Ten Days on the Ice: December 2006

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Last week a friend of mine asked me to take part in a 10 day trek for charity across the icy wastes of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic.
"It will be fun", she said, "It will be minus 25 degrees, you have to dig your own hole out of the ice if you need the loo and there might be polar bears, but it's a chance of a lifetime. Really."
"Yes yes," I said. "Sounds like a blast. I will certainly give it every consideration. Bye." Some people are absolutely barking mad, I thought as I hung up the phone.
But then somehow, after a few days thought, I agreed to take part. I had become the 12th and last person to sign up to the trek in aid of Mitchemp Trust, a children's charity. And I think I may have lost my mind.
Let me be quite clear about this. I am not some sort of fitness freak or adrenaline junkie. I am a 29-year-old financial journalist who has spent several years being taken out for lunch to nice restaurants by PRs. I don't do extreme sports, I do corporate hospitality.
My friends describe me as "well built" and say things like "well you don't look that heavy", while my father, who has never felt the need to protect my ego, calls me "fat".
I have a number of unhealthy vices and I have no real desire to give any of them up.
So why did I agree to go on this lunatic escapade? Well, as soon as i work that out out I will let you know. It's obviously for a very good cause and the chance to visit somewhere as unspoilt as Baffin Island doesn't come along every other day. I think its partly to do with the fact that I need a really good reason to get fit again. But all that sounds quite flippant. Lets just call it a big challenge and leave the psychology bollocks for another day.
This blog is a diary of what happens now. Think of it as Bridget Jones crossed with Sir Ernest Shackleton.
I have a little over six months to get fit enough to walk 140 miles over 10 days in one of the coldest and least hospitable places on the planet. A place so brutally frigid that skin suffers the first signs of frostbite after just a few minutes of exposure to the open air.
Wish me luck.

Ten Days on the Ice

Thursday, December 07, 2006

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