Can you tell our readers how your trip to the North Pole came about, was it something you had always wanted to do, and how did you prepare?

There has been a team of us in South Africa that have climbed a lot of mountains. We try to get together every 2 years or so. Personally I have climbed Everest and 5 of the 7 summits. (Editor’s note – the 7 summits are the highest mountains on each one of the 7 continents).

Sean Disney runs a company called Adventure Dynamics and we were having a chat about doing something different. Sean has been to the South Pole and was keen to do the North Pole. Once we had decided we soon had the first ever SA team ready to go to North Pole!

In terms of fitness, the team all had a good starting point; running, hiking and mountain biking. So we focused on endurance gym which involved repetitions rather than big weights. Also, exercises such as strapping a 4x4 tyre to my body with a harness and seeing how far I could pull it!