I did the race and followed it up with an ultra distance race a few weeks later in the Sahara called the Marathon Des Sables.
"The Last Marathon" as it was called when I did it was a cool event that ran along the Antarctic coast near a Soviet air facility and crossed borders between Soviet, Argentinean and I seem to recall Equadorian controlled segments of Antarctica. These countries and other divide the continent into pie shaped segments as part of the Internatonal Antarctic Treaty Organization (IATO). As such, we got passport stamps from each of the countries for participating in the event. Very fun.
We also did a hefty amount of whale watching and general cavorting around in the areas where it was environmentally acceptable for us to be, including an island so covered with penguins the pooh smell extended about four miles out to sea. Stinky.
The penguins, whales and elephant seals (awful looking things) were very friendly as few of them, if any, had ever seen a person before.
We also survived one of the most incredible storms I've ever been iin that I wrote about here, a few paragraphs down:
http://www.bikesportmichigan.com/...orials/0000088.shtml
Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com