Last year, we spoke to Arctic Mummy, Jo Winchcombe as she was preparing to take part in the Polar Race. Having recently completed the challenge, Flying Start caught up with her to see how she and the team got on. Words: Jennifer Shuttleworth
What were the results of the race? My Team - The Polar Slugs - reached the Magnetic North Pole first, but we actually finished second because of a navigational error at check point three!
Was the experience how you expected it would be? I didn’t really have any preconceived ideas about the experience. I thought it would be tough, especially the first week of the race, and it was exceptionally tough, especially the cold!
What exactly were conditions like out there? The conditions were extreme. Temperatures were often -26°C in the tent at night. We had endured a storm for two days where temperatures dropped to -40°C plus with winds gusting at 40 knots! It was a very unpredictable, but beautiful environment.
Just how did you endure the climate and work involved in hardcoring it across the North Pole? I don’t think you ever get used to such cold temperatures. You do acclimatise a little, but you have to be constantly careful about frost bite. It’s actually quite warm work pulling a 60kg sledge across the snow and ice, so whilst you are moving, you are reasonably warm. As soon as you stop though your body cools down very quickly and you need to put on extra layers. When you are in the tent at night the stoves soon warm you up and dry out damp clothes, but temperatures plummet as soon as the stoves are switched off, so you have to baffle down inside your down sleeping bags.
It was obviously a physically demanding challenge, do you feel fitter than you’ve ever felt before? I think that I am physically much stronger now than I have been for a long time, but I underestimated just how exhausted I would be after five very physical weeks out in the Arctic.
How did you prepare mentally, emotionally and physically for the challenges that lay ahead? I spent 18 months preparing for the Polar Race. I was very focused on raising the sponsorship money, raising money for my charity, and getting physically fit. My training included:
One of the first bits of advice I was given when I embarked on this venture was to get a good support team. I am very lucky and have an amazing group of family and friends, without whom I would not have achieved my goals. The other piece of information I was given at the outset was if you really want to do this, then you will make it happen. It was a daunting challenge from having to raise the finances to physically reaching the Magnetic North Pole, but I was very focused and quitting was not an option. Big projects like this have to be taken one day at a time.
Talks us through a typical day during the race?
Rob would light the stoves, make hot drinks and - turise and apply sun lotion. We would then change our tent clothes for our ski clothes. Breakfast was typically porridge or a high pro- tein egg based meal (I stuck to the porridge rather than rehydrated eggs & bacon...). Rob would also fill two flasks with hot water for each of us. We then packed up our sleeping bags, thermalites and roll mats and put on our wind-suits and Baffin snow off the valences, whilst Rob packed up the ‘kitchen’. We would
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