An interview with extreme polar explorer Ben Saunders

Today we completed a series of tests to try and understand just what has happened to my body following the completion of the Scott Expedition. 

First was a DEXA scan which looks at how my body has changed over 105 days of abuse, semi-starvation and physical exertion in Antarctica. The test basically showed – in the broadest terms – how much weight I lost while I was on the ice. Before I went I deliberately put on weight, most notably fat and did a lot of weight training to make sure I was strong enough. So really, we wanted to see how my body composition had changed - the percentage of fat versus muscle or, in other words, how much fat and how much muscle weight I lost. Finally, the test also analysed whether my bone density had changed. The scan gave me so much information, drilling down so specifically that we can see that – due to the motion of learning forwards to pull the sled – I’ve actually put on muscle on my trunk. 

The GSK HPL science team then took my measurements and completed an anthropometric test to support the data from the DEXA scanner. 

One of the most fascinating things about this challenge was the simple fact that the journey hadn’t been completed. To me that seemed almost unbelievable given all the things that we’ve learnt in the century since Captain Scott died - everything from scurvy to solar panels and the incredible 21st century materials, fabrics, technologies and science that exist. I mean, if you think of how our knowledge of the human body, nutrition and metabolism has grown it’s astounding.

I always saw this as a big, physical, athletic challenge, so I was just so intrigued as to why this journey hadn’t been completed yet. Captain Scott set the bar so high and no one had got any further even though so much time had passed. That to me was the fascinating thing about this challenge and a big source of motivation. We were clearly not exploring in the same way as Captain Scott was, we didn’t go down there trying to find out where the South Pole was, that has obviously already been done. But to me, this was always going to be a journey that explored human performance, our limits of endurance and our physical and mental potential as human beings.

Most of it was in the last twelve months building up to it. So there was a really busy year of training, preparation, organisation and planning. But in other ways it’s been a plan and a goal I’ve had for a very long time and a lot of my work over the last ten years has really helped me get to this point. For me personally it was a life-time ambition, it’s a weird feeling to sit here saying ‘well I’ve done it now’ – it hasn’t really sunk in yet.  

The science team at the GSK HPL massively helped me to prepare and be ready for the expedition. In some ways, the Scott Expedition was the culmination of more than ten years of stepping stone expeditions and a lot of trial and error, especially when it came to nutrition and rationing. But I feel like I’d got to the point where I had a decent grasp of what I was doing and was ready to take up the challenge. I’ve always had a real personal interest in human performance and I’ve always seen myself as an athlete which fits right in with the GSK HPL. 

So when I came to here I certainly wasn’t clueless about what I needed and how to train but it was fantastic to bounce ideas around with scientists who are actually at the forefront of the sports science and performance nutrition fields. It was also really reassuring to hear that I was training, working and thinking along the right lines. So really the GSK HPL helped me to tweak my preparations and, looking at the state I’m in now, I think we did a really good job especially when it came to my performance nutrition, so I’m really happy with that. 

I think just the sheer scale of Antarctica and the journey was, at times, almost overwhelming. We covered nearly 1800miles which is the equivalent of 69 marathons back-to-back so it was a vast, vast, vast journey.  Antarctica is a huge place, it’s nearly twice the size of Australia, so the scale of this challenge was really hard to appreciate at times. 

We had a lot of bad weather, what’s called a ‘white out’ which is very, very low visibility and mentally that was hard. Physically, everything about the expedition was extraordinarily tough; it was 105 days, just us, alone on the ice. We started out pulling just over 200kilos each on our sledges so in some ways the expedition was a strength challenge at the start and the heavy weight made progress quite slow. As the days went by, we gradually ate the food we were pulling, and the sleds got lighter making progress much, much quicker.

Alongside the weather and the physical challenge, we weren’t really resting enough; we were doing long days, on average 9 hours of activity and only 5 hours sleeping. So as the days went by we were waking up more and more tired. 

I think if you said to any endurance coach that you’re going to compete for 105 days with only three days off – in our case, one because of bad weather and two through hypothermia - they’d think you were barmy. So the real challenge was maximising recovery while we were out there. For us, nutrition was key to minimising the impact of such sustained physical activity. I think - and the GSK HPL science team really helped us refine this - we took a pretty radical approach to our nutrition plan. We had more carbohydrates than someone on a traditional polar diet and focused on high quality protein to help support muscle recovery. In addition to this we made sure that we ate at regular intervals each day, roughly every 90minutes. In some ways our performance nutrition plan was very much like that of any endurance athlete from a Tour de France cyclist to a marathon runner. 

Maybe go to somewhere warmer? Looking back, I don’t think we made any massive mistakes –there’s nothing really that I would do dramatically differently if I were somehow forced to do the same thing again. It’s really about tweaking things, which in some senses, is what the GSK HPL is all about, working with elite athletes who are trying to refine their performance and achieve those marginal gains that really make the difference. This was the biggest challenge I’ve ever undertaken by a long way and I think I wanted to go out there and mentally know that I had the best nutrition plan, the best preparation and the best knowledge of my own body from the data that we had been given by the GSK HPL scientists. It sounds bizarre but knowing for example that I was fat enough meant that I knew I had a buffer of stored energy to help me through the long expedition. So it was really reassuring to know that we were heading off well prepared. 

I’m not going anywhere cold anytime soon! I’m actually writing a book so I suppose in the immediate future that’s the next big challenge. Beyond that, I just don’t know. I think there probably is something addictive about these places and these sorts of expeditions so I have a few ideas but nothing concrete yet. I’d definitely love to stay involved with the GSK HPL and I’ve got a few endurance challenges coming up so hopefully we can work together on those.