When a broken ankle left him with a permanent limp and forced him to quit running marathons and ultramarathons, Mark Seaburg wasn't ready to give up extreme feats of physical endurance.
So at 50, he started biking. We're not talking loops around the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis, but riding 350 miles across the dark and frozen Alaskan wilderness. Pedaling 4,200-some miles across the United States. Mountain biking 2,700 rugged miles from Canada to Mexico along the Continental Divide.
And then there's northern Minnesota's Arrowhead 135. While 135 miles might seem like a breeze in comparison, the race is deliberately scheduled for the statistically coldest weekend in January, when temperatures regularly hit 40 below zero. Its finish rate is lower than 50 percent. Seaburg has beat those odds — entering it six times and finishing four.
"The best adventures are those I'm not sure I can finish," said the Hopkins physician, now 57. "And then when I do, it's a big accomplishment."
These adventures can entail real danger. In Alaska, he biked alone, often in the dark, over an ever-shifting terrain of blowing snow and wide rivers with patches of open water — fall into one and you could get sucked under the ice and carried away by the current. Sleep was minimal and often outdoors in just a sleeping bag. Seaburg worried that he'd get lost in the middle of nowhere, that his water supply would freeze, that falling snow would soften the trail and force him to walk his bike for miles on his bad ankle.
To Seaburg, it was all worth it.
"First of all, it's beautiful, when you can see it," he said. Beyond that, a successful finish comes with the feeling that "if you can do that, you can do anything."
The Trans Am Bike Race wasn't as scary as the Alaskan race, but midway through it Seaburg hurt his neck and was forced to quit the race to recuperate. Then he had to return to work. But two months later, he went back and finished the course by himself.
At that point, why not just blow it off?
"No!" he said, looking shocked at the suggestion. "No, you have to finish what you start! I couldn't have lived with myself if I hadn't finished."
Katy Read
