Dinner goes a long way, particularly when it is free, even if Cynan isn’t the greatest cook. But we convinced a good friend, Scott Walker, to come and be subjected to our queries about performance training and nutrition. He is a twice Olympic athlete and heads up various elite programs at UKsport so knows his stuff.

He drew this diagram which has changed how we are preparing:

While all four aspects are interlinked, the process begins with nutrition. This is a relatively obvious thing but is hard to get right.

Nutrition is important as it is designed to keep the body at its optimal level. A poor or misaligned food intake leads the body to become less alert, sluggish and more likely to make a bad decision, no matter how fit you are. Scott used the example of solo round the world sailors, like Ellen MacArthur, who sleep in very short bursts (sometimes 15 mins) and need to change their intake patterns to match, often eating small amounts very often to keep supplying energy to the body. Diets can also change depending on the difficulty of the sailing.

In many polar expeditions, there is a lot of weight loss - it is difficult to carry food to provide the 6-8000 calories a day needed, within reasonable weight limits. If the body can’t get its energy from food, it takes it from the muscle. The body starts to degrade and performance can be limited.

We’ve always associated food intake with physical performance but haven’t really thought about it from a vigilance angle so this is a bit of a change for us.

So our food, rather than just being designed for athletic performance, is now to be designed primarily around keeping vigilant. This ensures that at all times, we are in good condition, feel more positive, can keep warm and can make good decisions - always important when things are going wrong. Only once we have achieve this, can we focus on performing well. Also, take a look at Ben Saunder’s excellent site for an endurance athletes approach.

Clearly we need to be fit, but this is the one area on which we have perhaps placed too much importance on even though we’ve done enough expeditions in the Arctic to understand that so much of it is a mental battle. Being physically fit is relatively easy and doesn’t involve that much science at our level (hardly elite!).

Mechanics - train hard, fight easy as they say. This is not just being fit, it is about becoming natural with any movement or task needed. For us, this is hauling sleds and kiting. Unfortunately, hauling sleds is just not the same as going for a run or riding a bike. Hauling sleds (or tyres) has just become our number 1 form of exercise, so if you’re ever in Hyde Park, look out for us as we’ll be there regularly. As we’re kiting, we also plan to spend a reasonable amount of time kite surfing. All just to get the movements working like clockwork.

We’re also going to measure our training in lots more detail. This will include the type of training but also heart rate before and after, also in the morning and at night and our sleep quality. We’ll post the information just for the fun of it as well as the details we settle on for our nutrition.

Worked to about 3am last night and have been drinking coke all day to keep me going. Hmmm….maybe not the best way to start.