Stephanie Case’s bid to break a record in an Antarctic race no woman has previously entered: ‘I genuinely hate the cold’

Stephanie Case doesn’t like the cold.

Stephanie Case is attempting a record run in Antarctica.

In downward katabatic winds that will make it difficult to breathe, and in temperatures likely to linger at around -25C (-13F), the 43-year-old ultramarathon runner will this November attempt to set a 100-mile speed record on the coldest continent on Earth.

“I’ve run in extreme environments before but Antarctica is on another level,” the Canadian human rights lawyer told The Athletic. “I genuinely hate the cold, so this is not a case of playing to my strengths.”

No woman has previously entered The Antarctic Ice Ultra, a looped circuit around a base camp at the Schirmacher Oasis, in Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica, which is around 330ft above sea level. Case wants to be the first woman to take part, and break the overall race record in the process.

The outright course record of 22 hours, 40 minutes and 47 seconds was set by Chinese runner Yusheng Ni in 2025.

“Antarctica used to be called ‘the womanless continent’. This 100-mile race has only ever been attempted by men,” said Case.

“There is no women’s record because no woman has run it. I want to change that, not to beat anyone, but to make sure women are on the map. To put a mark down that says, ‘We were here, we did this, and we did it while being very much not quiet’.

“And I want to come home and tell my daughter that her mom got a world record.”

Last May, Case went viral when breastfeeding her then-six-month-old daughter, Pepper, during an ultramarathon that she won. She had stopped to eat a watermelon and feed her baby when competing in the 60-mile Ultra-Trail Snowdonia in Wales, her first race after a three-year hiatus.

Case, who lives in Chamonix, France, was overjoyed to be competing again.

When she crossed the line, she didn’t realise she was the first woman to complete it, finishing in 16 hours, 53 minutes and 22 seconds. She also wasn’t expecting to capture the attention of the world.

“The response was overwhelmingly positive, but there was also a loud contingent telling me I should be at home with my baby, that I’d raced too soon,” said Case. “That I should, essentially, be quiet. I’ve been thinking about that ever since.”

Case got into running while studying law but quickly outgrew road marathons, just as she outgrew her job working in mergers and acquisitions at a top New York City firm, so in 2008 she entered a 250km (155 miles) unsupported race in Vietnam which changed the direction of her life.

From “begging” the United Nations to let her become a volunteer in Afghanistan in 2014 to working in places like South Sudan and, more recently, helping Palestinians displaced from their homes, Case has committed her life to helping people.

“I can see bombs going off around me and I can think, ‘Woah, that was a close call’, but I’m over it in a couple of hours, or by the next day,” she said. “But what I can still remember are specific interviews I’ve done, specific sites I visited, stories from parents. I carry those with me over hundreds of miles.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget them — and I never want to because I know the moment I harden myself to those stories, the moment I wasn’t affected by what I was hearing, that was when I could no longer be a humanitarian or a human rights professional. You should be affected by those stories.”

Inspired by the conversations she had with women and girls in Afghanistan, Case founded the charity Free to Run in 2014 to help women run and exercise safely outdoors in areas of conflict and oppression.

“They had to flee violence in their own homes and are some of the most restricted women potentially on the planet,” Case explained. “They were stuck inside a house and for them to say to me they wanted to be able to run outside, I didn’t think that this would be on their radar.

“I thought they would be concerned about their personal safety, getting their kids to school, making sure they had enough to eat. I didn’t think running would fall into that category of basic needs and basic human rights.

“The idea was audacious to me. How do you start a running programme for women and girls in an area of conflict? But the fact that they wanted to do it signalled to me that I needed to try to find a way to make it happen.

“It’s about trying to push and challenge social norms, advance gender equity through running and leadership programmes for women and girls in areas of conflict because that is where it’s needed most.

“It changes how they think about themselves. It changes depression rates, their confidence and plans for the future.”

One of the conversations that greatly impacted Case during her time working in Gaza in January 2024 was with a woman who had just given birth. Case had recently experienced a miscarriage and was in the process of preparing for her final round of IVF treatment.

“She was basically sleeping on the floor of a United Nations school, and had given birth four days earlier; no pain medication, she barely had anything to eat. She was so happy, or she was exhibiting such joy, because she had this gorgeous baby,” recalled Case. “She sacrificed everything and created this beautiful little thing in the midst of war and chaos. And she didn’t complain about anything.

“We were really connecting just as women and I told her that I was trying to have a baby and she said that she would pray for me. It was a woman in a war zone who just had a baby and was thinking of me.

“It was a real moment of sisterhood. It was just two women, one who was a mom and one who wanted to become a mom, trying to relate to each other.”

While Case has experienced close calls in war zones, it was in the snowy mountains of the Italian Alps that she had a near-death experience.

In January 2017, she was running part of the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc course and slipped, tumbling down the mountainside and into a tree. “I broke six ribs, punctured my lung, lacerated my liver and had internal bleeding,” Case said. “It was pretty dicey. My phone had died in the cold, too.

“Luckily, I had the phone in my sports bra on the left side and I hit the tree on the right side and was able to warm the phone up enough to turn it on, give my GPS coordinates, call the helicopter and get airlifted to the hospital where I was in intensive care for 10 days. It was really bad. If my phone hadn’t turned on, I’d be dead.”

After her hospital stay, she said she was back running in three and a half weeks, punctured lung and all.

Her lived experiences perhaps help explain why she is not only attempting to run a race completed by very few — only 68 people have finished the 100-kilometre (62 miles) version — but also become the fastest to do so.

Case said it was impossible to truly prepare for the challenge. She took a trip to northern Norway recently to give her a sense of what conditions could be like in November. The North Face athlete is working on a custom pair of shoes specifically designed for the ice, while her focus in the build-up will be learning how to manage layering and making decisions in extreme conditions when her brain and body will be operating under a lot of stress.

“Nothing fully simulates running a 100 miles in Antarctica other than running in Antarctica,” said Case.

“I’m going into this knowing that I can’t fully prepare the way I do for other races. It’ll be a bit of a leap of faith, but I’ve taken the jump into the unknown before and it’s worked out OK, so why not in Antarctica too?”