Four years after embarking on an ambitious quest to complete marathons on all seven continents, Beth Sanden finally has checked off the last, and most difficult, challenge on her list: Antarctica.
Sanden, who was left partially paralyzed after a cycling accident in 2002, pedaled the Antarctic Marathon on a specially designed handcycle on Thursday in 29-degree weather. The trek took 10 hours, 57 minutes and 55 seconds across rocky terrain, tough mountains and mud.
Not to mention, she jokes, that her bike now smells of penguins.
But the 60-year-old San Clemente resident successfully accomplished the 26.2-mile journey, as runners recorded videos and cheered her on at the finish line.
“It’s the hardest marathon on earth,” said Sanden, a triathlon/track and field coach. “The terrain was surprising.”
Sanden started her challenge four years ago, when she completed the Great Wall of China Marathon in under eight hours. She later went on to the Kilimanjaro Marathon, Boston, Tasmania, Lima and Rome. Along the way, she has raised nearly $70,000 for the Challenged Athletes Foundation. She is now applying to Guinness World Records as the first challenged female athlete to do a marathon on each of the seven continents.
While the marathon was slated to start Feb. 14, inclement weather kept Sanden and a group of runners from flying out for five days. She used a handcycle with a front studded tire, loaned by para-athlete Tom Gregory and outfitted by Cycle Werks in San Clemente.
Tumbling over boulders the size of basketballs and struggling while climbing hills covered in black ice, she got mad.
“I … was not going to let this stop me,” Sanden said. “I started praying to God, ‘Lord, I know you can get me through this.’ I was thinking about my family.”
She blasted tracks from Christian rapper tobyMac and pushed past what she called the hardest of her seven marathons.
“It was just the most rewarding,” Sanden said of Antarctica.
Now that she has checked off all seven continents, people are asking what she’ll do next. Maybe marathons in all 50 states, she replied.
“Why not?” Sanden asked with a laugh. “I’m old – I can keep going.”
Contact the writer: kzhou@ocregister.com
