Chris Weir has been training in produce plant in Dallas as he gets ready to run the Antarctic Ice Marathon

Christopher Weir, is an avid marathon runner, among many other athletic pursuits. Chris, a successful Dallas businessman, has run the Dallas marathon four times and the New Orleans marathon once during the last few years. Running and finishing a marathon is special buy after you’ve done it again and again, with thousands of others at each event; what do you do for an encore? Well, leave it to Chris to transcend from the mundane to the extraordinary. On December 13, the fourteenth Antarctic Ice Marathon will take place just a few hundred miles from the South Pole at the foot of the Ellsworth Mountains, the highest mountain ranges in Antarctica. Chris Weir will be on the starting line this year.  He has been training by running in the ice-cold environment of a produce plant in Dallas.  For Chris, the journey begins by flying to Punta Arenas, Chile on December 10. During the next 24 hours he, and the 54 other competitors from 14 countries around the world, will undergo a briefing about the marathon and the conditions under which it will be run. On December 12, the entire group will be transported by private jet for the four hour flight to Union Glacier, Antarctica, the icy location of the marathon. Union Glacier Camp is only accessible by air and the aircraft will land on a naturally-occurring ice runway on the Union Glacier, where competitors will take their first steps in Antarctica. Then, they will climb aboard a specially adapted van for a five mile ride to camp, where final preparations will be made for the epic event the following day.

posted Wednesday November 28th