Arctic race tests contestants' physical, mental fortitude
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - After more than a year's training, eight teams of adventurers are battling across the Arctic in what is described as the world's toughest polar race, facing freezing conditions, polar bears and their own mental strength.
The Polar Challenge is a 350 nautical mile race to the magnetic North Pole in which team of three people, sponsored to raise money for charity, endure temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius and 24 hours of daylight for about two weeks.
Six days into the race, competitor Christopher Mike, one of the three team members of Bearing 360 North, co-sponsored by Reuters, ICAP and Merchant Inns, said the event was tougher than he could have ever imagined.
"Physically you can train all you like but you just can't be mentally prepared for the Arctic environment," he told Reuters on Thursday via a satellite phone from the first of the race's three manned checkpoints.
"The extreme cold is something you can't simulate in the gym or in the mountains at home. The prolonged, relentless cold affects people mentally, how you perform, how you think, and takes you so far out of your comfort zone."
The competitors began by participating in a four-day, 65 mile training expedition from Resolute Bay in northern Canada to Polaris Mine, the starting line for the race.
Competitors race on skis for about 12 hours a day, pulling supplies on a 90 kilogram (200 lb) sledge behind them. On day six Bearing 360 North was in second position with TeamPolarBears leading the race.
"You ski in single file with the background, screaming wind making it impossible to talk so you communicate through hand signals," said Mike, whose team is raising funds for Orchid, a charity committed to reducing the incidence of testicular and prostate cancers.
"It's a long time in your own head. I suspect everybody faces routinely the hourly and daily challenge mentally of wanting to give up."
Along the way Mike said they encountered a mother polar bear with three cubs but she ignored them and wandered off.
Competitors in the race had various reasons for wanting to compete in the event that was first held in 2003.
Kirsty Bamber from the Arctic Virgins, one of the two all-female teams, works in a bar and wanted an adventure.
Steve Jones from Team Star, leader of a UK-based software company, survived a rail crash in London and wanted to find something that would replace that traumatic incident as the most dominant experience of his life.
Nick Bevan, a chartered building surveyor in Team Star, saw the event as a good way to deal with a mid-life crisis.
"People are here for very different reasons with some people here for the spiritual experience," said Mike, from near Tetbury in Gloucestershire, who works in executive search services and battled a serious illness 10 years ago.
"When we were planning the event we were out to win but now our minimum objective is to finish the race safely and as a team. If we finish last it'd be better than not finishing."
