The Midnight Sun Marathon

Sorry about the lack of input recently, but fear not, a bevy of exciting tales will be heading to these pages shortly. In the meantime, here's a short piece about running in the arctic:

The Midnight Sun Marathon


I have been dropped off at the edge of the world. A pair of trainers, a course map, a box of pasta, and the knowledge that I am about to run the most northerly marathon in the world. It is ten at night, the sun is still up and the lodge-house has gone out to get drunk. Welcome to Tromso in the Arctic Circle. Why am I here?

The waters of the fjord shimmer in the light. My body desires sleep but my eyes are hypnotised. A yellow haze, that isn’t day or night - a lucid interval, where people walk in slow motion and wooden houses stand in rows of white. Am I awake?

Bang!

It’s too peaceful to run a race. Too simple. A thousand runners thunder across the island like blots of ink on a landscape painting, while seagulls sit waiting for fishing boats to return with their catch.

‘Run, run, run. 26 miles to go. Run, run, run.’

A second midnight approaches and Tromso continues. There is sun, and then there is dark. Nothing grows. Few animals survive.

‘Breathe, breathe, breathe. Run, run, run.’

They do what we need to survive, nothing more.

‘Keep going, keep going. One...more...mile.’

Fish, hunt and ready for eternal night. Life in the arctic.

‘I am there. I am there. I have finished.’

I want to be like them. That is why I have come here. I want things to be hard so I can survive. I have survived.

Now I need to sleep.

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