Armed Robber Turned Extreme Ultrarunner Wins Arctic Marathon – Runner’s World

In the frozen wastelands above the Arctic Circle, Tiberiu Uşeriu falls to his knees. He’s alone, surrounded by the flat, white expanse with 30 mile-an-hour winds howling and a 35 pound sledge loaded with supplies tethered to his back. He’s five days and over 500 kilometers into the 6633 Arctic Ultra, one of the hardest races on the planet. For a moment it feels like he can’t go on.

A year earlier, at a similar point in the race, doctors had tried to dissuade him from continuing because of frostbite, but Uşeriu refused, signing a document to take responsibility for his actions. “I made a new record for the final leg, I was so scared the frostbite would spread,” he says.

But now, he has himself to convince he should continue. In an attempt to overcome the physical exhaustion, he asks himself why he is there and where he needs to get to. “You need to get to the finish as that’s your destination,” he tells himself, forcing himself to his feet.

In March last year, Uşeriu, known as “Romania’s Ice Man,” crossed the 6633 Arctic Ultra finish line in a record 7 days, 4 hours, and 50 minutes—his third win in a row. Most years, less than one-third of those who start the 383-mile race in Eagle Plains, Canada, actually reach the finishing line in Tuktoyatuk on the Arctic Ocean coast.

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For Uşeriu, 45, the win was a further testament to how far he had turned his life around in the nine years since his release from prison for armed robbery.

Born in rural Romania during the country’s bleak communist period, Uşeriu suffered an abusive childhood, dropped out of school, and after completing Romania’s compulsory year of national service, joined friends in Spain and got involved in petty crime. Before long, a man Uşeriu claims was part of the Serbian mafia recruited him to help carry out organized crimes.

“We started by stealing luxury cars, changing their identities and then selling them in different countries,” Uşeriu explains. “We moved on to robbing jewelry stores, and then security vans moving money between supermarkets and banks.”

Uşeriu says he was motivated first and foremost by the need for money. The robberies took place mostly in France, Germany, and Austria, after which the group would disappear back to the Balkans, where the violent breakup of Yugoslavia was taking place. This continued for three years, until 1999, when Uşeriu was caught and sentenced to 15 years in a German prison.

He spent most of his sentence alone in his cell at a high-security prison, with only a few hours a day of communal time in the yard and library. “For the first three or four years I wasn’t thinking about my future, all I wanted to do was escape and get revenge on the guy who informed on us,” Uşeriu admits. However, a visit from his brother, who had established an environmental NGO back home, gave him motivation to turn his life around.

In 2009, after serving 9 years and 8 months behind bars, Uşeriu was released on good behavior and deported to Romania. He started collecting, driving, and arranging materials for his brother’s NGO, and slowly rebuilt his life. He also got two dogs, which he would take on runs out in the mountains. “I realized how much I liked it, it made me feel good running away from my problems,” he says. He discovered that running also gave him time to think and deal with his troubled past.

Uşeriu’s friends and family say that running has been a key part of turning his life around. “When Tiberiu was able to concentrate on something he enjoyed, and in which he found himself, I believe [that] was paramount,” says his brother, Alin Uşeriu.

“I admire my brother because he is powerful,” he adds. “And I’m not talking about being able to run for 600 or 700 kilometers at the North Pole—he succeeded in fighting enormously for his rehabilitation.”

In May 2012, Uşeriu entered his first marathon, and that September, competed in his first ultramarathon, a 115-kilometer race in Romania in which he finished fifth. Uşeriu pushed his body, continuing to race all over Europe, and found that he was well suited to long-distance and low-temperature conditions. “I like that point where I am at the physical end of my powers and then overcome it,” he says.

Uşeriu soon began looking for tougher challenges, and in 2015 learned of the 6633 Arctic Ultra, the race in the Arctic Circle.

After getting support from his family and friends, Uşeriu trained hard for six months, the last three of which he was running in shorts in 32-40 degree weather and snow, and then immersing himself in the icy waters of a lake to prepare his body.

Uşeriu says the Arctic race is mostly mental endurance. “Ninety percent of the time you are alone, you carry your own food, equipment, pulling a sledge,” he explains. The aid stations on the course are as far as 75 miles apart. Competitors are required to wear an SOS transmitter button on their person as they are assaulted by powerful winds and temperatures as low as -56 degrees Fahrenheit. The first 200 miles are hilly, but after that it’s flat. Which, according to Uşeriu, can actually be worse.

“That’s the part that generates the most abandons, as people just can’t take the lack of direction,” Uşeriu says. “People have difficulty keeping balance. Everything is white so you don’t have any points of reference, it is easy to fall over. It takes two days to go through that section, and you don’t see anything in that time.”

“You hit a point where it’s very hard and it’s easy to give up,” he adds.

Uşeriu would push to cover 62 miles every 24 hours. The first year he completed the race (a shorter, 350 miles) in about 173 hours, almost an hour ahead of his nearest rival. The following year he beat his previous time on the same course by 15 hours.

Uşeriu’s success brought attention back home, and newspapers began taking an interest in his past. In 2017 Uşeriu published a book, 27 Steps (27 de Pași), that laid out in stark detail his criminal past, life behind bars, and his rebirth as a long-distance runner. “I felt that the media was threatening to publish my past, so I wrote the book as a way to tell the story myself,” he explains. The book was an immediate success, and sold almost 50,000 copies.

Răzvan Luțac, a journalist with Gazeta Sporturilor, Romania’s leading sports publication, believes that had Uşeriu tried to hide his past, and it had come out anyway, public opinion would have turned against him. “Not all the public, but a lot of his fans would have snubbed him,” he predicts. Instead, Uşeriu’s public profile only grew.

And having opened up, Uşeriu looked to even greater challenges. After completing the arctic race in 2018 he headed to Everest to take part in the Everest Marathon. While the distance is far shorter – just 60km – the race comes with its own unique challenges. “You start at an altitude of over 5400 meters, and to deal with the lack of oxygen is very hard. You can panic, and it’s very difficult to run,” Uşeriu says. Despite this, he finished 11th, with a time of 13 hours and 45 minutes. The first seven spots were taken by Nepali runners far more accustomed to the conditions.

Uşeriu says his ultimate goal is to complete the five most difficult endurance races in the world, which along with the 6633 Arctic Ultra and the Everest Marathon include, he says, the Yukon Arctic Ultra, the Tor des Géants in the Italian Alps, and the Marathon des Sables in Morocco’s Saharan desert. “I like to discover myself through breaking through my limits,” he explains.

This February he was forced to pull out of his first attempt at the Yukon Arctic Ultra, on the advice of doctors, after suffering from frostbite in his right foot. Only 12 of 40 runners competing in the 430-mile race reached the finish line.

Meanwhile, Uşeriu’s role in the NGO has grown over the years, and now encompasses motivational camps and teaching children outdoor skills. He also conducts team-building exercises for large multinational companies. Still, the most liberating parts of his day are his runs. “I feel free when running, leaving everything behind. Leaving all the troubles behind,” he says.

After the life he’s lived, and the years behind bars, the miles of endless roads and tracks have become a source of therapy, as well as a driving force in Uşeriu’s life.