Blind explorer Mark Pollock made history this week by becoming the first blind person to reach the South Pole; the team he was racing with, called Team South Pole Flag, finished 5th overall.
Mark spoke to The Epoch Times from Cape Town where Team South Pole Flag and all the other teams who took part in the Antarctic adventure were recovering before flying back to Europe.
“We're horsing the food in here” said Mark jokingly, “last night everyone started ordering two desserts at a time. I also had two and a crème brulee on the side.” Mark and his teammate Simon O'Donnell both lost between two and three stone each during their twenty-two day adventure so they have a bit of leeway when it comes to diet for the next week or so.
All the competitors were delighted with the South Pole Challenge but were looking forward to returning home to their loved ones.
Looking back on his adventure Mark cited Christmas day, making their cut-off times and finally finishing the race as being the major highs.
Christmas day—“We started with a little shot of Brandy and some Christmas cake, which was wrapped in a message from home... the weather was great, the skiing was fast, an amazing Christmas day.”
Once Mark realised that he and the team were able to make the cut-off times at each transition point he was able to enjoy the race more. The constant worry of being eliminated because they failed to arrive at a checkpoint on time was something that played on Mark's mind the whole time during his preparation for the adventure.
“I was really really worried about not making the time cut-off's... day one, two, three, four and five we were way above the cut-off's and that was a huge high, knowing that we could do the distances.”
Many of the competitors experienced moments when they were skiing along and all of a sudden they would start crying, perhaps tears of joy or sorrow, Mark said this happened to himself several times in the first phase of the race, he discussed this with other competitors after the race and they had experienced the same phenomenon. “You think about something or someone at home, you think about something that has happened in the past and it just sets you off.”
The race was a strain both mentally and physically for all involved, Mark felt that perhaps they had underestimated how tough it would be mentally. During the race Mark realised that he would have to control his emotions because after the great highs he would experience great lows, so it was important to keep things constant. “Staying completely neutral was very important.”
Team South Pole Flag
Team South Pole Flag got its name because Mark was carrying a flag which had the images of over five hundred friends and sponsors. He brought the flag with him to the South Pole. For Mark the flag was more than just a piece of cloth covered in photographs, it represented the last ten years of his life.
Mark recently realised that a lot of the adventures he had been involved in were all about him and his efforts, this time the project was the culmination of all the help and support he has gotten from friends and family over the past ten years since he went blind.
“This month January ten years ago I was training with Larry ( Marks guide dog), I hadn't been out of the house for nine months, we made our first solo run.” Ten years on and Mark has become the first blind person to race across the waste lands of Antarctica to the South Pole.
When asked if he would do the race again Mark said that he wouldn't be afraid of doing an expedition of that length again but not to the South Pole.
“I like the snow but we were naive, no doubt about it.”
