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NY Times actually has an excellent piece on this.

How One Adventure Became Two

For much of this year, Rudd had been expecting a one-man battle against nature. Now his struggle has become a race.

Rudd announced in April that he would make the attempt. Then, in mid-October, with just weeks to spare, O’Brady, who had also been preparing for months, revealed on Instagram that he planned to do the same.

Both men hope to conquer a continent that has become the new Everest for extreme athletes, though they represent two vastly different approaches. ...”

At around noon on Nov. 3, Rudd and O’Brady boarded a Twin Otter ski plane that took off over Mount Rossman and banked east. After a 90-minute flight, they landed on the Ronne Ice Shelf.

O’Brady got out first and collected his gear. “Good luck,” Rudd told him, “I think we’re both going to make it.”

They hugged goodbye, likely their last human contact for at least two months.

Then, while O’Brady strapped into his sled, the plane drove about a mile away to Rudd’s parallel starting point. (That means O’Brady technically had about a 10-minute head start, but it will likely prove negligible over such a long distance).

The Ronne Ice Shelf is 600-feet thick, floating in the ocean yet fused to shore. They began three miles away from their first way point and the beginning of the Antarctic continent. That’s where O’Brady set up camp, on the lip of the continent, after a three-hour haul.

The sky was still blue — there are 24 hours of daylight in the Antarctic summer — and it was a relatively balmy minus 25 Fahrenheit (minus 32 Celsius), without a trace of wind. ...”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/sports/antarctica-race.html