I was interested to read a PDF of advice published by the team behind the South Pole Race (a 430-nautical mile race part-way from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole scheduled to start later this year) that advocates eating every two-and-a-half hours while hauling a pulk.
I might be letting slip one of my secret weapons here, but the longest I'll go on an expedition without eating is 90 minutes. I was taking in 260 calories per hour (predominantly carbohydrate) on my North Pole speed record attempt this spring and I've never felt stronger – or travelled faster – on a polar expedition. There's some great background on this approach in Steve Born's excellent piece, Proper Caloric Intake During Endurance Exercise.
I'll post something slightly less geeky later today.
"The consequent delay of a year, was a serious blow to me. It meant that I must attack the problem one year older; it placed the initiation of the expedition further in the future, with all the possible contingencies that might occur within a year; and it meant the bitterness of hope deferred.
Yet, when I gathered myself together and faced the situation squarely, I realized that the project was something too big to die; that it never, in the great scheme of things, would be allowed to fall through. This feeling carried me past many a dead center of fatigue and utter ignorance as to where the rest of the money for the expedition was to be obtained. The end of the winter and the beginning of the spring of 1908 were marked by more than one blue day for everybody concerned in the success of the expedition.
But the money still came hard. It was the subject of my every waking thought; and even in sleep it would not let me rest, but followed with mocking and elusive dreams. It was a dogged, dull, desperate time, with the hopes of my whole life rising and falling day by day."
Anyone who's been following Al's prolific blogging will know the story already, but it's high time I announced it here and gave you a little back-story: we're postponing SOUTH by another year, and Al and I will leave for Antarctica in late October 2009. The principle reason is that we don't have the funding in place. Six months ago I was sure that Ernst & Young, the title sponsor for my North Pole speed record attempt this spring, would extend their support. But they pulled out at around the time the word "downturn" started cropping up in the news and I watched my dream slipping out of reach, racing ahead of me to the horizon I've dreamt of for so long.
I've chosen a peculiar career. The Norwegian übermensch of the polar expedition world, Børge Ousland, has been in this game for 22 years, yet has embarked on just nine major polar journeys. If a tennis player knew their career would span a mere nine games or an artist were told they could only exhibit nine works in a lifetime, the pressure to get it right would be immense. And there's the rub. To accomplish anything new; to break new ground, you've got to risk getting it wrong.
I got it wrong this spring, and the impact of my defeat in the Arctic this year has taken a while to appreciate. The silver lining of having to postpone SOUTH is that it gives me a chance to return to the Arctic and finish the job. Al and I were planning a training camp at Mark Twight's Gym Jones in Utah this summer (which in turn has been postponed – I'm planning to go in December now) and Mark sent me a perfectly-timed morale-boosting note a few weeks back. I hope he won't mind me reproducing it here:
"To have been shut down by gear failure up north when you were so invested, and clearly moving with the necessary speed, is an ugly outcome to live with every day. I understand this. Revisiting that challenge while the knowledge and lessons learned are still fresh, when you know well what needs to be done beforehand, when you have the confidence born from having been equal to the task yourself, makes better sense than letting it slide with the intent of coming back to it later.
In 1998 Steve House and I few on to Denali to try the (Czech) Slovak Direct. We got acclimated by tagging the top via an easier route. Then we did some reconnaissance of the actual climb and realized our tactics were unsound: we needed a third to share the work. So it didn't happen that year. Life got in the way the following year but we both kept our attention on the route, figured out the team (we had actually hoped to go as a foursome but Rolo bailed last minute), formulated tactics, dealt with gear, etc. And we trained for that specific task. All that to say that we kept the fire burning brightly, without distraction and it was one of several reasons we were able to do the route in "exactly" the way we wanted in 2000."
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.
I've been back more than six weeks now, and feeling guilty that I haven't written an update since I was flown off the Arctic Ocean. Emotionally, I've handled having that dream snatched away from me far better than I thought I would, probably because it was a bit of equipment that let things down, and not me. It also left me itching to channel all that frustration into the next expedition. Even before I was home from the North Pole, I'd bought a new pair of running shoes in Ottawa and was pacing along the canal twice a day.
And now I'm back, I'm hurling everything I've got into SOUTH, like a madman burning his own furniture for warmth. Deep down, I know that unless I immerse myself in it utterly, it won't be a success. In stark contrast to the simplicity of pulling a sledge north, life once again feels like spinning plates on flimsy poles, or like Mickey Mouse packing his suitcase for a holiday. No matter how much I jump up and down, I can't quite close the latch. Things pop out. Plates tumble. Family, friends, relationships, a social life, emails, calls, sleep; all have been neglected this year, and all will continue to come second-best until I'm back home safe and sound next February.
Which should all make entertaining reading for you lot. From now until the departure for Antarctica in late October, I'm aiming to document the large part of the build-up through this blog. As far as the training goes, I'm currently being coached by the fabulous Faye Downey, with input from Mark Twight and Gym Jones (and a summer training camp in Utah that promises to be quite special). I'm completely humbled by the brilliance of the team supporting me, and it feels like this mammoth goal is finally within reach. Watch this space.
It's all go. I'm heading back to the North Pole in a matter of days (I leave the UK this weekend) and I'm planning to go solo and unsupported from Canada to the North Geographic Pole, with the aim of setting a speed record along the way. The current record of 36 days and 22 hours was set by a team using dogsleds and multiple resupply flights in 2005; I'll be alone and on foot.
There's a brand-spanking new website on the way, thanks to the brilliant people at Erskine Design – the site goes live on Monday (right here at BenSaunders.com – do not adjust your set) and I'll write more then…
Today was one of the most momentous days of my life. I spent two hours on a train this morning, Philip Glass' Solo Piano on the iPod, watching England's rolling countryside being flung past my window and waiting for a phone call.
It was a call, I tried not to remind myself as the butterflies in my stomach beat and quivered, that had the power to transform the next three years of my life. And travelling to a conference where I was expected to tell the waiting audience that anything is possible, it felt strange that so much of my future was see-sawing on the crux of one person's yes or no.
As we passed power station, Halfords warehouse, drab goods wagon with a blaze of graffiti down its flank; as my hope ebbed and flowed with the flickering bars of the mobile signal, I thought about the conversation with my mother this morning, when I learnt that my grandmother, gravely ill, was on her deathbed. A grandmother that I never knew, and that I will probably never know. Another small part of me somewhere, another flickering signal.
When the call I was waiting for came, I felt oddly dispassionate. It was good news. Perhaps the best news I've ever been handed, but expeditions have taught me to face down fear, to see through emotion's flap and facade, to be objective not excitable. Nothing's ever as good, or as bad as it first seems, right?
From train to taxi to another hotel, another stage. People ask if I ever tire of telling the same story, but I think of bellringers: pulling the rope is always the same, but the beauty is in never knowing who might catch the echoes on the wind. Staring into the bright lights in front of five hundred today, I feel oddly detached. One step removed. Handshakes. A taxi. A seat cover with wooden beads. Local radio. The girl next to me on the station bench eats chips in gravy with a wooden fork. Her striped carrier bag blows open in the breeze; two cans of lager.
My grandmother died earlier today, so she won't hear the story you're reading now, that I typed with two thumbs on a phone, on the train back to London. I'll tell you the news as soon as it's official, but it involves a big company, a big sum of money and the biggest plans I've ever made. Finally, finally. Five bars.
A composite animation of the Arctic Ocean's seasonal sea ice retreat in 2007 (from the Cryosphere Today – the original 200mb file is here). To my layman's eye, the rate of melting between July and September is staggering.
So, an update. The big news is that SOUTH will now start in November 2008. It's been enormously frustrating to roll back the start date of this project again, but I now realise how naive I was in thinking, three years ago, that this was an expedition that would take a few months to get off the ground. The truth is that it's a monster; the levels of complication and expense of doing something this ambitious in the remotest (and coldest) place on earth have been astonishing. The easy bit of SOUTH will be pulling a sledge for nearly four months. It's the three years that it's taken to get this far that have been truly tough.
The good news is that the change of schedule gives me time to return to the Arctic next spring as I feel I haven't quite got rid of my North Pole itch. I'll post more on this project soon…
Elsewhere, I've just got back from the incredible Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine, best described by a fellow attendee as "a brain spa" (though my legs got a good workout as well – I racked up a decent running mileage in the glorious Camden Hills State Park). After a throat infection picked up on the flight home, I'm training hard this week as part of the build-up to competing for a second time in the Ballbuster duathlon on Saturday 10 November.
Regular blogging will resume with immediate effect – I'd been holding back on announcing the news about SOUTH, and now that I've done so, I'm feeling far happier. I'll leave you with a cartoon that made my day, from the brilliant Anton Uhl.
