Ben Saunders

How to win a double-Ironman. A riveting (and informative, if you're daft enough to be considering a 21-hour triathlon yourself) blog post by the hard-as-nails Hywel Davies.

— Filed under Aside

Racing Vicariously

My brother's currently competing in the Surrey League Revolutions five-day stage race ("Around 100 of Britain's top riders will be taking part in the gruelling 5 day long race. Each day they will cover around 100 miles – as well as climbing some of the steepest hills in South East England.") He's been giving me a blow-by-blow account over the phone every evening, and he's posting daily update's on his cycling team's website.

"The strong riders wouldn't let things go clear, until the second lap of a big circuit… where Rob Hayles slipped away and opened the gas up… I looked at the moves and thought "If I don't get across to that, it will be even more GC time and the stage over" so I took a deep breath, shifted up and went for it. Steve Golla (Sigma) and one of the Irish Team Ras Mumhan racing came with me, and gradually we worked together for a hard five minutes get across. The last 200 metres to the break was pure pain, but it was worth the effort as this now large group (including the earlier move by Hayles) of about 20 worked to put some time into the bunch."

To give you an idea of the standard of racing, many of these guys are pros, and Rob Hayles narrowly missed selection for the GB team pursuit squad (that I've just watch win Olympic Gold, setting a new world record in the process). I couldn't be prouder of my little brother, even if it does mean admitting he can officially kick my arse on a bike.

— Filed under Cycling, Inspiration

"Frost in Arctic sleeping bags" – a 24-page PDF of a Canadian Military study into improving sleeping bag design for Arctic use. Admittedly this is probably of interest to less than one percent of my readership, but I still haven't found (or quite figured out how to make) the perfect North Pole sleeping bag yet. See also 'Improved Infantry Winter Shelter Project'…

— Filed under Aside

Milo Radcavic, the chap that nearly beat Michael Phelps in this morning's 100-metre butterfly has already written a blog post about it.

— Filed under Aside

Inspiration for the Week

T.S. Eliot's Geneen Marie Haugen's (whoops) The Return (thank you Jerry) and a sublime advertisement from Mercedes…

Some day, if you are lucky,
you'll return from a thunderous journey trailing snake scales, wing fragments and the musk of Earth and moon.
Eyes will examine you for signs of damage, or change and you, too, will wonder if your skin shows traces
of fur, or leaves, if thrushes have built a nest of your hair, if Andromeda burns from your eyes.

Do not be surprised by prickly questions from those who barely inhabit
their own fleeting lives, who barely taste their own possibility, who barely dream.
If your hands are empty, treasureless, if your toes have not grown claws, if your obedient voice has not
become a wild cry, a howl,
you will reassure them.

We warned you, they might declare, there is nothing else, no point, no meaning, no mystery at all, just this frantic waiting to die.
And yet, they tremble, mute, afraid you've returned without sweet elixir for unspeakable thirst, without a fluent dance or holy language
to teach them, without a compass bearing to a forgotten border where no one crosses without weeping for the terrible beauty of galaxies
and granite and bone.

They tremble, hoping your lips hold a secret, that the song your body now sings will redeem them, yet they fear
your secret is dangerous, shattering, and once it flies from your astonished mouth, they—like you—must disintegrate before unfolding tremulous wings.

— Filed under Inspiration

Fight and Flight

"Bicycling is the nearest approximation I know to the flight of birds. The airplane simply carries a man on its back like an obedient Pegasus; it gives him no wings of his own."

Louis J. Helle, Jr., Spring in Washington

Hill reps in Richmond Park yesterday afternoon (on my 31st birthday), photographed by the brilliant Sam Christmas for a forthcoming piece in Huck Magazine.

— Filed under Cycling, Training

Transformed

"I don't know what sort of general significance running 100 kilometres by yourself has, but, as an action that deviates from the ordinary yet doesn't violate basic values, you'd expect it to afford you a special sort of self-awareness. It should add a few new elements to your inventory in understanding who you are. And as a result, your view of your life, its colours and shape, should be transformed. More or less, for better or for worse, this happened to me, and I was transformed."

- Haruki Murakami writing in the Observer

— Filed under Running

Martin Hartley – Another Day in the Office

Martin Hartley photographing me at -45 degrees C. in Resolute Bay, Arctic Canada this spring.

This was a couple of days before my departure for Ward Hunt Island, the start point for my North Pole speed record attempt this year and we were busy getting some decent footage and photgraphy for my sponsor. Martin took a few hundred photos in the space of a couple of days, and his brand spanking new Nikon D3 (to my amazement) never missed a beat. You can see (and hear) how cold it was – Martin got the camera stuck to his nose at one point, an unexpected occupational hazard in those climes.

There's a HD (High Definition) version of the video on my Vimeo page.

— Filed under North Pole 2008, Photography

The Art of Suffering

"For what is the point of training but making pain seem routine? You work the body, yes, but the real point of training is to accustom the mind to endure discomfort: to know it, tolerate it and even, finally, to like it."

Matt Seaton in Rouleur magazine

Plenty of discomfort on this Sunday's training ride: it was boiling hot and horribly humid, I ran out of food, and I got stung by a wasp on my tongue. I thought the wasp was a bit of leftover energy bar wedged in behind a tooth – only as I bit into it (crunch) did I realise what was going on. I took four bars and two bottles of energy drink to see me through the five-hour session, but when I reached round to grab the last bar with an hour to go, I found the pocket empty – it must have fallen out – and trundled dejectedly home with a grumbling belly and plummeting blood sugar levels (but a perverse sense of enjoyment at what I was putting myself through as I rode past people soaping cars, sunbathing on lawns and drinking beer outside pubs).

There's more training – and I suspect no shortage of pain and discomfort – just around the corner. Alastair and I are heading to Utah at the end of next week for a ten-day training camp at Mark Twight's Gym Jones. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, with two parts sheer excitement and one part apprehension. Excitement because Mark Twight has had a strong influence on my own approach to expeditions (and, I suspect, to life). As an alpinist he was meticulous in his attention to preparation, gear, nutrition and training. His book Extreme Alpinism, published nearly ten years ago, seemed ahead of its time, and lay out an approach that had huge parallels with the type of polar expedition I wanted to lead in the future: fast, light, unguided, unsupported, pioneering and with an inescapable degree of challenge, danger and difficulty.

And part apprehension as Gym Jones, like any worthwhile expedition, represents an opportunity to be found out. To come face-to-face with my limits, and face-to-face with the reality of what it will take to surpass them.

"Gym Jones is not a cozy place. There's no AC, no comfortable spot to sit and there are no mirrors. Stressors are intentionally designed to cause discomfort and apprehension. Effort and pain may not be avoided. Physical and psychological breakdowns occur. The support of a like-minded group, dedicated to The Art of Suffering, provides a safety net. An individual will push harder and risk more in the company of trustworthy peers and that's one reason the gym is not open to the public. Gym Jones is a private, invitation-only facility located in Utah."

— Filed under SOUTH, Training

Things I Read on the Plane

"It's such a pleasure to travel. I go to New York at least two or three times a year. I'm particularly fond of Marrakech. Last year, we spent Christmas in Dubai. People tell us that Oman is extremely beautiful. I'm also attracted by the idea of Colombia. But more and more I'm coming to believe that the journey into my own self is the journey that I like the best."

- Charlotte Rampling, interviewed in Swiss Air's Swiss Universe magazine

"He was the only person with whom I could have a one-to-one conversation on what I call the sacramental aspect of walking. He and I share a belief that walking is not simply therapeutic for oneself but is a poetic activity that can cure the world of its ills. He sums up his position in a stern pronouncement: 'Walking is a virtue, tourism deadly sin'."

- Bruce Chatwin (on Werner Herzog) in What Am I Doing Here

I'm just back from a speaking gig in South Africa (a big howzit to all the Hollardites reading this). The big news at this end is that, as of an hour ago, Ernst & Young are not going to sponsor SOUTH. Strangely, the call just now has left me feeling galvanised and excited rather than staring into the abyss of self-pity. The next three months just got a whole lot more interesting, so watch this space.

Right now, my journey into my own self continues with a trip to the pub, to celebrate Alex Vero's birthday. More soon…

— Filed under SOUTH

Stretch not Cruise

Challenging times right now, as they often seem to be, and I'm going to break with a self-imposed rule I set a while ago and start talking (or indeed writing) a bit more openly about the ups and downs of getting an expedition like SOUTH off the ground. I've never seen anyone do this before, and probably for a good reason – the small clique of people like me who make a good living from expeditions tend to be pretty cagey about what they're doing next, and exactly how they're funding it. It's not the easiest time to be raising money right now, but I'm going to play my cards a little further from my chest, as it were.

I make no bones about the fact that my expeditions are paid for by corporate sponsorship. I started out with no money of my own, and my first North Pole expedition, in 2001, landed me in £35k ($69k) of personal debt that took years to pay off, so it's been a steep learning curve, and one I'm still grappling with. Last year was an interesting milestone – I did more speaking than ever before, and made more money than ever before. I felt secure and safe; grown-up. I started reading about investments and mortgages and bought a big flat shiny TV. Thought about getting a dog. Yet for the first time since 2001, there was no big expedition that year.

This year things feel different – edgy again. There's been one huge expedition already. Life is hurtling along, deadlines are towering over a horizon that races ever closer and debtors are looming large in the rear-view mirror. It all feels rather out of control, which I've come to learn is probably a good thing. A sign that I'm stretching and not cruising as Ridgway would put it.

There's a lot going on in the sponsorship department right now, and an important phone call with Ernst & Young's global head of marketing at 8am tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes…

Cinematic Orchestra 'To Build a Home' – Live At The Barbican

— Filed under Inspiration, SOUTH

A Day in the Life

9am: Interval training at Barn Elms running track with Kerry Anley and Andrew Tongue:

3pm: Andy Ward (SOUTH's Expedition Manager) and I cutting and taping USGS charts of Antarctica in order to plot the route from Berkner Island to the Antarctic Plateau:



(Larger photos on my Flickr stream.)

— Filed under Running, SOUTH, Training