Shackleton Centenary Expedition
Temperature: nippy. Wind: moderate. Weather: drizzly.
It's not Antarctica, but in the spirit of every little bit helps, I took part in the annual Barnes Green Half Marathon in Sussex, now in its 25th year.
Having done the course last year I knew what to expect and finished in approx. 1 hour 38 minutes which I'm pretty happy with as it beat my time last year by 10 minutes, and it meant I got a silver medal (the first 100 get gold, the next 200 silver, and everyone else who finishes gets bronze).
Having sullied this website with a picture of me crossing the finish line drenched in rain and slightly woozy, I am also going to give out a special mention to my younger brother who, in his first half marathon at the age of 20, finished in a very respectable 1 hour 57 minutes.
Now I'm off for a lie down and some more lucozade.
Over the coming weeks and months, we will be updating the SCE YouTube page as often as possible.
There's a small selection of our favourite videos from fellow YouTubians, some classic Shackleton footage, and we will also be uploading some of our own training videos. Not the kind of training videos where we teach you how to get fit, by the way, but the kind where you get to see us in pain, dragging tractor tyres around and so forth. It's how you get noticed these days, they say.
At the moment our favourite clip is a beautifully shot ad that Guinness ran in Ireland a while back, centred on Tom Crean. Crean was a highly-respected and unflappable crew member on Shackleton's Endurance expedition of 1914, and earlier took part in Scott's Discovery trip of 1901-4, where Shackleton also served.
Have a look and tell us what you think of it.
The New York Times, via our very own polar news service South Polar Gazette alerts us to this piece trailing an upcoming performance art piece taking place at the Wollman Rink in Central Park, NYC this week.
The artist Pierre Huyghe is responsible for a musical performance by a 42- piece orchestra recreating his own search for the elusive albino penguin of Antarctica.
The performance will be happening this week and will be filmed, they say. Those in New York wanting to take part should arrive around 6:30 in the evening to catch the event.
It looks amazing: if you're going, let us know what you find!
Like the rest of the country, we at the Shackleton Foundation will be cheering on the England Rugby players this evening as they look to be the only team in history to regain the World Cup.
England's performance over the past few weeks has been admirable, and the courage and leadership coming from some of the big players: Vickery, Shaw, Sheridan, Robinson, and Jonny Wilkinson has made for compulsive viewing. An interesting coincidence is that both Nick Easter and Andrew Sheridan went to Dulwich College, the same school as Sir Ernest Shackleton (a fair few years before them mind).
From seeming to be nowhere, the England rugby team has performed remarkably in the past few games, and now the country is behind them.
It just goes to show that all sport is as much about the mental side of things as the physical. It also reminded us of a quote from Max Weber that seems to have stood the test of time:
'Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible, unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word'
Come on England!
Today is Blog Action Day in which more than 12,000 blogs around the world are writing about the environment and climate change in order to raise awareness.
Being environmentally-friendly explorers, we observe that green concerns are now a constant drumbeat in the news, and that action has begun: be it multinationals trying to adopt and promote carbon-neutral policies, Al Gore winning the Nobel, or the growth of environmental companies making a successful business case for sustainable activity.
We're keen to promote the cause, and live up to it ourselves by ensuring our trip to the Pole will be 100% carbon neutral thanks to our supporters at Climate Care
We are hoping further, that the SCE blue ice research programme that the team will be carrying out will help us understand a little more about Antarctica.
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