II Magnetic Update
Lat: N 78° 51.726′
Lng: W 103° 29.879′
Time: 20:30 Local Time (GMT -0500)

II Magnetic held the first place position for this leg for 4 hours today, overtaking Team Refuge for the period. They too have finally cleared the rubble fields and expect to make considerably more progress tomorrow.

Note: The purple balloon on the above map represents Raymond’s Team II Magnetic.

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The following message was sent from Raymond while he was at Checkpoint 2 of the Polar Race…

Hello, from Checkpoint 2!

This is billed as “probably the world’s toughest race”. Well, it is! Even worse, it most certainly is the world’s coldest race.

Cold Damage

I have so far lost most of the sensation in the tips of all ten fingers.
They will heal in a few months. I over-heated one warm -20 degree day and foolishly took off my head mask, leaving my entire face unprotected.
Then a chilling west wind picked up suddenly, blowing directly at my left ear as we raced northward. The temperature dropped to -35 and with wind chill it was much worse. When we made camp that night I realised that my left ear had swollen badly, was frost-bitten and sub-burnt. (The sun is always behind us and I had not put sun protection lotion on the back of my ears.) Imagine my confused left ear – forst-bitten by the cold of the wind and sunburnt from the heat of the sun! The swelling has thankfully already subsided and the scab will eventually heal and fall off.
And, just to round out the story, I have a smattering of frost-nip on my upper lip, cheeks and nose. Nothing serious, just warnings to be cautious.
Also, all areas once damaged by cold are now susceptible to even more severe damage.

Polar Bear Attack

And while I’m listing all the bad news, I may as well mention the “POLAR BEAR ATTACK” . In the middle of the night, as Roddy and I were sleeping, a Polar Bear came right up to our tent and thankfully got more curious about my sled than our tent. He walked to my sled an UNZIPPED the sled bag. Note: he did not rip it open with his powerful teeth or claws. He very properly and elegantly unzippered the sled bags. He chose one item inside that particularly interested him and played with it. Eventually, losing interest, he abandoned the bag about 20 feet from our tent and plodded off into the night. We were mere feet from a giant carnivore, and slept through the whole experience.

The Race

There are 6 teams in the race. I am the weakest member of my team. My partner Roddy is much younger, much stronger and much faster. So our
team, II Magnetic, moves at my pace. I am much slower than 4 teams whose average ages are roughly half my
age. And I am faster than my 62-year-old friend Jan Meek of the team Carpe Diem. So we should finish 5th .
Due to some really hard skiing on my part, and some brilliant navigation by Roddy,and loads of luck, our team completed Leg One in 3rd place.
We beat the Blue Tits,a two girl team. They are best friends, work well together,are really fit and aged 27.
We also beat Brass Monkeys a team headed by a 6 foot tall muscle-bound 40 year-old super-strong firefighter.
When we crossed the finish line of leg one, and I was told we came in third, I broke into tears and could not stop crying. All the emotion
built up over the 5 days of racing northward in the desolate High Arctic got suddenly released as I crossed that finish line and knew I could rest for 2 days. We are now at Checkpoint 2 at the end of Leg 2. We are now in 5th place.
There is some great news though. The 65 miles of Leg 1 took me 5 days, the 130 miles of Leg 2 took me only 7 days.
I started at almost 10 nautical miles of progress a day and I have consistently improved up to 14 nautical miles a day.
Unfortunately, waking up on the morning of the 7th day of leg 2, we had 17.3 miles to go. That’s too far for me to go in one day, yet it is too wimpy to camp just a few miles from the checkpoint. So I put in one of the longest hardest days of my life and completed 17.3 nautical miles in one day, hauling a sled that weighs about 100 pounds.

Leg 3

This leg is 75 miles long. Our goal is that I race 15 miles per day and complete the leg in 5 days. Considering Leg one is 65 miles long and took
me 5 days, this upcoming leg will be yet another challenge.

My Condition

Except for the litany of cold injuries,I am in superb shape. Not one of my joints hurts. Not one muscle aches. I am rested and ready for the challenge of Leg 3.

Typical Day

We rise at 5am.
We are racing by 7:30am
We take 8-minute breaks every 2 hours or so otherwise we race non-stop for 10-11 hours every day.
We stop around 6pm.
We make camp, eat and fall fast asleep by about 9:30pm.

Dryness

The High Arctic air is so dry that it is officially designated a “desert”. My skin has dried so much that the skin on the tip of my right thumb eroded, leaving a cut almost a half-inch long. The cure is even more amazing – CRAZY GLUE. I applied it to the open cut and it worked perfectly.

That’s my report from Checkpoint 2.

Love,

Raymond

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