Running A Marathon in Antarctica and Australia in 2014

So I finally decided to run in Antarctica and push back the Australia trip into the fall for the Sydney Marathon. I would get the necessary vacation time by September to go so that was a big deciding factor. Another backup option would be the Auckland Marathon in early November. Even this year, there is space available for the Sydney Marathon so I have a good chance of registering for that marathon.

Dealing with our booked AA award to Australia

Our flights were booked on AA miles and I will reach EXP by Thanksgiving. I was smart in booking all the tickets on different PNRs in case I had to change anything on our schedules. Our outbound flights were on different days and return flight from LAX to Boston were on different days as well so we couldn’t have the same PNR even if we tried. Being that she was flying to Australia on a different day as myself, she would not get lounge access, which she absolutely loved when we went to South Africa back in February. She said that she can never travel the same away again without lounges. Well, this time she would have to as I’m not there and she only got a coach ticket to Australia.

So the plan would be to move my flights out to September 2014 when there was availability and then cancel my wife’s tickets once I reached EXP at the end of the year. The only small issue is that I had booked these two tickets: BOS-…-SYD, and CHC-…-BOS. Yes CHC is Christchurch. We had planned to spend a week on the South Island of New Zealand. I’ll probably just move the date to make sure I have a flight back and then when I get EXP, change the originating airport CHC without the change fee. Something else I learned is that i can change the intermediate routing, as long as the starting/ending points are the same. At worst, I would just buy a one-way positioning flight to CHC before the award flight.

The plan would be to spend only a week in Australia, flying out Friday night and then out Monday morning back to the US.

I’ve always wanted to run the Sydney Marathon, but I knew with my wife’s schedule that would be close to impossible to schedule. Now that shes not traveling with me, I have the opportunity to run it. Running over the Sydney Harbour Bridge would be amazing and I look forward to doing that.

Seven Continents Quests

So I wanted to run a marathon on all seven continents, which this trip would be a huge leap forward on my quest. Australia would be the last one on the list. I also wanted to step foot on all seven continents.

In terms of traveling to all 7 continents, I would hit that mark the instant i step foot on that island. Doing so would also mean I’ve visited all 7 continents a 365 day span (March 2013-March 2014). If I was crazy enough to run the Sydney or Auckland marathon this year and managed to register for the Hong Kong Marathon next year, I would also have ran a marathon on all 7 continents in the same time frame. However, I think I’ll settle for visiting all 7 continents in a year.