Dandenong Ranges Literary Festival

Join ultra-marathon runner and pain scientist, Donna Urquhart, and author and journalist Charisse Ede, as they discuss what 1400km on the Antarctic ice taught Donna about overcoming pain and adversity.

In January 2024, Donna set the world record for the longest run in a polar region by completing a 1402-kilometre ultramarathon in Antarctica. She had trained for nine months, running on a treadmill in a refrigerated shipping container and also in an industrial wind tunnel.

To achieve the record, Donna ran up to 60 kilometres each day across 28 days in the coldest, windiest and driest desert on earth. Some days, the temperature plummeted to –20 degrees Celsius and the winds reached a brutal 80 kilometres per hour. 

Donna is a pain researcher and well-versed in the science of pain and how humans can cope with it. She is drawn to exploring the limits of human performance, and she pushed herself to the extreme to discover what she was capable of, gaining insights that now help her navigate everyday challenges.

Donna and Charisse will discuss their book Life Without Limits: An Antarctic journey through pain and possibility (September 2026), where Donna has brought together her comprehensive toolkit for understanding and handling pain and adversity—whether physical, emotional, mental or social—showing that all of us can challenge our boundaries and thrive: at home, work and everywhere in between.