme marathon on King George Island, which is about 1100km south of Cape Horn, the tip of South America.
Organizers said runners completed the run in harsh weather extremes, with temperatures dropping to below zero with the wind chill, encountering leopard seals, penguins and steep glaciers along the course.
Michelle Johnson, 34, a single mother of four from Lake City, Minnesota, took up the challenge after surviving a broken neck in a car accident, being struck by lightning, and last year winning a battle with cervical cancer.
"This was a challenge I could control which made it pretty significant in my world but I never imagined it would be so hard. It was brutal," she said in a telephone interview after completing the run in 5 hours 33 minutes and 39 seconds.
"At one stage there was a white-out and I couldn't see anything in front of me - then I came within about five feet of a seal who barked at me. It really scared me and made me run a bit faster for a while."
The race has been run eight times since it began in 1995 and was last held in 2005. Participants have to take several flights and a 44-hour sea journey to get to the event.
This year's winners were Christina Harding, 31, of Weston, Massachusetts, who won the women's division with a time of four hours, 54 minutes and 33 seconds and Matthew Tyler of Victoria, British Columbia, won the men's division in 3:51:33.
- REUTERS
