Standing by, training hard and getting excited…

Our latest weather report this morning was not great. We’re probably not leaving before the 30th now. It is what it is. We’re all smiling, making the best of it, and enjoying good food and comfort while we got it 🙂

The travel safety team did a brief for us this morning breaking down the route, the conditions, the glacier, the crevasses and everything we’ll be encountering on the expedition.

It’s definitely going to be a bit of a challenge 🙂 The route looks step and relentless. And even once we get to the top of the glacier, Josh from travel safety told us it’s a pretty challenging uphill grind to “Titan Dome,” the highest point of our expedition. He didn’t paint a warm and fuzzy picture, that’s for sure 🙂

Although I imagine it won’t be too easy, it looks absolutely epic. Everyone here at Union Glacier is so excited for us – it is such a privilege to be able to go where so few people have gone…

While waiting, yesterday I went out on the 10km loop again. This time with even more gear in the sled. I took my teammates cache bags and went out with 68 days worth of food. We’ll only have to carry 18 up the glacier, and 20+ on the polar plateau. So this was significantly heavier.

I felt that extra weight, especially on the inclines, but it was great mental training…

As human beings, we think in relative terms. Our brain uses reference points to compare one thing in relation to another. That’s how we assign subjective values and judgments to things, from our favorite blender to our best vacation.

As soon as I dropped off the cache bags with 50 days of food in them, that sled with 18 days of food then felt like nothing. I cruised back to my tent. I felt like Kate Winslet in Titanic – I was flying 🙂

By dragging a much heavier sled now than the one I will have on the expedition, when we finally get out there, my mind will believe that sled is light. It will compare it to the training sled I dragged yesterday. It will then use that as a reference point to assign a subjective value to the weight of the expedition sled.

Suffer harder in training and your life will become easier in battle!