SA women’s winner and team beat -40ºC temps in five-day Arctic race

The SA team of trail runner Tarryn Gordon-Bennett — the women’s winner in 2024’s 230km, five-day Ice Ultra Marathon extreme race in Swedish Lapland in the Arctic Circle — got used to their snow shoes by running on a beach.

There are echoes of the story of the Jamaican bobsleigh team at the 1988 Winter Olympics, featured in the film Cool Runnings, in how all six South Africans finished the 39-entrant event six weeks ago. Eight runners didn’t make it.

That movie was a light take — the Ice Ultra is a monumentally serious race.

Each stage, except the 15km fifth day, is a marathon length or longer.

The fourth is 64km, all across snow-covered Arctic tundra, mountains and frozen lakes, mostly run in snow shoes (what used to look like tennis rackets) in temperatures as low as -40°C.

In addition, the race is self-sufficient, so competitors carry what they need — 8.5kg — on their backs.

On the route through the Unesco heritage site in Laponia, Europe’s last remaining wilderness, there is no-one — just reindeer and thousands of kilometres of snow.

Add another factor for the SA team that included Gordon-Bennett’s running partner Andre Erasmus (seventh place), Nick Denoon-Stevens (ninth), Cordi van Niekerk (22nd), Robin Kelly (24th) and Paul Venter (26th) — arctic conditions are not this country’s thing.

Gordon-Bennett placed sixth overall and top woman in 39hr, just over 6½ hours behind Irish ultra-marathon runner Alex O’Shea in first (32:31).

Erasmus was 5min behind in 39:14 and Denoon-Stevens, in 42:25.

‘Amazing but brutal’

“What an amazing but brutal race,” Gordon-Bennett said. “The first day is run across 50km, day two is 43km, day three 42km, day four was the big one with 64km, and day five 15km.

“It was a mini-Comrades for the first three days, almost a Comrades on day four, and then we finished with a bit of a sprint.

“I felt great for the first three days.

“It was extremely challenging. The snow was thick — we ran in our snow shoes 90% of the time. On day one and two there was quite a climb — a 1,000m elevation on both.

“The climbing in snow shoes was brutal. We also hit -36°C on day two on Mount Kabla, where we had to put on all our layering, but the visibility was great.

“Day three we were hit by a blizzard and a whiteout on the lakes so the visibility was poor and it was just survival. It was also -25°C and it was flat — running 20km-plus on lakes, we heard the lakes creaking and moving.

“On day four I hit the wall a few times. It was 64km, I started becoming hypoglycaemic at about 55, I ran out of food and it snowed for the last 20km, so it was extremely cold.

“I didn’t put my jacket on soon enough, so my core got cold. That was the toughest day. But finishing [on day five] I felt completely cleansed — the self-accomplishment after an event that big, the feeling is amazing.”

The team did thorough research beforehand.

“It was extremely difficult to prepare for a race like this,” Gordon-Bennett said.

“Preparation comes down to physical fitness and having a really strong mind.”

This also involved spending a day in a freezer set at -20°C “to test our kit” and trying out their snow shoes on the beach.

“It took us about a year to prepare for what to wear, what bag to carry — we carried about 8.5kg on our backs. We needed to boil water. Then toilets were outside — we used long drops.

“The highlight was being in the middle of nowhere. The highlight was that pure silence, participating with a group of friends you’ve built solid relationships with over the months in the build-up.

“Some ran together, some didn’t — I ran with Andre.”