The 2005 Scott Dunn Polar Challenge is a competitive team-race to the 1996 location of the Magnetic North Pole and beyond, with the finish line at the deserted Isachsen salt mine. Organised by the Polar Challenge company, the race is staffed by experienced adventurers, arctic and logistics experts and, despite only having run for two years, is now generally acknowledged as one of the toughest adventure races in the world.

Events do not come much more extreme than skiing and walking to the North Pole, carrying all your supplies behind you on a 90kg sled and experiencing temperatures as low as -40°C. It’s also where 80 per cent of the world’s polar bears live…

In May 2005, Commando Joe completed the Polar Challenge in a time of nine days, 17 hours and 39 minutes, comfortably breaking the existing record. You can read more about it HERE.

It was good training for the next challenge...

More people have climbed successfully to the top of Mount Everest than completed a crossing of one of the world's oceans in a rowing boat...

Rowing an ocean is the ultimate adventure, a test which pushes the boundaries of mental stamina and physical ability to their very limits...and when that crossing becomes a race across the 3,100 nautical miles of the previously unconquered North Atlantic rowing route, involving four men spending more than 40 days in a 29 ft rowing boat ...

You're talking one tough challenge.

CLICK HERE to read more...

The Sahara Desert race is officially known as the Marathon des Sables. The distance covered is 151 miles over six days – equivalent to 5 ½ regular marathons. Competitors must carry everything they need for the duration (food, clothes, medical kit, sleeping bag, but not water and a tent) in a rucksack on their back. Midday temperatures can reach up to 120 F and almost 20% of the distance is through shifting sand dunes.

“Not for nothing is it known as the toughest footrace on earth,” says Charlie Martell - who will captain the Commando Joe team participating in this event. “In these conditions, mental stamina constitutes probably 50 per cent of whether you’ll make it or not. Physical fitness is important but we’ll have to counter severe mental exhaustion in order to make the most of our physical condition.

“It’s probably the most extreme event of the three planned by Commando Joe but by then, having completed trips to the North Pole and across the Atlantic, we will have had some of the best physical and mental preparation possible.”