By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
It was the marathon before the marathon.
In what was a grueling day of travel, Dan McCann flew from Philadelphia to Atlanta and then caught another flight to Santiago, Chile. Then he flew from Santiago to Punta Arenas, a city near Chile’s southernmost Patagonia region.
Come Monday, the globetrotting Sea Isle City attorney is scheduled to hop on a charter flight in Punta Arenas for his final destination – Antarctica, the South Pole.
If everything goes as planned, his marathon trip will culminate Tuesday when he runs in a marathon to promote breast cancer awareness, he said during a phone interview Friday night from Punta Arenas.
“We’ll be running on the ice. They told us to prepare for zero-degree weather, with the wind chill in the negatives,” he noted of the numbingly cold conditions expected during the 26.2-mile race.
Unlike a traditional marathon, McCann won’t be running the entire distance in one shot. He will have to duck into tents for shelter along the way to avoid frostbite.
“I can’t bring water with me because it would freeze. I’ll have to go into tents to prevent my face from freezing,” he explained.
The 35-year-old McCann is a lifelong resident of Sea Isle and a member of the prominent local family of homebuilding and real estate headed by his father, Joe McCann.
Dan McCann’s inspiration for running in the marathon – and to use the international exposure in Antarctica to raise awareness of breast cancer – is someone close to him who was diagnosed with the disease this year. He declined to name her, but said she is doing fine now.
“I’m hoping that this global platform will help raise awareness for women to get out and get tested. It would help if even just a few women get tested early,” he said.
Antarctica will be the sixth continent where McCann has run in marathons to raise awareness or money for charitable causes. He started eight years ago by running in the Ocean Drive Marathon between Cape May and Sea Isle.
Next, he ran in the Great Wall of China Marathon in 2016. In China, he donated money to a homeless family in Beijing. He also raised money for struggling parishes in Cork, Ireland, by running in a marathon there while accompanied by his family on the trip to Europe.
Along with his wife, Katelyn, McCann also ran a marathon in Tanzania in 2018 while raising money for homeless children to go to school and receive medical treatment.
The couple ran a marathon again in 2019 in the Caribbean island of Aruba, which is part of South America. They raised money in Aruba for the care of abandoned puppies and kittens.
McCann hopes to travel to Australia someday to complete his goal to run in a marathon in all seven continents.
“Australia still remains. It’s definitely a goal in the back of my mind,” he said.
Now, Antarctica is up. To prepare for the marathon, McCann trained for 25 weeks – sometimes running in the dark of night. His last long run as part of his training regime was a 20-mile jaunt on Sea Isle’s oceanfront Promenade two weeks ago.
“I’m nervous. I’m so anxious,” he said. “It’s a miracle to get where I’m at. But I’m mentally ready.”
Punta Arenas is located in the southern tip of Chile on the Strait of Magellan connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It is often the jumping-off point for excursions to Antarctica.
McCann said his charter flight from Punta Arenas to Antarctica will include 50 marathoners from around the world. He noted that the plane will land on an ice runway.
His trip to Chile came down to the wire. Travel restrictions during the global pandemic became even tighter with the outbreak of the Omicron variant. McCann sent a flurry of emails to Chile while trying to find out whether he would even be allowed to enter the country.
“I put it together like I was doing a case,” McCann said of using his attorney skills to prepare for his trip.
Once he landed in Santiago, he faced intense scrutiny and questions from the Chilean authorities about his vaccination status. He said his COVID-19 vaccination credentials had somehow “slipped through the cracks” in Chile.
He feared he would be deported or forced to quarantine in Chile for 14 days in a government facility. At one point, he reached out to South Jersey Congressman Jeff Van Drew for help.
“He called me at my hotel,” McCann said of Van Drew’s efforts to help him.
After two hours of questioning from Chilean authorities, McCann was finally able to prove that he was vaccinated. He also took a COVID-19 test in Chile that turned out negative. He was scheduled to take two more COVID tests before receiving final clearance to fly to Antarctica.
“I made it,” he said during the interview from Punta Arenas. “It was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life to get there.”
Come Tuesday, he may face something even harder – a 26.2-mile marathon on the ice in the freezing South Pole.
