The Listening Company

The Listening Company’s Rik Vercoe braved sub zero temperatures and snow drifts to secure 2^nd place and raise £4,000 for charity in the North Pole Marathon on 7^th April.

Click here to listen to Rik on 107.4 Quay Radio!

Vercoe, Site Director at The Listening Company’s Portsmouth office, battled 45km per hour winds and frozen arctic sea ice to complete the 42.2km race in 5 hours 7 minutes and 30 seconds. All proceeds went to The Elizabeth Foundation, a charity that supports infants with hearing difficulties and one of the main benefactors of The Listening Company’s Decade Trust foundation.

Despite temperatures plummeting to -20 degrees Celsius, all 25 competitors finished the race with former Dutch marine Joep Rozendal winning in a time of 5 hours and 58 seconds and Ireland’s Emer Dooley crossing the line first (5:56:54) in the women’s competition.

Runners flew by jet from Spitsbergen, Norway to a drifting Russian camp at the Geographic North Pole on 6^th April with the race commencing at 1500 GMT the following day.

The first North Pole Marathon took place in 2002 when the current race director covered the distance alone. It’s recognised by Guinness World Records as the Northernmost Marathon on Earth and is the only event of its kind to be run entirely on water, albeit the frozen water of the Arctic Ocean.

Rik Vercoe, Site Director, said: “I’ve been training for 18 months so the North Pole Marathon was really just the last piece of the puzzle but to come in six and a half minutes behind the eventual winner felt great. As soon as I decided I was going to raise money for charity, The Elizabeth Foundation was the obvious choice for me.  I’ve seen what they do firsthand and the people they help come from all over the country. It was all for a very worthwhile cause.”