British soldier Jordan Wylie completes marathon after North Pole run cancelled

Any one of us would be forgiven for re-thinking plans to run an Arctic marathon in the face of a global pandemic.

In fact, anyone would be forgiven for re-thinking plans to run an Arctic marathon full stop.

But when his plans to tackle a 26.2 mile race across the North Pole were halted by the coronavirus outbreak, Jordan Wylie found an alternative.

Last weekend, and a little closer to home, in Poole, he completed a world-first by running a marathon inside a cryotherapy chamber simulating temperatures as low as 60 degrees below freezing.

It comes after Jordan completed marathons in three of the most dangerous countries in the world – Somarlia, Iraq and Afghanistan – in 2018 as part of the Running Dangerously project.

Now he is looking to repeat the feat in his ‘Polar Edition’ of the challenge. Already he has completed marathons in Siberia, the Yukon and Iceland, and now he can add a cryotherapy chamber in Poole to that list.

The CryoAction chamber, housed at CryoLabs Poole, can reach sub-zero temperatures of -160 degrees, but was set between -30 to -60 degrees to match the real life Arctic and Siberian conditions Jordan would have faced during his four-hour run.

The ex-soldier turned extreme adventurer experienced early onset of frostnip - the stage before frostbite begins - for the first time in his life during latest marathon and says it was in many ways uncharted territory.

“This is the first time anything like this has been attempted,” he said. “I am used to running in sub-zero temperatures, and have done it three times before, but this was an entirely new experience.

“I have been training hard for this latest marathon, so I’m glad that the CryoLabs team have been able to help us add to the £1 million I’ve raised through events like this.”

The CryoAction chamber is usually used by sports stars, including Andy Murray, Gareth Bale and many Premier League football teams, to deliver increased gains in performance, speed up injury recovery times, reduce inflammation and enable better sleep quality and increased energy levels.

For Jordan’s marathon, the chamber was kitted out with a treadmill as he completed the task in isolation.

Ian Watson, director at CryoLabs, said: “After hearing about the problems Jordan has had trying to complete his series of Arctic marathons I knew we could help.

“Although we have never done a marathon before we have used the cryotherapy chamber for TV production crews to test their camera equipment in Arctic conditions before travelling to the North Pole. We set the temperature of our chamber to -30C and kept a close eye on Jordan as he completed the 26.2 mile run.”

posted Tuesday March 24th
by Elliott Binks