Fitness & Training

See a short film of Team Pink Lady^® training on Camber Sands. This file is nearly 4Mb so may take some time to download. Please be patient!

The Scott Dunn Polar Challenge is one of the toughest adventure races in the world and will require an exceptionally high level of fitness and stamina, not to mention mental determination.

The team will not be satisfied with just finishing the course, they aim to be competitive. They intend to cover the 368 mile journey within 18 days. To do this the team must walk and ski an average of 20 miles a day dragging a 60 kilo sledge behind them. Training for such a daunting event is a challenge in itself. The team intend to concentrate on three key areas:

Endurance

Aerobic fitness alone is not enough for a polar challenger. In order to be competitive the team must be able to withstand 11 hour days of strenuous walking....and then be able to get up the next day and do it again. This means they must develop stamina and endurance through long hard hillwalking. Every weekend over the next nine months the team will be in the hills putting in long hours of strenuous hillwalking. As the training progresses they will begin dragging tyres with them to approximate the weight of a pulk.

Strength

The girls' main disadvantage is that they do not have the physical strength of the male competitors. Most of the race will be across uneven sea ice that can form ridges and walls of chaotic ice. Challengers need to be strong in order to haul the pulks over these ice ridges, particularly in the upper body. The girls will be hitting the gyms and using weights to try and even out the disadvantage.

The Cold

The team also need to prepare themselves for extreme temperatures. At minus 40°C, exposed skin can burn and digits can freeze. Learning how to survive in such conditions is a vital part of their pre-race training. The girls will be spending time in Norway and Austria learning how to fight the cold and avoid injury through exposure or hypothermia.

Bulking Up

The team can expect to lose 10% of their body weight during the race due to the cold. To reduce the effect this will have on their performance they must gain weight before the race. This should not be a hardship for the three girls!

New Skills

Team Pink Lady^® are all proficient hillwalkers who have several years of expedition experience between them but there are several skills that are unique to the Arctic. As well as brushing up on their GPS skills (the girls are all compass lovers) the girls will be learning how to avoid the attention of curious or hungry Polar Bears. This will include learning how to shoot rifles incase of an extreme emergency.