Three Canadians have reached the South Pole in record time.
The trio said they set a new records and that they suffered through whiteout conditions, temperatures as low as 40 below---and did all this on a a steady diet of deep-fried bacon and butter.
The men suffered altitude sickness, vertigo and massive, painful blisters. They kept themselves fueled with a 7,000-calorie-a-day diet of deep-fried bacon, cheese and huge chunks of butter.
According to BBC News:
"Ray Zahab said he and his teammates completed the 1,130-kilometre journey from Hercules Inlet on Antarctica's Ronne Ice Shelf to the South Pole in 33 days, 23 hours and 30 minutes, finally arriving Thursday.
"If you took a cloud, wrapped it around your head and then duct-taped it, that's what a whiteout is like," a weary yet animated Zahab, 39, of Chelsea, Que., said by satellite phone from Antarctica.
"It was exhausting."
Zahab is best known for his epic 6,920-kilometre run across the Sahara Desert in 2007, which was the subject of a documentary narrated by actor Matt Damon entitled Running the Sahara.
Tom Sjogren, founder of ExplorersWeb.com, a New York-based website that compiles statistics on adventurers' feats, said the men beat the record of 39 days, seven hours and 49 minutes set by American Todd Carmichael just last month.
"They have definitely broken the record," said Sjogren, who uses a variety of materials, including photographs of explorers' GPS co-ordinates and their logs, to help verify records."
