When Irishman Mark Pollock lost his sight in 1998 at the age of twenty two he thought he had reached the end of his world. Ten years on he is embarking on an amazing challenge by racing to the worlds end in The Amundsen Omega 3 South Pole Race.
The South Pole challenge will take place in December this year. Nearly one hundred years since the last South Pole race between Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, and his English rival, Robert Falcon Scott. This time there will be six teams of three who will carry their own supplies by sled over 483 miles of frozen waste lands.
The challenge is expected to take between thirty to forty-five days. In order to cover this distance in the Antarctic each three man team will have to pull their 70kg pulks (sleds) for approximately 16 hours each day.
Mark Pollock spoke to The Epoch Times about his reasons for doing this challenge and also his fears of what lies ahead.
Ever since Mark Pollock went blind in 1998 he has been embarking on greater and greater challenges, he decided to do the South Pole race because “it has the element of adventure and the element of competition it’s an expedition race not just an expedition”.
The list of the challenges Mark Pollock has undertaken and completed are quite breath taking. They vary from winning rowing medals at the Commonwealth games, doing six marathons in six days across the Gobi desert, extreme marathon at the North Pole, kayaking across the Irish Sea, IronMan Triathlon, the worlds lowest marathon The Dead Sea Ultra Marathon and of course the worlds highest marathon The Everest Marathon.
While talking about the adventure ahead Mark explained that to date all of the challenges since the Gobi desert have been “interesting and exciting because of the people and the environment but I knew I could cover the distance so they haven’t made me nervous but this race it has the feeling of the Gobi desert, into the unknown”. Mark paused for a moment, “I actually don’t know if we are going to be able to finish it, whether we are going to be able to make the cut off times or what the environment is really going to be like but we will dress for the occasion”.
In 1998 before Mr. Pollock lost his sight he was studying business at Trinity College Dublin. Ten years on he is a successful motivational speaker with conferences in Las Vegas, Chicago, New York , London, Geneva, Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney to name but a few. Mark said, “I use adversity to develop leaders, I use my experiences with adversity and dealing with challenges by sharing my story and thus helping others to deal with the challenges in their lives, work etc”.
Mark gives motivational presentations at conferences. Eighty per cent of his work is for large multinational companies. Very often Mark goes into a large company and starts off talking about the disaster of him going blind and how over the last ten years things have generally improved for him up to now.
“So basically it starts bad and then goes success, success, success, but generally I only talk about the highs.”, he said.
Sometimes in the questions and answers section people want to now if he has had any other setbacks. He often has to recount how he had to stop during a race in New Zealand the audience actually like that. “I think it’s because it makes it easier for people to engage with me because I have these great exciting adventures but there is always the chance of failure. Just like they can fail because usually it is not possible to be successful all the time. Maybe the failure makes me more human, which I am.”
According to Mark leadership also has to do with helping people make proper informed decisions with respect to their lives. “I don’t think leadership is necessarily for the people who happen to be sitting at the head of an organisation it also relates to ones personal leadership”.
Mark also works with school children, “Whether it’s a fifteen year old deciding what subjects they want to do in school or if they are going to go to university, decision occurs at all levels of society.”
Mark is happy with his career to date he feels that he gets to meet a wide variety of people from different backgrounds and cultures. He said, “the common bond is we all have to face tough times. I get the opportunity to talk to people about my experiences of dealing with those tough times and I also get to learn from these people and their stories.”
Ten years on from his college days Mark realises that the reason why he liked rowing for Trinity in a crew as opposed to sculling where you train by yourself is because “I liked belonging to something bigger than me.”
“The Gobi Desert was something bigger than me. Over the last few years all of the races have really just been about me and I have been training by myself. I haven’t belonged to anything. This south pole race I feel like I’m involved in a big team.
“I think that it is really important if we are talking about motivation and decision making. These types of things are really tough to do on your own, you have got to try to be involved instead of sitting back by yourself.”, he said.
Marks advice for anyone finding it difficult to get motivated to start by just getting involved in something. “If you can just belong to something, it’s a lot easier to be motivated, make decisions and be a leader. It is lonely out there when you are by yourself, I recommend getting involved in something whatever it is.”
South pole history
In preparation for the race Mark had listened to an audio book called “Shackleton’s Way”. Which was a best seller in the late nighties, which looked at the leadership of Shackleton during his expedition to the South Pole.
Mark said, “the interesting thing about the book was that back in august when I was really in the doldrums in the money front I was amazed how one hundred years earlier Shackelton had gone through the same process that I had to go through in putting the team together, getting the kit and the finance together. It was mirrored by what they were doing 100 years earlier.”
Like Mark, Shackleton didn’t get one big sponsor, so he had to go round doing public talks, writing letters, scraping it all together.
“The raising of the money is mirrored one hundred years on, the gathering of the right guys who really want to be there not the people who say oh I fancy that idea, I'll sign up for that, those guys are no good, you have to really want to be here you can’t bluff it.
“However 100 years on it’s different. We are not pioneers, we are adventure racers there is a difference. We are not recreating the Shackleton, Scott, Amundsen era, it’s a new chapter in polar history. However, there are huge similarities with funding, getting the right people, mental preparation, the physical side as we too are not using dogs.”
More information
If you would like to find out more information about Mark Pollock or sponsor him on his polar challenge then
please visit www.southpoleflag.com
