Morten Grundsøe, 33, and Jens-Erik Nielsen, 56, have reached the geographic South Pole from the edge of the Antarctic ice cap in the second fastest time ever, according to jp.dk.

The two men spent 29.5 days to cross almost 950 kilometres, an average of over 30 kilometres per day. Their final stretch of 54.3 kilometres took a straight 22 hours.

“We’ve had a fantastic expedition. Our plan was to have a safe and enjoyable expedition, but when we saw that we were making good daily progress, we began to be interested in speed,” Grundsøe tells jp.dk by satellite phone.Erik  Nielsen is 56 and has previously crossed the Greenland ice pack without support.

When they reached the South Pole on Tuesday, only two others had reached the pole this season. On their way, the two Danes overtook a group of seven women from various countries who were also making the trip, but had not reached the pole by the time Grundsøe and Nielsen spoke to jp.dk.

The seven women are from different nations — Great Britain, India, Cyprus, Ghana, Singapore, New Zealand and Brunei Darussalam. The team plans to reach the South Pole on New Year’s Day to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Commonwealth on January 1, 1950. Kaspersky Lab has sponsored the expedition. An eighth member, from Jamaica, was forced to drop out early after suffering frostbite.

Norway’s Roald Amundsen was the first person ever to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911.