preparation - Teaching On Ice

Due to the hours spent trudging along with a sledge attached to me my fitness and strength are currently pretty good. Not wanting to lose what I worked hard to gain I've accidentaly entered the ballot for the Edinburgh Marathon; it will give me a focus that will encourage me to train. Today I decided to test my legs by going for an 80-90 minute run. The problem was that none of my current routes are that long, so I did some research. Armed with directions scribbled on the back of an envelope and a little bit of water I headed off ...

The first 65 minutes went well, then I lost the path, then I discovered another one in the corner of a field and followed it. The path led into a field of shouty women and men armed with green barber jackets and guns. Not wanting to be shot or concussed by falling pheasants I ran away, then I lost the trail again, I found another but, according to the compass on my watch, it was heading 180 degrees in the wrong direction, little bother as soon I'd lost that path as well.

Things were a little serious now as I'd been out of water for a while, I was getting cold and I couldn't go back due to the scary barber wearing men. I slowed to a walk in order to conserve energy and lose less water through sweat and decided to find a road as that was more likely to have a taxi to home on it than the paths/streams I was running down. 30 minutes later I found a road and discovered, somehow, that I was exactly where I wanted to be. 20 minutes of running later I was home ... I'd been out yomping through mud/streams/killing fields for two and a quarter hours!!

I'm now knackered but very happy as my run turned into an adventure. How many of our everyday tasks/journeys could be turned into an adventure by going a different route, losing ourselves for a while and having to problem solve in order to complete them? Amundsen said that 'Adventure is simple bad planning' ... I'm all for a little less planning and a little more adventure!

Tomorrow I'm back in the classroom, Thursday is the ski trip meeting, next Thursday is Y8 Parents Evening, Duke of Edinburgh lunchtime training sessions start soon, I'm not sure what I'm meant to be teaching and I've forgotten a lot of names!

And then there is Antarctica; I've started to pull together some teaching materials, but they're nowhere near complete and they rely on the data from Portsmouth which isn't available yet. But I do have lots of photos. But there again is death by pretty powerpoint going to motivate and inspire?

It wasn't meant to be quite this disorganised, but my plan of going in last Friday and sorting everything out didn't work as my mouse batteries had run out, the server was re-booting and I wanted to give blood. Oh well, I'll just go in and see what happens!

Happy New Year to everyone and good luck for the start of term, let me know how they go, your stories may make me feel better!

There are now less than 24 hours until our flight into Antarctica is due to leave (although delays are looking like being a certainty). Today we had our pre-flight briefing and sent most of our kit to the plane.

The slide presentation on what to expect when we get to the airport really got me excited about going. We will walk on to the plane through the rear ramp and sit on benches at the sides of the plane; down the centre will be pallets of kit. The plane will be guided on to the ice runway by two guys with mirrors! On exiting the aircraft we will walk up to the Patriot Hills camp and find very little set up as we are arriving so early in the season (on our return we will be greeted by mess tents, toilet tents, residential tents and other creature comforts). We will set up our tents and have a snow wall built up by a bulldozer due to the very high winds that are experienced at Patriot Hills (up to 80 knots due to the wind being channelled through the mountains). After a few days learning to cross-country ski and perfecting our routines we will be flown up into the Ellsworth mountains where we will start our science work.

The other presentation was on how to avoid frostbite, less exciting... in fact some of their photos were quite gruesome. I think their aim was to scare us into making sure we follow their advice: stay hydrated and nourished, have good tent routines, wear lots of layers, make sure you don't sweat, wear mittens not gloves, make sure you have no contact with metal or fuel and have a buddy system so that you are regularly checked for frost nip (not serious) and frostbite (serious). And if the pictures don't make you listen to the advice, the nicknames for the conditions will... who would want to suffer from Arctic willy!

Despite the fact that we aren't going to be flying tomorrow we had our last proper meal this evening which was washed down with a couple of bottles of wine... so I apologise for the spelling!

I hope not to update you tomorrow as I will be busily setting up camp in Antarctica. Good night!