The story
Baikal Ice Marathon Festival in Lake Baikal
The Baikal Ice Marathon is an annual 42-kilometer run across the frozen surface of Lake Baikal, staged from one shore to the other and officially themed around preserving the lake. Ranked among the twenty most extreme footraces in the world, it draws distance runners, including internationally competitive amateur athletes, to Siberia each winter.
Lake Baikal, in southern Siberia, is the world's deepest and oldest freshwater lake, holding roughly a fifth of the planet's unfrozen fresh water and freezing over with thick, often strikingly clear ice each winter.