By Tarquin Cooper Published: 10:00AM GMT 05 March 2010
Over the top: Bernie Shrosbree trains Tarquin Cooper for the Heroes of Telemark plea Photo: PHILIP HOLLIS "We"ll be skiing 1,000km, that"s 50km a day for twenty days. You up to that?" The man asking me is Bernie Shrosbree, Special Boat Service maestro and chosen opening coach.
I have an opinion I might live to bewail my certain answer.
Pen Hadow: Snow Patrol Top twenty great British adventurers Manned air travel: reliving all the Wright moves Top 10 websites to assistance you get fit Sir Ranulph Fiennes: unprepared commercial operation on EverestNext week I am to stick on a 12-man group of Royal Marines on an epic 700-mile cross-country ski speed opposite Norway. The plan is to retrace the track taken by Norwegian commandos prior to their raid on a Nazi atomic weapons factory, a story immortalised in the Kirk Douglas movie The Heroes of Telemark, and some-more not long ago by Ray Mears on television.
"It"s a poignant challenge," says speed personality Lt Col Gary Green.
To hit me in to shape, I"m put in the hands of a associate part of of the team, 51-year-old Bernie, who trains the likes of Formula One drivers Jenson Button and Mark Webber, and Olympic cycling and rowing medallist Rebecca Romero.
We encounter at his precision centre at Sandbanks, Poole, the disdainful enclave dear by footballers and millionaires. Unfortunately, no luxuries await usually an out-of-date Royal Marine cold-weather initiation.
"So the plan is for you to go for a float in the sea and afterwards put your bike together. Are you OK with that?" Bernie asks.
It"s cold and an onshore breeze is gusting at 30mph. The wind-chill heat is 23F (-5C). I don"t need to be a alloy to know that station around exposed after a float is not recommended.
The thought is to replicate the kind of unfolding I"ll encounter in Norway, when the cold reduces elementary tasks similar to putting up a tent to a severe mental ordeal.
"You have to be means to think and perform in an impassioned sourroundings when the elements are opposite you. Anyone can be cold and miserable," Bernie says.
First, I run up and down the beach to get warm. Then I frame down to my undies and in the excellent British tradition, run in to the sea similar to a madman. In an instant, the cold grips me similar to a vice. I try to recollect Bernie"s difference to pull on by the pain. After 10 metres I listen to him pursuit me to spin around. Back on the beach, the genuine plea starts perplexing to container my back circle in to place and put the sequence on whilst a trenchant breeze literally chills me to my core. It"s a competition opposite time as my fingers lose their dexterity, my feet go dull and my brain slows to a snail"s pace. I onslaught to spin the circle nuts tight. The stop cables exclude to go in to place. Sand is everywhere. My fingers stop working.
Bernie calls time and dispatches me to the hotel"s prohibited cylinder to comfortable up. "You did a great job. You weren"t the mummy"s child I was expecting."
A crater of tea after and we"re on the sequence packet to the Isle of Purbeck for the subsequent proviso of my conditioning programme a run in the silt dunes and afterwards a towering bike around the island. To my pleasing surprise, Bernie doesn"t scream in to my ear similar to a cavalcade sergeant.
"In the special forces we don"t shout. It"s not about beasting you. That will not get you by this. We have to sight intelligently."
Retracing The Heroes of Telemark track is usually one component of speed Tusen Takk, that translates as "a thousand thanks" in loyalty to the Norwegian hosts.
For the speed personality Lt Col Green, 47, and most of the alternative members of the team, it is a personal journey. Five months ago Green lost his mother to cancer. In 2008, Col Jim Hutton lost his son, additionally a Marine, in a precision accident. His mother was additionally not long ago diagnosed with cancer. The disease is additionally close to home for Major Willie Ferguson, whose 18-year-old son was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2006.
The speed is anticipating to lift multiform thousand pounds for Service and cancer charities.
Another target is to pass on the skills and experience of the comparison members of the team, who in between them have 160 years of use history, to the younger members, who are elderly nineteen to 22.
"It"s going to be an engaging contrariety with 6 immature fit Royal Marines who will be raring to go, opposite the old ensure who haven"t been to Norway for a small time," Lt Col Green says.
During the speed we will design temperatures as low as -20F (-29C) and have a stand homogeneous to the tallness of Mount Everest.
"It will be tough," Lt Col Green concedes. "But you can overcome tired by fitness, nourishment and a small thing in that we specialise in the Corps called determination."
Back at his opening centre, Bernie tells me he feels celebrated to have been invited onto the team.
He"s not the usually one. Although I"m additionally a small scared.
The speed is raising supports for The Royal Marines Charitable Trust Fund, Macmillan and Clic Sargent. To have a concession or review some-more about the journey, go to tusentakk.co.uk