Australian ultrarunner Pat Farmer revealed an expedition of absolutely epic proportions yesterday when he announced that he’ll be running from the North Pole to the South Pole in 2011. The journey will get underway in March at the North Pole and will end 11-months later when he reaches the South Pole, 13,000 miles away.
According to this article, Farmer will begin at 90ºN and head south into Canada, then proceed down the West Coast of the U.S. and into Mexico, before continuing through Central and South America.
Eventually, he’ll end up in Ushuaia, Argentina, where he’ll be airlifted to Patriot Hills on the Antarctic continent, where he’ll then complete the last leg of the journey, ending at 90ºS. When he’s finished, the Aussie will have run through 14 countries and three continents. He estimates he’ll wear through 40 pairs of shoes and 300 pairs of socks in the process.
As if the goal of running from one pole to another wasn’t grand enough, Farmer has even loftier designs for his run. He hopes to raise $100 million for the Red Cross along the way to aid efforts for clean water and sanitation programs around the world. He also intends to address the United Nations after he has completed his mission as well.
You can read more about the journey and follow along with Pat on his website, which as of this writing is down for maintenance and updates. I’m sure it’ll have all kinds of info once it is up and running properly however.
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run Forest, run 😀
An unbelievable challenge! Having just finished the book about his run around Australia (only 15,000kms), I've been inspired to do one myself, a mere 1,400kms over 16 days. Hoping to raise about $50,000. The fun starts in September 2011.
I'll keep you posted on my progress too – http://www.33marathons.com
Cheers
Andy
The site is actually pole2polerun.com not poletopolerun.com.
http://www.pole2polerun.com
Thanks for the support
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what distance did he run in the Simpson ? how many hours ? time of the year ?
Gosh – this is epic! My maths makes that running over a marathon every day for almost a year!
And I have never heard of live video streaming into classrooms from the North Pole. This will indeed be a "first" of an expedition.
Agreed Alastair. It's going to be quite the amazing undertaking. It definitely will be fun to follow along.