Marathon marathoner
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* Anne Tempelman-Kluit

What do you do after running 100 marathons? Run another 100, of course.

![Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/166/7/948.1/F1.medium.gif)

[Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/166/7/948.1/F1)

Figure. **Antarctic marathon: Green (centre, glasses) gets shipshape**

Janet Green, a Vancouver Island GP, completed the first 100 of her 42-km races in October 2001. “I wanted to run 100 races before age 50, and I made it by 48,” she says.

The marathon circuit has taken Green from Baffin Island to Stockholm and from Whitehorse to Athens. In London, she experienced an awful mass start involving 30 000 people. In Medoc, France, “we ran though vineyards, and they offered us wine and raw oysters.” She's run 5 marathons in Boston and 3 in New York, but still rates California's Big Sur as the most beautiful course. At the Mayo Midnight Marathon in the Yukon, competitors ran under the midnight sun, with patrollers out along the course to chase away the bears.

Green's most memorable marathon was run last year in Antarctica. Runners arrived by ship, but for the first time in the event's 4-year history they were unable to land. “The waves were horrendous and snow that was blowing horizontally. We waited for the weather to improve, but it didn't, so we [simply] ran around the ship.” Competitors ended up running 422 laps of the deck in “the strangest marathon I've ever run.”

Green, who practises in a busy clinic in Courtenay, gets up at 6 am so that she can begin most days with a 10-km run. “It's the only way I can fit regular exercise into my crazy schedule. If I'm expecting a delivery I run with my cell phone.” No one seems to mind, she adds, if she arrives in the case room in running gear.

Green started out at a much slower pace. During her first triathlon in 1985 she walked part of the 10-km run, and “when I had finished only the biking part, everyone at the finish line was cheering. I thought they were cheering for me, but they were cheering the person who had already won.”

Undaunted, Green continued running and finished her first marathon in Victoria in 1988, on the same course where she completed her 100th race. “If you are in shape and your body likes doing it, you can run a marathon every second weekend,” says Green, although she may face knee-replacement surgery in the future.

Green, who has worn out 50 pairs of running shoes in the past decade, says running gives her life “a nice balance” because “most of my running friends are not doctors.”

And how long will it take to run the next 100 marathons? “I'm aiming for 2013, when I'll be 60.” — *Anne Tempelman-Kluit*, Vancouver