With an alleged audience of 2bn and 7 simultaneous concerts around the world, Live Earth created quite a fuss. So we went along to check it out, see if it could really match its hype and hyperbole…certainly, entertainment wise it hit all the spots, an amazing line up with each artist restricted to a ‘best of’ 3-4 songs. The message and all the celebs wheeled out to support it were a little more self conscious as if they didnt want to be the party pooper with the serious message and stop all the fun. Some were almost apologetic about having to real off some fact around the amount of carbon saved by an individual action. Yet it’s important to bear in mind that that Live Earth is just the start, a start of a three year campaign by Al Gore and Live Earth to drive individual action and force an international governmental response. If only 1% of the audience of 2bn, that’s 20m people, took the message to heart over the weekend and start to take concerted individual action, that’s a phenomenal amount of CO2 saved there and then and makes a mockery of those who criticise the concerts for their carbon footprint. A good start, let’s hope they build on it…

OK, we said we’d put some more pics on here from the Aersomsith gig in Hyde Park, so here they are. Our main aim in being there was to spread the word about climate change and to get more people to pledge on the EarthFireIce website. And we also had some fun…

Here’s Sarah - with Trevor and Ed - looking kind of Earthy in her new t-shirt, plus a few more happy t-shirt wearers and a few air tattoos, the money for which went straight into the charity budget for expanding awareness of climate change issues. Thanks to everyone!

Here are a few pics from the Aerosmith gig in Hyde Park at the weekend, where we were spreading the word on climate change… 

EarthFireIce made its first public appearance at the weekend, at the Hyde Park Calling gig in London. Three stages featuring bands such as Aerosmith, Peter Gabriel and Crowded House attracted nearly as much attention as our groovy new octagonal tent. Around 75,000 people attended over the weekend - and we reckon that most of them squeezed into our tent during the torrential rain! We sold t-shirts, tattooed people (OK, air tattoos - we didn’t draw blood!), and generally spread the word about taking personal action against climate change. Thanks to everyone who visited us - and a special thank you to our fantastic team of committed EFI-ers… Sean, Ed, Bee, Trev, Chie, Andy, Ilona, Sue, Robbie, Josh, Irma, and Andy. More pics to appear over the next few days…

Today was World Environment Day…apparently. Is it just me or was this somewhat of an underwhelming day? Perhaps my expectations were misaligned, there i was thinking there would be huge fanfare from governments and businesses all jumping on, lots of events, lots of media coverage. Perhaps there was in places, and in certain countries, but not that i saw in the UK. Not even those trusted bastions of environmentalism, the Independent and the Guardian had much to say on it. If i am missing the point , someone let me know…..or perhaps everyone is just too focused on the upcoming G8, which will have far greater reaching consequences in the battle to curb carbon emissions, hopefully postive ones. There’s clearly been a lot of posturing by countries in the lead up to the G8, the US asking for a completely separate negotiating framework outside of the UN (surprise) to be started next year, Germany and the UK insisting a deal be done at the G8. Let’s hope this is just postering and that a deal of substance will be done….the world expects in hope.

Just saw today that Lewis Gordon Pugh, adventurer and swimming nut, is going to swim a full one kilometer at the north pole to highlight the fact that there is not ice where there should be…his swim would not have been possible just a few years ago. I completely relate to Lewis, not just because he is raising awareness like us, not just because like us he is highlighting melting polar ice caps, but also because i, like Lewis is about to, went swimming in arctic water….except that my scrawny body lasted all of about 3 seconds in the water, and it was not pretty….watch the youtube video here for the full gorey 60 seconds of drama. All i can atest is that what Lewis is planning on doing is 100% truely mental. Nutter!

Our 48 hours at the pole will live with me till I die. I am going to dull my grandchildren into submission with tales of the 2 days that I spent on the frozen drifting temporary ice mass that is the north pole. From the 2.5 hour flight in a soviet plane designed specifically to land on the arctic ice to the first steps on the frozen ocean at the pole, from the marathon itself to the perpetual battle to fight off the coruscating cold, from the helicopter ride to the actual geographic north pole in an old Russian M-8 to the burly bearded vodka-fuelled Russians who ran Camp Barneo as it is known, it was a surreal, unforgettable experience, laden with incredible images.

I write this on the plane home. I am exhausted, content yet still trying to get to grips with exactly what I saw and experienced. I am not sure how much has really sunk in. After 48 hours at the pole, I was very glad to be leaving that harsh landscape – the cold and the lack of sleep were simply too much and made it increasingly harder to appreciate where we were at. One thing is for sure, hot showers and heated bathroom floors that we had in Spitsbergen felt like manner from heaven. It is a relief not to have to worry about the cold, to have continuous feeling in my feet.

Yet, without wanting to get all preachy, if we as a human race let this wondrous breathtaking natural phenomenon disappear in the next 50 years, it will be a travesty, an unforgiveable act of negligence for which we all have to take responsibility.
Some Photos:
Just landed at the Pole
The True Geographic Pole
The View at the Geographic Pole

One of the best parts of the whole North Pole experience was the other competitors, meeting and getting to know them – an amazing bunch of people who have done many amazing feats in different parts of the world. Learning about some of the stuff that these guys have done has opened up a whole new world to me. Yet for all their feats, and all amazing sights and experiences of the last week, one thing stood out a mile, and is worth highlighting.. While we were doing the plain old marathon, one guy, alone was doing the first ever wheelchair marathon at the pole – up and down the runway, for 26 miles on his own. William Tan does a lot of road marathons, and he is fast – ranked in the top 20 in the world, he normally does the marathon in about 1:50 minutes. But he had failed the Antartica marathon twice, once he timed out, once it was too muddy. But he succeeded here. And how. These particular frozen 26 miles took him 21 hours. It was staggering. Each push advanced him often as little as 5cms, the specially designed wheels not getting traction on the mixture of crushed snow and ice that was the runway. The isolation, solitude and cold must have been immense. He started 6 hours before we started our race. He finished 9 hours after we did. Never have I seen such determination, such will power. It was truly inspirational. William, we salute you.William completing the North Pole Marathon

It was about 3.30am, the sun was shining brightly outside, most of us were huddled in our sleeping bags trying to rest and keep warm (which was hard even with 4 layers of clothing, 5 pairs of socks and 3 hats inside a sleeping bag) when the call came – we’re running the marathon in 30 minutes, get ready. It was all a blurred rush. Before I knew it we had set off and I had not had time to even stretch, let alone put on my snow shoes properly. The first of the ten 4.2km laps was like an exciting novel adventure, winding our way round the Russian camp and the runway, and through the ice dunes that punctuate the flatness of the white, icey north pole landscape. At lap 2, it started to dawn on me that actually these laps take quite a long time, and that really it’s quite cold. It did not help that the tendon in my knee gave way at that point, meaning that for the rest of the race I was in a lot of pain, and that at many points all I could do was hobble and drag my left leg along. By lap 5 or 6, my whole face was frozen - literally – hair, eyelashes, skin: all white with frost and icicles. By lap 7, I had lost all feeling in my feet, but I thought I had just one lap left, only to discover that the race was 10 laps, not 8. The last two laps were simply spent dreaming of the relative warmth of the tents, hot liquid, and a cessation of pain. I stumbled home in 6 hours, once again relieved that the whole thing was over, and a litte frustrated that I had not been able once more to run injury free. Probably because of the slower pace of the race, it did not feel as physically exhausting or demanding as the Sahara, the cold and the pain in my knee had been the real challenges here. But i did it, and never have i enjoyed pot noodles and 5 cups of tea in a row so much.

Exhausted…haven’t slept in 48 hours. Endless daylight wreaks havoc with the sleeping patterns as does extreme cold! Well a short one then… Sean and I survived the marathon. An absolute mission - we have no idea what our exact times were - but we made it. What a relief to put on clean clothes and have a shower. Time to sleep and relax now. Full story tomorrow!

5 DAY FORECAST
Monday
-9°F (-23°C) | -21°F (-29°C)
Tuesday
-3°F (-19°C) | -17°F (-27°C)
Wednesday
-4°F (-20°C) | -14°F (-26°C)
Thursday
1°F (-17°C) | -8°F (-22°C)
Friday
1°F (-17°C) | -5°F (-21°C)

…walk in the park

Packing for the North Pole is a nightmare. Seriously i have no idea what to take…bar just putting all my warmest clothes in a case and hoping for the best….i mean all these dilemmas…what do i want to have photographed on top of the world? what if it’s just -10C instead of -30C? Should i take a silly costume? Wanted to go for another brisk walk tonight, but chaos rules supreme, what with finishing stuff for work, emailing people, website-ing and the like. Looking forward to getting on that plane tomorrow and leaving the warm lands behind.

Starting to get organised again… although its taking time to adjust to the mania of London life. Race day pictures below… feels like an age ago!

Sahara marathon 2007 - the starting line…

Seanyboy at 10km - before the suffering…

Kwagga at 10km - looks like I’m suffering already…

I did not enjoy the marathon. It was hell. Even though i now have very fond recollections of it, loved the whole build up and atmosphere around it, and would possibly even do it again, i know my mind is playing tricks. OK, so the start with the local men on camels as pace setters, dancing and singing women, kids running alongside, and a dozen or so jeeps from the red cross, assorted film crews and various others was all very exciting. And when we ran through a town at exactly the half point, and again we ran through a column of cheering people, that was pretty cool. The rest, forget it. I think once near the start i appreciated the beauty of the desert, but that was it. By mile 7 i was pretty tired, by mile 14, i was dead on my feet and ready to stop (in fact, we probably mis-paced it, given that i ran the first 13 miles in 1hr 50 mins), and…well, the rest, it was not pretty. 42C heat, sany/rocky ground, the up and down of dunes, the complete solitude (apart from one totally random camel at mile 20 or so) made for a miserable torid time. At certain points i was sure i would not make it, at others i bizarelly started thinking about the impossibility of having to do the north pole as well within the next month which was pretty stupid - it just resulted in making me even more down. In the end i stumbled home in 4hrs 45 mins, relieved rather than elated, and looking forward to a few days of doing sweet nothing apart from tending to sore limbs.

Monday 26 February… the big marathon day! Blisteringly hot… 42 degrees celcius in the sun. Not a breath of wind.

Sean and I started off strongly… toward the front of the pack. We clocked the first 10km in under 50 minutes and the second 10 at roughly the same or even faster speed. By the half way stage things were looking good - we had done 21km in under 2 hours and our spirits were high. The energy sachets seemed to be working.

In retrospect perhaps our fast start was a sign of our inexperience… we were never going to keep up the pace… especially as the midday sun set in. The temparatures shot to 42 degrees celcius. The terrain changed from flat to neverending uphill and downhill and frequently we had to run over soft sand which just destroyed whatever energy we thought we had left.

Somewhere around the 30km it became an absolute killer. Sean and I had parted company a few kilometres before… at this point it was all about finding one`s own pace and then just plodding along. Sometimes the only thing that kept me from slowing to a walk was a mini-ambition to make it to the next watering station or the regular appearance of the filming crew… I had to keep on running for the cameras but of course these guys wanted more - they wanted interviews, wise words of “earthfireice campaign” wisdom. Unlikely.

Reaching the 35km mark after 3h20mins was perhaps the first time I realised that I was going to make it. My urge to walk by this stage was overwhelming but I kept focusing on trying to run an extra 100 metres and then another extra 100 metres… somehow I managed to run all the way for a grand marathon time of 4 hours 7 minutes and 41 seconds. Elation, satisfaction and utter exhaustion!

Dont know how I made it and don´t know whether I´ll do it again. For the time being at least it ís sufficient to dwell on the pleasure of the moment. The North Pole marathon is still just over a month away after all…