For runners, one of the most storied—and feared—stretches is Heartbreak Hill, 20 miles into the Boston Marathon. The 90-foot elevation gain over one-third of a mile would be a painful climb in any marathon, but here it’s compounded because it occurs at the distance where many runners hit the proverbial wall.
Last April, Erik Rasmussen, a 42-year old trail seeker, runner, and triathlete, finished the Boston marathon at 2:42:35, good for 241st overall. But in August, he became the first to complete what may arguably be the world’s toughest 26.2-mile race: up the face of Kilimanjaro, the world’s tallest freestanding mountain and the highest in Africa. In this debut run, which was measured to be an exact marathon distance, Rasmussen crossed five ecological zones, from bushlands through a rain forest and up to the glacier-capped summit at 19,341 feet. It took him eight hours and 33 minutes.
Rasmussen’s race up Kilimanjaro was a final test to experience a course he’s measured in pieces in 2016 and run parts of before. This August, through his tour group, Erik’s Adventures, he’ll take a group of similarly adventurous runners up the same route. So far, 19 people, some of whom will hike the mountain a week earlier to avoid altitude sickness, have signed up.
In the U.S. alone, more than 64 million people went running or jogging in 2016, according to recent figures. As more runners than ever look to complete the Big Six—Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York—one of the challenges has been simply getting in. For next week’s race in Boston, more than 5,000 runners who qualified are unable to run because of the space limitation. Roughly 100,000 applied to get in to the New York marathon in November, but only 51,000 lined up for the starting gun.
“In the last 10 to 15 years, running a marathon has gone from something extraordinary—that the very few did—to a popular trend that the average person would take on as a challenge,” says Steen Albrechtsen, spokesman for Albatros Travels in Copenhagen.
City marathons have become such massive, organized events that more and more runners are going off road for a more adventurous 26.2 miles. In recent years, travel companies have expanded running packages to the Arctic Circle, the Great Wall of China, the Petra archaeological complex in Jordan, and the Bagan Temples in Mynamar. These are not “ultra marathons” in which runners compete for extended distances. They are rigorously measured 26.2 mile courses—minus the massive crowds, well-stocked snack tables, and well-paved asphalt. Rasmussen simply calls them “adventure marathons.”
They, too, are selling out in record numbers. Capped at 50 or 100 runners in areas for environmental and safety reasons, there’s already a two-year waiting list to run the Antarctic Ice Marathon, the world’s southernmost race; Marathon Tours & Travel is confirming runners for its Antarctica Marathon for 2021. (Yes, there is more than one marathon in Antarctica.) The 50 spots in Peru’s Inca Trail Marathon in July have been reserved for months. Albatros’s Polar Circle Marathon in Greenland is almost fully subscribed ahead of its October date.
“Runners in general are goal-oriented people,” says Tim Hadzima of the Abbott World Marathon Majors, which runs a series promoting the “big six” marathons and awards a medal to those who finish all of them. “Once folks run a race, they usually want to do another one and do another one and another one and another one.” So far, more than 1,200 runners have completed all six through Abbott.
The more exotic the location, the higher the cost. The entry fee for Boston was most recently $185 for U.S. residents and $250 for international participants. Costs can add up in any location, depending on travel and hotel needs: A trip to Antarctica, by boat or plane, can easily reach $7,000 without counting the flight to Chile or Argentina.
Every extreme marathon poses unique challenges, whether surviving the gut-churning Drake Passage to run in freezing conditions in Antarctica or the steep ascents, descents, and countless steps to reach Machu Picchu in Peru. And every course incline is examined and discussed beforehand to prepare for the challenge.