The North Pole Marathon

On July 12, 2026 we board Le Commandant Charcot in Longyearbyen, Svalbard — the world's northernmost town — and sail north until there is no more north. Sixteen days, out through the pack ice to the Geographic North Pole and back. This page is our live tracker for the whole expedition: where the ship is, what we're doing, and how race day went at the top of the world.

The occasion is the North Pole Marathon, the World's Coolest Marathon: 26.2 miles on the frozen Arctic Ocean at 90°N, run on floating sea ice above more than 12,000 feet of water. It is the 19th edition of the race and the 4th Summer Edition, organized by Runbuk. Hailey wears bib 12, Max wears bib 14.

The ship is a piece of the story in itself. Le Commandant Charcot is PONANT's polar exploration flagship — the first hybrid LNG-electric icebreaker built for passengers, and the first French vessel ever to reach the Geographic North Pole, on September 6, 2021. She carries 123 staterooms, Alain Ducasse's northernmost restaurant, an outdoor heated Blue Lagoon fed by recovered energy, a snow room, two science labs, fourteen Zodiacs and a helicopter.

The plan, day by day: depart Longyearbyen on the evening of July 12; run the west coast of Spitsbergen on the 13th; then four days breaking through the drifting pack — July 14 to 17 — as the ice thickens toward the top of the world. If the ice cooperates we reach the Geographic North Pole around July 18, and spend two days on station at 90°N.

Race day came early — July 17, moved up when the ship reached the pole two days ahead of schedule — and it was the toughest course in race history: ankle-deep meltwater over roughly half of every lap, deep drifted snow over the rest. Hailey won the women's half marathon in 2:49:36, breaking the tape with the flag flying. Max finished the full marathon — not first, not last, every mile earned. Polar-bear guards held the perimeter; every time zone on Earth converged underfoot; the sun never set.

The race has history. The first North Pole Marathon was staged on April 17, 2003 — Martin Tighe won it in 5:02 — and 655 runners from 58 countries have finished it since. The course records belong to William Hafferty (USA), 3:14:49 in 2024, and Becca Pizzi (USA), 4:46:26 in 2025. The 2025 Summer Edition fielded the largest race in event history, with nearly 90 participants across the four distances.

After the pole, the ship turns south: four more days in the sea ice, then Zodiac days along the northwest and southwest coasts of Spitsbergen — glacier fronts, walrus haul-outs, bird cliffs, and whatever the fog decides to reveal — before we disembark in Longyearbyen on July 27.

Because the ship sails beyond reliable satellite coverage, this page does something a little different: it dead-reckons. The tracker carries the full sailing plan and moves the ship along it in real time, and whenever we can get a position report or a dispatch off the ship, the plotted track snaps to the truth. Between updates, the chart shows where we should be — latitude by latitude, ring by ring, all the way to 90°N.

We posted dispatches from the ice the whole way — the crossing, life aboard an icebreaker, the pole two days early, the course walk, and race day itself, finish-line tape and iced-over shoes included. The full race-day gallery lives in the log above.

At 90°N there is no east, no west, and no time zone — only south in every direction. We'll stay on ship's time, Longyearbyen's clock, and keep this page honest about the rest.