The start of the World’s Deepest Marathon in Boliden’s Garpenberg zinc mine at 1,120 metres below sea level. Credit: Sam McElwee/BecomingX
It was hot, damp and utterly dark, the kind of darkness that swallows sound. A line of headlamps bobbed through the tunnels of Boliden’s Garpenberg zinc mine more than a kilometre underground, the air thick with humidity and the faint tang of diesel and dust.
This wasn’t a shift change but the start of the World’s Deepest Marathon, where 55 runners from 18 countries traced a 2-km stretch of tunnel back and forth to reach the full 42 km. The racers, including some of the most senior executives in the mining industry, Boliden staff, part-time runners and seasoned ultra-marathoners, competed down in the tunnels of Boliden’s zinc mine, 180 km northwest of Stockholm.
“You’d run to the end and then you’d turn around and come back and we did that 11 times,” Henrietta Newman, a consultant with the World Gold Council, told The Northern Miner in a video interview from London. “There was music at the start and finish point. [And] other than our head [lamps], it was complete darkness.”
Henrietta Newman with her World’s Deepest Marathon finishing medal. Credit: Henrietta Newman
Organized by education company BecomingX, the International Council on Mining and Metals and Boliden, the event is poised to set Guinness World Records for the deepest marathon and the deepest underground marathon distance run, pending final verification.
The run was also aimed at raising more than $1 million for the BecomingX Foundation to support disadvantaged students in Africa, and for dog welfare initiatives through U.K.-based Wild at Heart Foundation.
From tunnel to tunnel
Newman, who has run in several half-marathons and a full marathon in London in 2021, began training for the underground race about eight weeks ago by increasing her weekly distances. It helped that she could do some practice runs in tunnels while on holiday in Spain, where several roads inside tunnels go through the Sierra Madre mountains.
Her running coach also joined her for an “informal marathon” through the Combe Down Tunnel near Bath, U.K., one of the country’s longest non-ventilated tunnels.
“Every year there’s a race where people have to run it 200 times, and it’s something like 1.2 km [long],” she said. “It’s an extreme challenge that people do, but that was quite good preparation actually running in that tunnel.”
Go down and run
Once at the Garpenberg site on Saturday morning, the runners were taken by elevator down to 1,120 metres below sea level and then driven by truck to the race area.
“And that’s probably the craziest thing because it was a working mine,” Newman said. “You could see these giant trucks full of stuff, and then there we are just in our four-by-four, kind of weaving into the mine.”
For safety reasons, some items of personal protective equipment were mandatory for all runners, including helmets.
“I was a bit worried about wearing a hard hat…But I almost didn’t even notice it,” Newman said. “They’re super light climbing ones. One person had to run with a Go Pro on their helmet for the actual world record, to authenticate how far we’d run.”
Boots weren’t needed. The organizers graded the floor of the tunnel and removed large rocks, so it was more like a smooth gravel road and participants could wear running shoes.
Humid but supported
Temperature-wise, it was humid, and Newman estimates it was 24C, but she got used to it. Organizers said the air in the mine contains 30% more oxygen than in the atmosphere.
“When you were going up [the incline] there was no movement of air, but coming down you’d get these occasional puffs and it was so nice. That was perhaps oxygenated air,” Newman said.
Refreshment stations at each end of the tunnel kept marathoners hydrated, and the support staff were diligent with logistics, including helping runners whose headlamps malfunctioned.
No easy feat
With the run itself, Newman stayed in the “middle of the pack” for most of it and the 12-metre wide tunnel provided more than enough space for people to pass each other.
But the stuffy and dark conditions took their toll on some runners, even the top finisher, whom Newman said finished 50 minutes slower than his personal best for a marathon.
While Newman said, laughing, that she wouldn’t do the race again, she does recommend it as a way to bond with people through a unique experience.
“There were people from different walks of life,” Newman said. “There were two young runners, and one of them…it was her first marathon, and I ran with her for a little bit. It was tough for her. She did it. And at the end, three South African runners who were super runners, they all went and did the lap with her, and it was just such a nice moment.”
