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."
"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."
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."
"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…
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
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.)
I'll be speaking at 2gether08 in London next week – "a festival of ideas and action… exploring how digital technologies can bring us major new social benefits". My plan is to throw open a challenge to what I'm hoping will be a fairly switched-on audience: how do we best use the internet to tell the story of SOUTH as it unfolds, and to engage as wide an audience as possible?
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.
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.
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.
The first surface crossing of Antarctica via the South Pole, the 1955–58 Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition was a camping trip of epic proportions, with government funding from four countries, the Queen as patron, a leader that came home to a knighthood, a ton of corporate sponsorship, and ships, planes, huskies, sno-cats, tractors and skidoos. I'd read The Crossing of Antarctica, Sir Vivian Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary's account of the expedition, but I didn't realise there was a film of the trip until I unearthed it on YouTube this morning.
[This is part one of five, the rest are here: 2, 3, 4, 5.]
The films were painstakingly digitised and uploaded by Simon Coggins, who works for the British Antarctic Survey, and first came across the original cine film reels while over-wintering at Halley Research Station.
"Halley has a great selection of old 8mm cine film reels, with the best of the bunch being a 50 minute colour documentary of the 1955-58 Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition. It usually gets a few showings a year and the quality is starting to fade, so during my first winter Mark Maltby recorded it to a digital format by projecting the reel onto the darkroom wall then recording it with his digital video camera. The results were surprisingly good so I made sure I took a copy back home with me."
Apologies for the radio silence. As you'll note, I've spruced up the design of the site a bit (not least because there were a few similar-looking sites popping up, and it's good to raise the game now and again) and I've also managed to fix a few problems that have been bugging me for ages, mainly getting the archives and categories working properly.
Anyway, here it is. There are obvious gaps to be filled here and there, but do let me know if you spot any glaring errors.
The next expedition, SOUTH, is now less than six months away and I'm starting to feel the familiar sense of pressure as kick-off approaches. You'd think having a Yahoo! website and a Discovery Channel documentary lined up would have sponsors knocking at the door, but the truth is a little different and we're currently reeling from being turned down by a huge technology company that we'd been courting since February. At least the current exchange rate makes buying a mile of the expedition a bit of a bargain for those of you in the UK/Europe.
The physical preparation is going rather better, and I'm working with triathlon coach extraordinaire James Beckinsale in the build-up to our late-October departure for Antarctica. The current period of training, "base one", entails building my aerobic capacity and strengthening the supporting muscles that I use when I'm sledge-hauling. Lots of running, cycling and weight training, with a bit of roller-skiing thrown into the mix. I'll write more on the training shortly (and hope to start blogging it day-by-day) but right now I've just seen I'm horrendously late for a meeting. More soon…
