There were 29 athletes when the five-day run of the Snowman Race started from Gasa. With 20 elite international runners including a woman who beat all women to the finish line of the Everest Marathon in 2018, everyone following up on the race had lots of expectations. However, the elevation they were running at changed everything and forced 12 of them to decide not to continue the race.
Holly Zimmermann from Germany who was the first woman to reach the finish line of the Everest Marathon in 2018 withdrew from the Snowman Race on Day Two. On her Instagram page, the 52-year-old wrote, “I am heartbroken but safe”.
The mother of four is not just an athlete. She is a blogger, a motivational speaker, and authored two books: Ultramarathon Mom: From the Sahara to Artic and Running Everest: Adventures at the Top of the World.
So, what made her decide not to continue the race this time?
Holly says the beginning of the race was smooth as the first 20 kilometre was relatively flat, with some roads in the wilderness, and then a valley full of mud. Technically, she could not run but was able to walk quickly. However, as the elevation kept rising, at some point, she also started running in light snowfall. And it became increasingly hard for Holly to locate the trail and had to use GPS on her watch. She realised that though the first day was short, the following days were going to get longer each day.
“The decision to stop the race was from my head and not my heart because my heart wanted to be out there in the mountains, my heart wanted to see the Himalayas, meet the people in the Lunana Valley and just be in nature and do what I love and that’s running, nature and the mountains. That’s what my heart wanted to do but my head said “hey you got people at home that are waiting for you,” concluded Holly.
The snowman race is dubbed as one of the toughest of its kind. Besides the Everest Marathon, Holly ran the Moroccan Sahara Desert and Polar Circle Marathon. She said had she continued and completed the race, Snowman would have been her toughest so far.
“On the second day, I started the race and realized once I got up to the first high pass at 5,280 meters that my pace was very slow and at that pace, I would be out probably at 10 or 11 or 12 o’clock at night, the next two nights in a row. This put a lot of us in a difficult situation because you are looking for runners out there and you want everyone to be safe. Of course, I wanted to be safe too. So, you know I have four children at home and that was my priority to say, I need to look out for my safety, first and that’s why I stopped the race.”
Just like Holly, 11 international runners decided not to continue the race.
Sarah Keyes from the US was the first woman to reach the finish line on Day One. But she also withdrew from the race. Coming from a running background, she was at ease on the first day. She was in the moment with a proper appetite and was even able to get restful sleep on the first night. With the same optimism, she started her race on the second day. However, the unseen unfolded. According to her, soon after she crossed the next pass the altitude got to her.
“As I tried to climb up the next pass, I vomited a few times and I was very dehydrated, dizzy and by the time I got to the second-night halt, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to continue. But I decided to go to the medical folks. They did a wonderful job of starting an IV on me and giving me some fluids. They recommended I don’t continue as the next few days were of high risk. So, I took their advice and decided to not go.”
Similarly, another foreign athlete pronounced the severity and challenges of the race. She discontinued the race on Day Three after she started having trouble with high altitude and blurred vision.
“I could only see a sort of a spot in front of me on the trail and then my breathing got really erratic and started hyperventilating which is your breath in and out really fast and you can’t control. And I was already feeling tired from the altitude more than what I expected would be normal for me,” said Clarie Perks, an athlete from Canada.
She reiterated how the difficulty of the race does not lie in the distance or amount of hiking up and down mountains. Every promising athlete had done that before but the only difference was doing it at a high altitude.
“So, I think we all learned that if you want to race at this elevation you need a lot of time to acclimatize prior to the race so that when you can actually be your normal self. In this situation, these mountains it was something that none of us has ever experienced before,” she added.
The Run was initiated to help raise awareness of the impacts of Climate Change. While runners like Holly took the heartbreaking decision to discontinue the race, it is safe to say that they will take back home the message of melting glaciers and the looming climatic disaster.
Devika Pradhan/Kipchu
Edited by Phub Gyem
