0:00:00.833,0:00:03.411
So in the oasis

0:00:03.411,0:00:06.917
of intelligentsia that is TED,

0:00:06.917,0:00:09.285
I stand here before you this evening

0:00:09.285,0:00:12.629
as an expert in dragging heavy stuff

0:00:12.629,0:00:15.159
around cold places.

0:00:15.159,0:00:16.715
I've been leading polar expeditions

0:00:16.715,0:00:18.317
for most of my adult life, and last month,

0:00:18.317,0:00:21.847
my teammate Tarka L’Herpiniere and I

0:00:21.847,0:00:24.795
finished the most ambitious expedition

0:00:24.795,0:00:27.141
I've ever attempted.

0:00:27.141,0:00:28.789
In fact, it feels like I've been

0:00:28.789,0:00:30.484
transported straight here

0:00:30.484,0:00:32.806
from four months in the middle of nowhere,

0:00:32.806,0:00:34.594
mostly grunting and swearing,

0:00:34.594,0:00:35.105
straight to the TED stage,[br]so you can imagine

0:00:35.105,0:00:35.355
that's a transition that hasn't been

0:00:35.355,0:00:35.605
entirely seamless.

0:00:35.605,0:00:35.855
One of the interesting side effects

0:00:35.855,0:00:46.273
seems to be that my short-term[br]memory is entirely shot,

0:00:46.273,0:00:48.665
so I've had to write some notes

0:00:48.665,0:00:50.383
to avoid too much grunting

0:00:50.383,0:00:53.703
and swearing in the next 17 minutes.

0:00:53.703,0:00:56.211
This is the first talk I've given[br]about this expedition,

0:00:56.211,0:00:59.323
and while we weren't sequencing genomes

0:00:59.323,0:01:01.690
or building space telescopes,

0:01:01.690,0:01:03.734
this is a story about giving

0:01:03.734,0:01:06.915
everything we had to achieve something

0:01:08.267,0:01:08.517
that hadn't been done before,

0:01:08.750,0:01:10.352
so I hope in that you might find some food

0:01:10.352,0:01:12.535
for thought.

0:01:12.535,0:01:14.276
It was a journey,

0:01:14.276,0:01:16.041
an expedition in Antarctica,

0:01:16.041,0:01:19.013
the coldest, windiest, driest,

0:01:19.013,0:01:20.917
and highest altitude continent on Earth.

0:01:20.917,0:01:22.774
It's a fascinating place.[br]It's a huge place.

0:01:22.774,0:01:25.119
It's twice the size of Australia,

0:01:25.119,0:01:26.791
a continent that is the same size

0:01:26.791,0:01:30.460
as China and India put together.

0:01:30.460,0:01:32.758
As an aside, I have experienced

0:01:32.758,0:01:34.152
an interesting phenomenon[br]in the last few days,

0:01:34.152,0:01:36.357
something that I expect Chris Hadfield

0:01:36.357,0:01:38.099
may get at TED in a few years' time,

0:01:38.099,0:01:39.724
conversations that go something like this:

0:01:39.724,0:01:41.767
"Oh, Antarctica. Awesome.

0:01:41.767,0:01:44.484
My husband and I did Antarctica

0:01:44.484,0:01:47.595
with Lindblad for our anniversary."

0:01:47.595,0:01:49.081
Or, "Oh cool, did you go there

0:01:49.081,0:01:50.939
for the marathon?"

0:01:50.939,0:01:54.445
(Laughter)

0:01:54.445,0:01:56.442
Our journey was, in fact,

0:01:56.442,0:01:58.485
69 marathons back to back

0:01:58.485,0:02:02.386
in 105 days, an 1,800 mile round trip

0:02:02.386,0:02:04.476
on foot from the coast of Antarctica

0:02:04.476,0:02:07.587
to the South Pole and back again.

0:02:07.587,0:02:09.491
In the process, we broke the record

0:02:09.491,0:02:11.464
for the longest human-powered

0:02:11.464,0:02:15.087
polar journey in history[br]by more than 400 miles.

0:02:15.087,0:02:19.498
(Applause)

0:02:19.498,0:02:21.913
For those of you from the Bay area,

0:02:21.913,0:02:23.980
it was the same as walking from here

0:02:23.980,0:02:26.023
to San Francisco,

0:02:26.023,0:02:29.018
then turning around[br]and walking back again.

0:02:29.018,0:02:30.527
So as camping trips go,

0:02:30.527,0:02:33.778
it was a long one,

0:02:33.778,0:02:35.914
and one I've seen summarized

0:02:35.914,0:02:38.190
most succinctly here[br]on the hallowed pages

0:02:38.190,0:02:40.976
of Business Insider Malaysia.

0:02:40.976,0:02:43.066
[Two Explorers Just Completed[br]A Polar Expedition That Killed

0:02:43.066,0:02:46.247
Everyone The Last Time It was Attempted]

0:02:46.247,0:02:48.917
Chris Hadfield talked so eloquently

0:02:48.917,0:02:52.678
about fear and about the odds of success

0:02:52.678,0:02:54.489
and indeed the odds of survival.

0:02:54.489,0:02:56.254
Of the nine people in history that had

0:02:56.254,0:02:58.019
attempted this journey before us,

0:02:58.019,0:03:00.712
none had made it to the pole and back,

0:03:00.712,0:03:04.590
and five had died in the process.

0:03:04.590,0:03:07.237
This is Captain Robert Falcon Scott.

0:03:07.237,0:03:10.000
He led the last team[br]to attempt this expedition.

0:03:10.000,0:03:12.438
Scott and his rival Sir Ernest Shackleton

0:03:12.438,0:03:15.154
over the space of a decade

0:03:15.154,0:03:17.174
both led expeditions battling to become

0:03:17.174,0:03:19.427
the first to reach the South Pole,

0:03:19.427,0:03:22.956
to chart and map[br]the interior of Antarctica,

0:03:22.956,0:03:24.581
a place we knew less about at the time

0:03:24.581,0:03:26.485
than the surface of the moon,

0:03:26.485,0:03:28.830
because we could see[br]the moon through telescopes.

0:03:28.830,0:03:30.734
Antarctica was, for the most part,

0:03:30.734,0:03:32.963
a century ago, uncharted.

0:03:32.963,0:03:34.565
Some of you may know the story.

0:03:34.565,0:03:36.748
Scott's last expedition,[br]the Terra Nova Expedition,

0:03:36.748,0:03:40.022
in 1910, started as a giant[br]siege-style approach.

0:03:40.022,0:03:42.251
He had a big team using ponies,

0:03:42.251,0:03:44.898
using dogs, using petrol-driven tractors,

0:03:44.898,0:03:48.915
dropping pre-positioned[br]depots of food and fuel

0:03:48.915,0:03:50.726
through which Scott's final team of five

0:03:50.726,0:03:52.653
would travel to the five[br]would travel to the pole,

0:03:52.653,0:03:53.837
where they would turn around and ski back

0:03:53.837,0:03:55.416
to the coast again on foot.

0:03:55.416,0:03:57.599
Scott and his final team of five

0:03:57.599,0:03:59.804
arrived at the South Pole

0:03:59.804,0:04:01.337
in January 1912

0:04:01.337,0:04:03.984
to find they had been beaten to it

0:04:03.984,0:04:06.259
by a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen,

0:04:06.259,0:04:07.908
who rode on dogsled.

0:04:07.908,0:04:09.997
Scott's team ended up on foot,

0:04:09.997,0:04:11.925
and for more than a century

0:04:11.925,0:04:14.665
this journey has remained unfinished.

0:04:14.665,0:04:16.290
Scott's team of five died

0:04:16.290,0:04:17.822
on the return journey,

0:04:17.822,0:04:19.633
and for the last decade,

0:04:19.633,0:04:22.954
I've been asking myself why that is.

0:04:22.954,0:04:26.576
How come this has[br]remained the high water mark?

0:04:26.576,0:04:28.596
Scott's team covered 1,600 miles on foot.

0:04:28.596,0:04:30.337
No one's come close to that ever since.

0:04:30.337,0:04:32.172
So this is the high water mark

0:04:32.172,0:04:34.586
of human endurance, human endeavor,

0:04:34.586,0:04:36.142
human athletic achievement

0:04:36.142,0:04:38.510
in arguably the harshest climate on Earth.

0:04:38.510,0:04:41.018
It was as if the marathon record

0:04:41.018,0:04:44.037
has remained unbroken since 1912.

0:04:44.037,0:04:45.941
And of course some strange

0:04:45.941,0:04:49.145
and predictable combination of curiosity,

0:04:49.145,0:04:51.095
stubbornness, and probably hubris,

0:04:51.095,0:04:52.535
led me to thinking I might be the man

0:04:52.535,0:04:55.182
to try and finish the job.

0:04:55.182,0:04:59.013
Unlike Scott's expedition,[br]there were just two of us,

0:04:59.013,0:05:01.126
and we set off from[br]the coast of Antarctica

0:05:01.126,0:05:02.449
in October last year

0:05:02.449,0:05:04.214
dragging everything ourselves,

0:05:04.214,0:05:06.814
a process Scott called "man-hauling."

0:05:06.814,0:05:08.045
When I say it was like walking

0:05:08.045,0:05:10.297
from here to San Francisco and back,

0:05:10.297,0:05:11.830
I actually mean it was like dragging

0:05:11.830,0:05:13.594
something that ways a shade more

0:05:13.594,0:05:15.638
than the heaviest ever NFL player.

0:05:15.638,0:05:17.681
Our sledges weighed 200 kilos,

0:05:17.681,0:05:20.746
or 440 pounds each at the start,

0:05:20.746,0:05:22.510
the same weights that the weakest

0:05:22.510,0:05:25.018
of Scott's ponies pulled.

0:05:25.018,0:05:29.430
Early on, we averaged 0.5 miles per hour.

0:05:29.430,0:05:31.287
Perhaps the reason no one[br]had attempted this journey

0:05:31.287,0:05:33.145
until now, for more than a century,

0:05:33.145,0:05:35.118
was that no one had been quite

0:05:35.118,0:05:38.415
stupid enough to try.

0:05:38.415,0:05:40.087
And while I can't claim we were

0:05:40.087,0:05:43.454
exploring in the genuine[br]Edwardian sense of the word

0:05:43.454,0:05:47.192
— we weren't naming any mountains[br]or mapping any uncharted valleys —

0:05:47.192,0:05:49.143
I think we were stepping

0:05:49.143,0:05:51.674
into uncharted territory in a human sense.

0:05:51.674,0:05:53.252
Certainly, if in the future we learn

0:05:53.252,0:05:54.947
there is an area of the human brain

0:05:54.947,0:05:58.779
that lights up when one curses oneself,

0:05:58.779,0:06:02.215
I wouldn't be at all surprised.

0:06:02.215,0:06:03.817
You've heard that the average American

0:06:03.817,0:06:05.814
spends 90 percent of their time indoors.

0:06:05.814,0:06:09.413
We didn't go indoors[br]for nearly four months.

0:06:09.413,0:06:11.595
We didn't see a sunset either.

0:06:11.595,0:06:13.151
It was 24-hour daylight.

0:06:13.151,0:06:15.566
Living conditions were quite spartan.

0:06:15.566,0:06:17.888
I changed my underwear three times

0:06:17.888,0:06:20.465
in 105 days,

0:06:20.465,0:06:22.810
and Tarka and I shared 30 square feet

0:06:22.810,0:06:24.552
on the canvas,

0:06:24.552,0:06:25.713
though we did have some technology

0:06:25.713,0:06:28.847
that Scott could never have imagined,

0:06:28.847,0:06:30.960
and we blogged live[br]every evening from the tent

0:06:30.960,0:06:32.655
via a laptop

0:06:32.655,0:06:34.605
and a custom-made satellite transmitter,

0:06:34.605,0:06:36.115
all of which were solar-powered:

0:06:36.115,0:06:37.252
we had a flexible

0:06:37.252,0:06:39.040
photovoltaic panel over the tent.

0:06:39.040,0:06:42.430
And the writing was important to me.

0:06:42.430,0:06:43.823
As a kid, I was inspired

0:06:43.823,0:06:47.260
by the literature of adventure

0:06:47.260,0:06:49.164
and exploration, and I think

0:06:49.164,0:06:51.021
we've all seen here this week

0:06:51.021,0:06:53.204
the importance and the power

0:06:53.204,0:06:55.595
of storytelling.

0:06:55.595,0:06:57.081
So we had some 21st-century gear,

0:06:57.081,0:06:59.868
but the reality is that[br]the challenges that Scott faced

0:06:59.868,0:07:01.865
were the same that way faced:

0:07:01.865,0:07:03.652
those of the weather

0:07:03.652,0:07:05.603
and of what Scott called glide,

0:07:05.603,0:07:06.671
the amount of friction

0:07:06.671,0:07:08.946
between the sledges and the snow.

0:07:08.946,0:07:11.199
The lowest wind chill we experienced

0:07:11.199,0:07:12.801
was in the minus-70s,

0:07:12.801,0:07:15.378
and we had zero visibility,[br]what's called white-out,

0:07:15.378,0:07:18.931
for much of our journey.

0:07:18.931,0:07:20.742
We traveled up and down one of the largest

0:07:20.742,0:07:23.435
and most dangerous glaciers[br]in the world, the Beardmore glacier.

0:07:23.435,0:07:26.314
It's 110 miles long: most of its surface

0:07:26.314,0:07:27.731
is what's called blue ice.

0:07:27.731,0:07:29.379
You can see it's a beautiful,

0:07:29.379,0:07:31.074
shimmering, steel-hard blue surface

0:07:31.074,0:07:32.467
covered with thousands and thousands

0:07:32.467,0:07:36.623
of crevasses, these deep cracks

0:07:36.623,0:07:39.038
in the glacial ice, up to 200 feet deep.

0:07:39.038,0:07:40.315
Planes can't land here,

0:07:40.315,0:07:43.775
so we were at the most risk,

0:07:43.775,0:07:46.399
technically when we had[br]the slimmest chance

0:07:46.399,0:07:48.395
of being rescued.

0:07:48.395,0:07:49.974
We got to the South Pole

0:07:49.974,0:07:52.505
after 61 days on foot,

0:07:52.505,0:07:54.804
with one day off for bad weather,

0:07:54.804,0:07:57.521
and I'm sad to say, it was[br]something of an anticlimax.

0:07:57.521,0:07:59.726
There's a permanent American base,

0:07:59.726,0:08:02.304
the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station,

0:08:02.304,0:08:03.488
at the South Pole.

0:08:03.488,0:08:05.125
They have an airstrip,[br]they have a canteen,

0:08:05.125,0:08:06.658
they have hot showers,

0:08:06.658,0:08:08.353
they have a post office, a tourist shop,

0:08:08.353,0:08:10.071
a basketball court

0:08:10.071,0:08:12.695
that doubles as a movie theater.

0:08:12.695,0:08:14.506
So it's a bit different these days,

0:08:14.506,0:08:15.922
and there are also acres of junk.

0:08:15.922,0:08:17.292
I think it's a marvelous thing

0:08:17.292,0:08:19.266
that humans can exist

0:08:19.266,0:08:22.586
365 days of the year

0:08:22.586,0:08:24.583
with hamburgers and hot showers

0:08:24.583,0:08:26.231
and movie theaters,

0:08:26.231,0:08:29.087
but it does seem to produce[br]a lot of empty cardboard boxes.

0:08:29.087,0:08:30.829
You can see on the left this photograph,

0:08:30.829,0:08:32.384
several square acres of junk

0:08:32.384,0:08:35.287
waiting to be flown out[br]from the South Pole.

0:08:35.287,0:08:38.909
But there is also a pole at the South Pole

0:08:38.909,0:08:42.485
and we got there on foot, unassisted,

0:08:42.485,0:08:43.971
unsupported, by the hardest route,

0:08:43.971,0:08:46.316
900 miles in record time,

0:08:46.316,0:08:48.684
dragging more weight[br]than anyone in history.

0:08:48.684,0:08:50.333
And if we'd stopped there and flown home,

0:08:50.333,0:08:53.467
which would have been[br]the eminently sensible thing to do,

0:08:53.467,0:08:55.348
then my talk would end here

0:08:55.348,0:08:59.318
and it would end something like this.

0:08:59.318,0:09:01.153
If you have the right team around you,

0:09:01.153,0:09:02.592
the right tools, the right technology,

0:09:02.592,0:09:06.261
and if you have enough self-belief

0:09:06.261,0:09:08.072
and enough determination,

0:09:08.072,0:09:13.226
than anything is possible.

0:09:13.226,0:09:15.409
But then we turned around,

0:09:15.409,0:09:18.288
and this is where things get interesting.

0:09:18.288,0:09:20.842
High on the Antarctic plateau,

0:09:20.842,0:09:25.161
over 10,000 feet, it's very windy,[br]very cold, very dry, we were exhausted.

0:09:25.161,0:09:27.111
We'd covered 35 marathons,

0:09:27.111,0:09:28.737
we were only halfway,

0:09:28.737,0:09:30.478
and we had a safety net, of course,

0:09:30.478,0:09:32.452
of ski planes and satellite phones

0:09:32.452,0:09:34.425
and live, 24-hour tracking beacons

0:09:34.425,0:09:36.515
that didn't exist for Scott,

0:09:36.515,0:09:38.257
but in hindsight,

0:09:38.257,0:09:40.323
rather than making our lives easier,

0:09:40.323,0:09:42.482
the safety net actually allowed us

0:09:42.482,0:09:46.337
to cut things very fine indeed,

0:09:46.337,0:09:48.914
to sail very close to our absolute limits

0:09:48.914,0:09:50.284
as human beings,

0:09:50.284,0:09:53.697
and it is an exquisite form of torture

0:09:53.697,0:09:56.414
to exhaust yourself to the point[br]of starvation day after day

0:09:56.414,0:09:57.946
while dragging a sledge

0:09:57.946,0:10:00.686
full of food.

0:10:00.686,0:10:04.773
For years, I'd been writing glib lines[br]in sponsorship proposals

0:10:04.773,0:10:07.954
about pushing the limits[br]of human endurance,

0:10:07.954,0:10:10.763
but in reality, that was[br]a very frightening place

0:10:10.763,0:10:12.806
to be indeed.

0:10:12.806,0:10:14.525
We had, before we'd got to the Pole,

0:10:14.525,0:10:17.659
two weeks of almost permanent[br]headwind, which slowed us down.

0:10:17.659,0:10:20.469
As a result, we'd had several days[br]of eating half rations.

0:10:20.469,0:10:23.278
We had a finite amount of food[br]in the sledges to make this journey,

0:10:23.278,0:10:24.880
so we were trying to string that out

0:10:24.880,0:10:27.063
by reducing our intake to half

0:10:27.063,0:10:29.176
the calories we should be eating.

0:10:29.176,0:10:32.682
As a result, we both became[br]increasingly hypoglycemic:

0:10:32.682,0:10:35.236
we had low blood[br]sugar levels day after day

0:10:35.236,0:10:37.674
and increasingly susceptible

0:10:37.674,0:10:40.414
to the extreme cold.

0:10:40.414,0:10:42.457
Tarka took this photo of me one evening

0:10:42.457,0:10:44.477
after I'd nearly passed out[br]with hypothermia.

0:10:44.477,0:10:47.565
We both had repeated bouts of hypothermia,

0:10:47.565,0:10:49.075
something I hadn't experienced before,

0:10:49.075,0:10:50.746
and it was very humbling indeed.

0:10:50.746,0:10:54.554
As much as you might[br]like to think, as I do,

0:10:54.554,0:10:56.830
that you're the kind[br]of person who doesn't quit,

0:10:56.830,0:10:58.664
that you'll go down swinging,

0:10:58.664,0:11:00.916
hypothermia doesn't leave you much choice.

0:11:00.916,0:11:03.726
You become utterly incapacitated.

0:11:03.726,0:11:06.907
It's like being a drunk toddler.

0:11:06.907,0:11:08.880
You become pathetic.

0:11:08.880,0:11:13.269
I remember just wanting[br]to lie down and quit.

0:11:13.269,0:11:15.173
It was a peculiar, peculiar feeling,

0:11:15.173,0:11:17.170
and a real surprise to me

0:11:17.170,0:11:20.722
to be debilitated to that degree.

0:11:20.722,0:11:25.064
And then we ran out of food completely,

0:11:25.064,0:11:28.802
46 miles short of the first of the depots

0:11:28.802,0:11:30.567
that we'd laid on our outward journey.

0:11:30.567,0:11:31.960
We'd laid 10 depots of food,

0:11:31.960,0:11:34.607
literally burying food and fuel,[br]for our return journey

0:11:34.607,0:11:37.254
— the food was for a cooker so you[br]could melt snow to get water —

0:11:37.254,0:11:40.481
and I was forced to make the decision

0:11:40.481,0:11:43.361
to call for a resupply flight,

0:11:43.361,0:11:46.286
a ski plane carrying eight days of food

0:11:46.286,0:11:48.190
to tide us over that gap.

0:11:48.190,0:11:49.699
They took 12 hours to reach us

0:11:49.699,0:11:51.812
from the other side of Antarctica.

0:11:51.812,0:11:53.716
Calling for that plane

0:11:53.716,0:11:55.458
was one of the toughest[br]decisions of my life,

0:11:55.458,0:11:58.174
and I sound like a bit of a fraud[br]standing here now with a sort of belly.

0:11:58.174,0:12:01.704
I've put on 30 pounds[br]in the last three weeks.

0:12:01.704,0:12:04.629
Being that hungry has left[br]an interesting mental scar,

0:12:04.629,0:12:06.696
which is that I've been hoovering up

0:12:06.696,0:12:11.154
every hotel buffet that I can find.

0:12:11.154,0:12:13.940
But we were genuinely quite hungry,

0:12:13.940,0:12:16.958
and in quite a bad way.

0:12:16.958,0:12:18.909
I don't regret calling[br]for that plane for a second,

0:12:18.909,0:12:21.161
because I'm still standing here

0:12:21.161,0:12:23.251
alive with all digits[br]intact telling this story,

0:12:23.251,0:12:27.709
but getting external assistance like that[br]was never part of the plan,

0:12:27.709,0:12:30.913
and it's something my ego[br]is still struggling with.

0:12:30.913,0:12:33.955
This was the biggest dream I've ever had,

0:12:33.955,0:12:37.577
and it was so nearly perfect.

0:12:37.577,0:12:39.458
On the way back down to the coast,

0:12:39.458,0:12:41.269
our crampons — they're the spikes

0:12:41.269,0:12:44.125
on our boots that we have for traveling[br]over this blue ice on the glacier —

0:12:44.125,0:12:45.750
broke on the top of the Beardmore.

0:12:45.750,0:12:47.445
We still had 100 miles to go downhill

0:12:47.445,0:12:49.419
on very slippery rock-hard blue ice.

0:12:49.419,0:12:51.810
They needed repairing almost every hour.

0:12:51.810,0:12:53.761
To give you an idea of scale,

0:12:53.761,0:12:55.665
this is looking down towards the mouth

0:12:55.665,0:12:57.058
of the Beardmore Glacier.

0:12:57.058,0:12:58.753
You could fit the entirety of Manhattan

0:12:58.753,0:13:00.378
in the gap on the horizon.

0:13:00.378,0:13:03.977
That's 20 miles between[br]Mt. Hope and Mt. Kiffin.

0:13:03.977,0:13:07.065
I've never felt as small

0:13:07.065,0:13:10.060
as I did in Antarctica.

0:13:10.060,0:13:11.825
When we got down[br]to the mouth of the glacier,

0:13:11.825,0:13:14.240
we found fresh snow had obscured

0:13:14.240,0:13:16.631
the dozens of deep crevasses.

0:13:16.631,0:13:18.303
One of Shackleton's men described

0:13:18.303,0:13:19.952
crossing this sort of terrain as like

0:13:19.952,0:13:22.483
walking over the glass roof

0:13:22.483,0:13:24.665
of a railway station.

0:13:24.665,0:13:27.289
We fell through more times[br]than I can remember,

0:13:27.289,0:13:30.981
usually just putting a ski[br]or a boot through the snow.

0:13:30.981,0:13:32.281
Occasionally we went in

0:13:32.281,0:13:33.604
all the way up to our armpits,

0:13:33.604,0:13:37.157
but thankfully never deeper than that.

0:13:37.157,0:13:39.757
And less than five weeks ago,

0:13:39.757,0:13:41.313
after 105 days, we crossed

0:13:41.313,0:13:44.912
this oddly inauspicious finish line,

0:13:44.912,0:13:47.814
the coast of Ross Island on the[br]New Zealand coast of Antarctica.

0:13:47.814,0:13:49.834
You can see the ice in the foreground

0:13:49.834,0:13:52.876
and the sort of rubbly rock behind that.

0:13:52.876,0:13:54.757
Behind us lay an unbroken ski trail

0:13:54.757,0:13:56.568
of nearly 1,800 miles.

0:13:56.568,0:13:59.076
We made the longest ever[br]polar journey on foot,

0:13:59.076,0:14:01.026
something I've been dreaming of doing

0:14:01.026,0:14:03.255
for a decade.

0:14:03.255,0:14:05.461
And looking back,

0:14:05.461,0:14:07.876
I still stand by all the things

0:14:07.876,0:14:09.338
I've been saying for years

0:14:09.338,0:14:11.637
about the importance of goals

0:14:11.637,0:14:15.329
and determination and self-belief,

0:14:15.329,0:14:17.117
but I'll also believe that I haven't given

0:14:17.117,0:14:19.810
much thought to what happens

0:14:19.810,0:14:23.432
when you reach the all-consuming goal

0:14:23.432,0:14:27.240
that you've dedicated most[br]of your adult life too,

0:14:27.240,0:14:29.051
and the reality is that I'm still figuring

0:14:29.051,0:14:30.630
that bit out.

0:14:30.630,0:14:34.461
As I said, there are very few[br]superficial signs that I've been away.

0:14:34.461,0:14:35.762
I've put on 30 pounds.

0:14:35.762,0:14:37.155
I've got some very faint

0:14:37.155,0:14:39.500
— they're probably covered[br]in makeup now — frostbite scars.

0:14:39.500,0:14:40.893
I've got one on my nose,[br]one on each cheek,

0:14:40.893,0:14:42.333
from where the goggles are,

0:14:42.333,0:14:44.608
but inside I am a very

0:14:44.608,0:14:47.116
different person indeed.

0:14:47.116,0:14:49.925
If I'm honest,

0:14:49.925,0:14:52.387
Antarctica challenged me

0:14:52.387,0:14:55.010
and humbled me so deeply

0:14:55.010,0:14:56.473
that I'm not sure I'll ever be able

0:14:56.473,0:14:59.027
to put it into words.

0:14:59.027,0:15:02.603
I'm still struggling to piece[br]together my thoughts.

0:15:02.603,0:15:06.248
That I'm standing here telling this story

0:15:06.248,0:15:08.640
is proof that we all

0:15:08.640,0:15:11.356
can accomplish great things,

0:15:11.356,0:15:13.260
through ambition, through passion,

0:15:13.260,0:15:15.582
through sheer stubbornness,

0:15:15.582,0:15:17.347
by refusing to quit,

0:15:17.347,0:15:18.833
that if you dream something hard enough,

0:15:18.833,0:15:19.971
as Sting said,

0:15:19.971,0:15:23.384
it does indeed come to pass.

0:15:23.384,0:15:25.520
But I'm also standing here saying,

0:15:25.520,0:15:28.051
you know what, that cliche

0:15:28.051,0:15:30.628
about the journey being more important

0:15:30.651,0:15:32.671
than the destination?

0:15:32.671,0:15:35.992
There's something in that.

0:15:35.992,0:15:38.221
The closer I got to my finish line,

0:15:38.221,0:15:42.377
that rubbly, rocky coast of Ross Island,

0:15:42.377,0:15:43.631
the more I started to realize

0:15:43.631,0:15:45.395
that the biggest lesson

0:15:45.395,0:15:47.741
that this very long, very hard walk

0:15:47.741,0:15:49.761
might be teaching me

0:15:49.761,0:15:51.293
is that happiness

0:15:51.293,0:15:53.754
is not a finish line,

0:15:53.754,0:15:55.194
that for us humans,

0:15:55.194,0:15:57.400
the perfection that so many of us

0:15:57.400,0:15:58.793
seem to dream of

0:15:58.793,0:16:02.740
might not ever be truly attainable,

0:16:02.740,0:16:05.666
and that if we can't feel content

0:16:05.666,0:16:11.029
here, today, now, on our journeys

0:16:11.029,0:16:13.676
amidst the mess and the striving

0:16:13.676,0:16:15.534
that we all inhabit, the open loops,

0:16:15.534,0:16:18.204
the half-finished to-do lists,

0:16:18.204,0:16:21.106
the could-do-better-next-times,

0:16:21.106,0:16:24.055
then we might never feel it.

0:16:24.055,0:16:27.631
A lot of people have asked me, what next?

0:16:27.631,0:16:31.299
Right now, I am very happy just recovering

0:16:31.299,0:16:34.597
and in front of hotel buffets,

0:16:34.597,0:16:39.612
but as Bob Hope put it,

0:16:39.612,0:16:41.678
I feel very humble,

0:16:41.678,0:16:45.347
but I think I have the strength[br]of character to fight it.

0:16:45.347,0:16:47.297
Thank you.

0:16:47.297,0:16:50.975
(Applause)