Lundin, BecomingX climb from deepest marathon to world’s highest

Standing at 4,200 metres high in Chile’s Atacama desert, the CEO and co-founder of education firm BecomingX takes a step forward from The World’s Deepest Marathon to begin a new adventure.

“We have just done the second [training] run here in Chile, the world’s highest run,” Paul Gurney said in an interview with The Northern Miner Group. “We begin in the Candelaria mine, running right to the bottom and up to the top”.

BecomingX, a corporate team-builder that Gurney formed in 2018 with reality TV star Bear Grylls, is screening its documentary The World’s Deepest Marathon – a film of the run last October in Sweden – on Feb. 9 at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town. The company, which raised $600,000 for charities, is now pivoting to The World’s Highest Marathon and keeping the mining connection.

This month, 10 runners are braving oxygen levels less than half of sea-level as they start by descending from the summit of Ojos del Salado, the world’s tallest volcano at 6,893 metres. Lundin Mining CEO Jack Lundin, who ran in the Swedish event, oversees the Candelaria mine (which produced 145,471 tonnes of copper last year) and is hosting training for the new marathon.

Chile run

While the deepest run attracted 55 mostly amateurs – some from the mining industry – the Chile run on Feb. 10 will be led by pros. It features elite climbers, an ultra-endurance cyclist, a former commando and TV personality, and several world record holders. They’ll be supported by 12 trekkers and guides.

“We were excited to welcome the World’s Highest Marathon team to our Candelaria operation last week and support their preparation with a unique training session in our open pit,” Lundin said in a statement issued Friday. “We wish every runner great success as they take on this remarkable world‑first challenge.”

For Paul Gurney, it’s clear that mining shapes how he thinks about people and performance. He says the industry can be transformative.

“Mining illustrates the way people have the potential to dig deeper. In particular it sticks with me as an industry that can have a negative impact but also a huge positive impact”.

The World’s Deepest Marathon film will help kick off Cape Town’s annual mining event. Now in its 31st year, the Indaba is the continent’s largest mining convention, set to attract over 13,000 industry players and the world’s largest companies over four days from Monday. 

Boliden mine

The film shows how people have the potential to do more, to do better. At a depth of 1,120 metres below sea level, Boliden’s Garpenberg zinc mine in Sweden offered a unique location to carry out Gurney’s groundbreaking idea.

“It is phenomenal to see what we can do with safe, responsible, well managed engineering,” he said. “It is a key part of our economy and needs real efforts from companies to be the best they can be”.

Director Sam Strong was awed at the transformation of a mine into a high-performance venue, and credited Boliden’s crew.

“To host a marathon in a place where it’s difficult to exist at all is remarkable, and they met us with so much patience and understanding,” Strong said. “It’s no accident that this exceptional team have built one of the safest mines in the world.”

First-timers

Most of the runners had never stepped foot into a mine.

“Their blind trust in the organizers, the mine team, and each other was inspirational and something I carried into my crew,” Strong said. “I physically couldn’t be everywhere at once, so trusting them in those high-pressure moments was vital”.

Although the film came with operational challenges, the crew used drones and GoPros to capture a marvellous, self-lit environment. However it’s still difficult to capture quite how extraordinary it is to film in a mine. They used lowlight to create beautiful imagery that could have filled the entire film with shots of just the runners in the tunnels. Strong reflected on what they couldn’t capture on camera.

“The stillness, the scale, the darkness made the space such a unique place to film. Of course, if the light wasn’t manmade, it simply doesn’t exist”.

The director recalled the eerie experience of initially encountering the mine.

“Nothing really prepares you for that feeling of descending for the first time into the mine and standing in a quiet, pitch-black, tunnel that deep underground. It was a phenomenal experience I cannot liken to anything else.”