Two marathons a day

To ski to the South Pole in any meaningful sense, you’ve got to start at the edge of the continent, which is a distance of 730 miles. It’s also uphill – by the time you reach the pole you are 9,300ft up. Temperatures range from -50C to -60C, although I had days when it reached -70C. If you feel a tad chilly, you have to put an extra scarf on.

It’s a great place if you want to lose some weight because you burn up to 10,000 calories a day, which is the equivalent of running two marathons a day for two months. So you have to get fit.

I trained every day, including holidays. A typical working day for me was to get up at 4am and either drag some tyres up and down a hill for three hours or go for a 20-mile run. I’d also go for a mile and a half swim in a loch some days, but only in the winter – it was too warm in the summer.

Breakfast would be a massive bowl of porridge, handfuls of dried fruit and a chopped banana on top. I’d wolf that down then eat six boiled eggs and six raw eggs. Then I’d go to work. At noon, I’d do another two hours of training, usually dragging tyres up and down Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh – my employer was very understanding.

Lunch would be a whole chicken followed by a pint of cream down in one. The best time of day would be 3pm when I’d eat a whole cake or a couple of packets of biscuits. Then I’d be in the gym for a couple of hours in the evening. It’s that sort of dedication that you need to do a trip like this.

Lunch would be a whole chicken followed by a pint of cream down in one.

There was one very important thing I needed on this trip and that was someone else to go on the expedition with me. It’s a big decision. One thing you consider is size – two well-built men in a tent is a bit cramped.

I got a tip-off in Glasgow about a woman called Fiona Taylor who could be right for the trip. Actually, she was perfect. She had that old-school grit – very determined and mentally tough.

She’d never done anything like this before but anyone can get fit enough to do this trip. It’s just a question of putting one foot in front of the other a wee bit longer than normal. I taught her everything I knew: how to ski, how to dress, what to eat and we became a really disciplined team. We practised everything. We did days and days of training together over weekends so everything became second nature and we never had to question ourselves. We just knew what to do. The main thing was that we got along with one another. We became friends and great team-mates. It was also important that she became good friends with Michelle – they got on really well.