-Racing to the South Pole- Mark Pollock Interview

Mark Pollock is an exceptional Endurance athlete, who has completed many high profile and taxing endurance events around the globe. For his latest challenge Mark will be undertaking a Race to the South Pole.

 What is even more remarkable is that Mark is completely blind – having completely lost his sight ten years ago. His story is one that is truly inspiring and perfectly captures the nature of endurance.

These include:

•The Gobi Desert marathons

•The extreme Marathon to the North Pole.

•Kayaking across the Irish Sea

•Ironman Switzerland

•The Dead Sea Marathon (the worlds lowest Marathon)

•The Everest Marathon (The worlds highest Marathon)

Having been a competitive rower, Mark completely lost his sight while still in secondary school. Not one to let such a small matter get in his way, he continued rowing while completing his Degree in Business Studies in Trinity college Dublin – ultimately earning his place as a medal winner at the Common Wealth games.

It was not long after the games that Mark and his friend Nick Wolf decided to take part in the Gobi Desert Marathon. This is a challenge which is not for the light hearted and involves running 6 Marathons in 7 days across the sweltering heat of the Gobi Desert. The terrain on which the race takes place is rocky and uneven – far from what you might imagine is an easy course for any runner, let alone one who cannot see. Using their fitness from rowing as a springboard for the event, Mark and Nick had only 2 months for their specific running training before the race.

Is there a particular person who had an impact on how you developed in your athletic life?

“Well both my Rowing coaches in school and also university had a huge influence on me. There’s a lot of whinging in every sport when you get beaten, be it – “your part of the course had heavier wind than the other part” – Or if you turn up late for training everybody always has an excuse. I think the thing that Jaques (school rowing coach) taught us, was that there is no point talking about excuses, the only thing that really matters are the facts. You either win or you don’t and your either late or your early. It was this reality of just dealing with the facts that Jaques drilled into us, and ultimately it was one of the most important things in helping me to deal with my blindness.” This was the same with my university rowing coach (Nick Dunlop) who had the exact same attitude. With him the excuses, whinging and moaning just didn’t cut it and all the mattered were the real facts of what took place.

Making the transition from the sport of rowing to running was not an especially smooth one for Mark as running by its’ very nature involved many more obstacles and risks for somebody who was blind. “The big change for me was that I was so used to racing to win when we were rowing, but with running races I was suddenly competing on an uneven playing field. When we were racing in the Gobi desert it was extremely rocky terrain. All the time I had to worry about where to put my feet and if I was going to fall. It was here that I had to begin to get my head around the fact that my blindness was stopping me from being as competitive, as my fitness would have allowed me to be if I could see. This was really the stage where I had to begin the slow transition from being competitive with other people to being competitive with myself.”

"The Gobi Marathon event involved running 6 Marathons over 7 days, in what was very rough and changeable terrain. It was also Marks first serious competitive running event:

It was myself and my rowing partner Nick Wolf who took part in the Gobi Race together. We had been running down to rowing training, and only had about 2 ½ months between the end of the Rowing season and the beginning of the Gobi Marathon. At the time I didn’t think that the timescale we had was ideal, but when I look back now I can really see the benefits of the cross training we were doing. It was ultimately our fitness from rowing and not just the two and a bit months of specific running training that got us through. I think that fitness combined with our ability to “just keep going” we’re our main strengths in that event”

Did you have a particular nutrition or hydration strategy when you entered the Gobi event?

We had been experimenting for quite a while, and had been asking around and taking loads of advice. In the end we decided to go down the route of using very specialist foods, with our key emphasis being on getting enough calories in each day. This meant that we were taking tons of high calorie nutrition bars etc.. but had unfortunately ignored the “Human Factor” of our nutrition plan. We just hadn’t realised at the time, the importance of having some comfort food to perk you up when we were 4 or 5 days in and feeling terrible! I think the best way to describe it is that we did a Rocky 4, but followed the Dolph Lundgren approach instead of the Rocky approach. I think what I would probably recommend now would be going 60% on the science side and 40% whatever you’d like!”

Endurance: The ability or strength to continue or last, despite fatigue, stress, or other adverse conditions; stamina