Diana Loves The Cold,

and is really looking forward to the snow that is forecast for the end of next week,

 Steve loves running and runs everyday, and is in fact shortly to be running a half marathon with his partially sighted running partner, Steve acting as the guide, so why not combine the two, but where to go? well here is the place, Oymyakon, it is the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth, with temperatures constantly dropping to under -50 degrees Celsius in winter time, this place is so cold that a person’s unprotected face can suffer frostbite in a matter of seconds, and sometimes the mercury in thermometers freezes, so cold that if left outside a bottle of vodka freezes! now that is cold,

 but the good news is that there is already a race in place, on January 5, 16 brave runners – aged 21 to 71 and very well-trained – competed in bone-chilling marathons for 5, 10, 20, 30 and 42 kilometers across the frozen taiga of central Yakutia, at the start of the run, the air temperature was an almost unbearable -52 degrees Celsius, and by the time the first and only runner reached the 39km mark, it had happily gone up to -48 degrees Celsius,

“We could see utter amazement in the eyes of tourists that traveled here from Australia, Taiwan, Japan and India to watch the world’s coldest race,” runner Sargylana Neustroyeva told The Siberian Times, "This was our first try at organizing the extremely cold marathon. Next year we are definitely doing another race, all athletes from around the world are welcome!" "We wanted to make running in -45C and colder more popular, and to show that athletes can adapt to extremely low temperatures," champion runner Yegor Abramov added,

the longest distance run on the day, 39km, was achieved by Ilya Pesterev, the head of Emissa village, He came the closest to completing the 42km marathon, the youngest participant, 21-year-old Innokentiy Olesov ran 10km in one hour and 8 minutes, while the oldest runner, 71-year-old Yegor Permyakov, conquered 15km in two and a half hours, the world’s coldest race was organized by Alexander Krylov, head of Turuu Tour agency, He plans to do it again next year, hopefully with more brave runners able to endure the extreme winter temperatures of Oymyakon, so 4 return tickets to Oymyakon, it is then, although I am not sure about the waterless toilets, it is too cold to have water in the outhouse!