The Mental & The Physical

Preparing for this expedition is more than hard and I can only go on past expedition
biogs to mentally prepare for it. They say that 80% of this kind of expedition is all in the mind and only 20% of it is physical. My expedition leader Andrew Rees Stoke advised us to mentally train by endurance fitness, what ever it is you do, do it for a long amount of time... Okay I thought, I've done that it before... I did the Walk the Walk Moonwalk for Charity 3 years in a row. That's walking 26.2 miles (yes the .2 bit was the killer) over the course of 7 and a half hours! Yes charity, but surely there's less painful ways of raising money for a good cause?! Is it the buzz of getting together with like-minded people all with the same goals? Yes that's always something to look forward to, but I do that everyday in my job...

Each time (during the event) I vowed I'd never do the painfully gruelling deed again, but each year I feel drawn to it and I pondered at why I do it again and again. And the big question here is WHY? Why the arctic, why now!? These are the questions I often hear thrown as me by my friends and colleague who all must by now think I'm utterly insane.

They say your mind forgets pain easily, especially if you're of the female variety (something to do with reproduction and the need to give birth again...?!), so perhaps I'm falling into the human nature trap of forgetting long suffering physical and mental endurance, or perhaps I have never really put my body and mind through enough to really and truly know what I've let myself in for... Scary stuff!

I finally came to the conclusion that I'm addicted to putting myself through extremities and seeing how far I can push myself, but for some reason I'm not willing to admit this to anyone let alone myself... There is nothing better than completing your goals and more so if it was particularly soul destroying whilst doing it... The mental feat needed to combat pain or back breaking brutalness is definitely a challenge and is something I need to work on, I look upon it as character building so it's all good...

If during this adventure I find the answer (or a better answer) of why I'm doing this, I will be sure to share it!

As for physical preparation, I felt like I was on my own until I coincidentally come across the official trainer for the Catlin Arctic Survey Team! What is better than learning from the same trainer that trains a world leading Arctic team? Nothing comes closer!

I initially had no motivation to carry out the countless fitness programmes I had painfully dug up specifically for polar training, I spent energy researching the topic more than I had actually training for it and it was a constant droning worry that I will not be fit enough to do it. Not only will this mean I can't enjoy what I'm experiencing as much but the thought that I'd be dragging my team down or putting them in danger is more than enough to give me a good kick up the backside to put 100% in being prepared for this expedition.

My week to week training have pretty much been the same for the last 5 months and these are broken up into long weekends away training with my team and some solo ones too.

Weekly training includes, core and strength stability training (circuit and pilates), hypoxic training, swimming and rock climbing. The latter is more for my pleasure but I've been told this will help too.

Only one more month to go! For the past 5 months I've been increasing my activities and any spare time I have you'll mostly find me training (this is meant to be a subtle/cowardly way of apologising to friends and family that I have neglected these last few months...sorry...!), whether it's after work or weekends, early morning or late at night...

The changes I have seen are small to myself but people have often commented on how much I've improved, I guess fitness and improving on a technique is not essentially physically measureable and especially if I'm doing the activities daily, it's hard for me to see any change at all...

The training trips I've attended and been on are always so fruitful, I can't possibly imagine wanting to miss them. The one in Derbyshire was a gem and integral part of my training, actually meeting the people in my team was key, especially if worrying about whether we'd all get along or not. Luckily as you'll see in my other blog we all do and now I'm even more so looking forward to getting to know them better during our expedition...

So as I draw a close to this blog, I'd like to round off by thanking everyone that have played a crucial part in getting me where I am today. My mental and physically goal is always being challenged and I'm constantly surrounded by key people that whether they know it or not have given me the infectious courage and motivation to carry on that little bit further. When I'm on the ice surrounded by the vast lifeless tundra and when I hit a snag I will always look back to how grateful I am right now... Whether it's 'snow cones', or that extra 'awesome effort Flo!', it's the little things that will keep me going...!