Our Day (a day in the life)

(from Richard)

People have asked what our days look like.

Essential what we do is break every day into the same structure, we have 6 marches a day. Each march is about 1 hour and fifteen minutes long - followed by a dense fifteen minute break for food (granola bar, water, cheese, chocolate, etc.). Depending on how chatty the group is, it can go a bit longer.

The first three marches of the day are fairly easy, we are feeling fresh and spritely from the high calorie food we are eating and the start of the day.

The last few of the day are hard. The last one especially is really hard. The back aches. Your feet are wincing, if your feet could wince. You are feeling every pinch point in your feet. And at this point, it is magnified.

The last one of the day really matters. It is like the last rep of the day in the gym, the final exam in course, or the final deliverable for a client. It is the one that allows you to keep piling the miles on and get to your goal quicker! We are increasing our mileage each day; we know it isn’t sustainable. But, we want to take it as far as we can.

During the day, it has been pretty boring. We have luckily had reasonably warm weather - by arctic standards. Nice blue skies. Not really much to see - it looks a lot like the surface of the moon.

All we have to entertain us is our music or spoken word MP3s. I so far got through Alan Partridge’s and Stephen Fry’s autobiography (thanks Sx).

You have the strange shape of the Zastruga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zastruga) to look at…

Or the strange quirks of the back of the bloke ahead.

Or if you are leading, you have the job of navigating - which at least gives you something to think about.

One of the highlights of the day are the occasional flat drops, which sure wake us all up. They are rare, but they are when the whole continent feels to fall a bit. The surface is, snow packed on ice, packed on snow. As these different density layers shift, occasionally the whole surface will drop a couple of inches. It is a weird feeling. They sound like big thunder claps, and you feel the earth move a bit, which is slightly disconcerting. But again, it wakes you up and gives you something to think about as you trudge to camp…and some excitement about getting to the end of the day.

That is about the full amount of the day - we will add more about our mornings and evenings later. We are moving well, and I think everyone is happy. Cheers!