Archived from Outside magazine, November 1995
Running: But Radionucleotides Can Never Hurt Me
The worrisome world of Matt Carpenter, skymarathonman
By Martin Dugard
I have a social life, proclaims Matt Carpenter, king of the
fledgling sport known as skymarathoning, which basically entails running 26.2-mile races
in places better suited for mountaineers. I really do. That may
be so, but conversation must suffer when you spend as much
time as Carpenter does with an air filter strapped to your
face. The mask, which lends him the profile of a praying
mantis and which he wears from the moment he leaves his
house in Colorado Springs till he arrives at the starting line
of the race hes traveling to, is Carpenters quirky way of
maintaining a competitive edge: While his opponents are inhaling secondhand cigarette
smoke on international flights, Carpenters lungs heave in a rarefied world
of fresh-scrubbed oxygen. Its a painters mask, explains the 31-year-old graphic
designer, who this month will try for his third consecutive win
at the Everest Skymarathon, on the Tibetan flanks of the worlds
highest mountain. It even filters out radionucleotides.
Idiosyncratic seems to describe both Carpenter and the sport of skymarathoning,
which has been around since 1992 and whose small but devoted
corps is composed mostly of current and former world-class marathoners from
Europe, Kenya, and the United States. A variation on the Welsh
pastime known as fell running, skymarathon follows a circuit that now
includes stops on Italys 15,217-foot Monte Rosa, Frances 15,771-foot Mont Blanc,
and Kenyas 17,157-foot Mount Kenya, with winners taking home $10,000. Except
for the Everest event, which takes place on a relatively flat
course at 17,000 feet, the general routine is the same: Scamper
up a mountain (you choose your own route) and then get
yourself back down as fast as possible--on foot, on your backside,
or head over heels. Despite gravitys help, its the downhill aspect
of the sport that doesnt do much for Carpenter, a 2:19
marathoner and qualifier for the 1992 Olympic trials. Some guys will
literally throw themselves down a couloir, he says, sounding a tad
puritanical.
Raised in Ohio, Carpenter wasnt particularly fond of altitude until after
he left near-sea-level University of Southern Mississippi for Colorado. Now he
trains on 14,110-foot Pikes Peak, occasionally experimenting with his own avant-garde
style of descent, gliding down glaciers seated on a windbreaker. Thankfully,
he says, he wont have to employ such tricks on Everest.
The running will be easy, he says nonchalantly. Its convincing your
body it doesnt need oxygen thats a bit harder.
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