Upon receipt of my entrance forms, the first thing Polar Challenge asked me was "who's on your team?". Until that point I was fully convinced that said team would come, fully trained and raring to go, with the entrance pack. As this turned out not to be the case, two courses of action instantly occurred to me.

1) Asking everyone I knew if they were interested in a little flirting with death by extreme physical tribulation, in the arctic wilds.
2) Asking everyone I didn't know if they were interested in a little flirting with death by extreme physical tribulation, in the arctic wilds.

Focusing on the maximum set size, I chose option number 2 (with a light seasoning of 1, as I don't really know anyone actually crazy enough to want to do this type of thing). Once this course of action was clear, I determined that my time would be better spent getting someone else to do the work for me.

So I pitched my story to my local paper - The Wharf. They responded enthusiastically with the offer of a series of articles. Since someone has already said it and said it better, you can read the first article here.