I've never been a particularly 'sporty' or athletic person, having spent my school days doing everything possible to avoid P.E. and the following years staying away from anything that seemed remotely like it could involve exercise. That is, until last September. Last year I noticed an advert in the paper by The British Red Cross, asking for volunteers to complete a trek to raise sponsorship for the charity, and concentrating on the 'doing good' side of things rather than considering the physical requirement, I signed up. Essentially what I've signed up for is a 6 day trek covering 250km, driving a team of Huskies across the Arctic from Tromso in Norway to Jukkasjärvi in Sweden, in temperatures that I'm told can reach -20°C and below. Although the huskies will obviously be there to lend a hand (or paw), the fact that any incline means that we will have to help push the sled which has a weight of around 50kg minimum makes the trek even more daunting - especially considering on the very first day, we will be travelling over a mountain. By doing this, I hope to raise £4000 in sponsorship for the charity - whose work helps people both abroad and in the UK.

The fact that the trek is carried out in such extreme conditions means that it requires more preparation than just general fitness training - in terms of both the cold and the huskies I will have no previous experience to fall back on. Because of this, in the past few months I have taken on the responsibility of training our two dogs - Bertie and Joe, gaining control of them on a lead (sort of) and generally being 'the pack leader'. With the recent snowfall, they have also helped keep me outside in the cold - which I'm sure will be great for acclimatising as they get their daily walks and play time! As they are both tiny however, this still left me without experience of large dogs. To be honest, the thought of controlling a pack of working dogs was actually a little terrifying, and I kept picturing me being dragged across the Arctic in complete chaos. To overcome this, last year I both walked with wolves at the Wolf Conservation Trust and walked a pack of large dogs, which as they were fantastically well behaved, has really got my confidence up! I am also planning on offering a dog walking service to my local area of Riddlesdown in order to get my confidence up with controlling large breed dogs and also to help with the fundraising!

With regards to the fitness, I can honestly say that the first thing I did was try and go on a running machine, and lasted for about 4 minutes before I collapsed in a heap on the floor. Not a great start! I had been advised by the company that the key areas I needed to work on - their phrase was the fitter you were the more likely to were to 'enjoy the challenge', which I assume was code for less likely to be destroyed - were upper body strength, lower body strength, and stamina. As we are going to have around 14 hour days where we are constantly on the move, be it sledding, setting up / taking down the camp or taking care of the dogs, stamina in particular will be key. Initially I had started to train at the gym with weights (deadlifts, squats, press'), which, once I had decided the gym wasn't actually the terrifying place I'd always imagined, was working really well. However in December I was diagnosed with Osteopenia, meaning I have a lower bone density than the normal 20 year old - the scans show I have a bone density more like that of a 50 year old. Having done some tests it seems that I am really low in Vitamin D, and so am taking loads of daily supplements to try and get my bone density back up to where it should be. Because of this condition, my specialist advised me that I shouldn't be lifting very heavy weights, especially while my skeleton was still developing, so it was back to the drawing board! As the trek is not the usual running / cycling challenge, it genuinely is hard to train for as there isn't really an equivalent activity to practise, but I was told by the challenge organisers that rowing was really the best for the three key areas described before, and as this obviously wouldn't involve the heavy weights I've been banned from, we purchased a Concept2. I'm trying to get on the rowing machine as much as possible, and am so far able to row about 4km without being out of breath (I know this might seem a bit wimpy to many rowers out there, but for me it's quite impressive!) but I plan to really push the training from now on as there isn't long left until the trek!

Fundraising has proved to be almost as much of a challenge as the fitness, however through getting the word out with blogs such as this, and bucket collections I'm at 74% of my target and hopefully will raise the full amount! Last month I stood outside our local Tesco's with my trusty Red Cross bucket and t-shirt (definitely a challenge in the freezing weather - but good preparation I suppose!) and raised a fair amount. I've also had collections at local band gigs, and have sold a huge amount of my clothes / shoes / jewellery / old toys on e-bay to raise the sponsorship.

In this blog I'm hoping the capture the final few weeks before the trek itself (which will be from the 17th to the 24th April 2012), with details on the highs and lows of fundraising, general preparation, and most importantly - training!

www.justgiving.com/eirian-whitehead