A Race of Extremes

John O’Loghlen (NZ investment banker at Goldman Sachs, NY) and Rosa Volz (Wellington IT worker) were the first non-Mongolian man and woman respectively to finish the 42km Mongolia Sunrise to Sunset Marathon, “one of the toughest and most unusual [races] in the world.” Fellow Kiwis John Peterson and Paul O’Connor also took part, with Peterson the first non-Mongolian veteran to cross the finish line. The race’s difficulty lies in its altitudinal extremities: runners climb to 1650m above sea level, to 2300m, back to 1700, up again to 2100 and back down to about 1650.