For further information contact:

  Polar Adventures Ltd
  18 Neville Road
  Kingston
  Surrey
  KT1 3QX
  UK

Tel: +44 (0)20 8549 1457
Fax: +44 (0)20 8241 7914
Eml: info@polarrace.com

Charlie Newington-Bridges

Team: Northern Stars

BIOGRAPHY

I was born and brought up in Gloucestershire and educated at Clifton College and Oxford University, where I read Philosophy and Theology. I met my wife, Tamsin, at Oxford and we now have a fifteen month-old daughter, Beatrice.

I played a lot of sport at school and university - mainly rugby, hockey and cricket, but really anything with moving balls. Somewhat surprisingly for a soft southerner, I played blues (University first team) rugby league at Oxford. However, I would say I had all the interest in endurance events of your average beer drinking, but vaguely active, teenager and student.

After I left university and started work in the city, I realised that playing team sports and working long hours, sometimes including week-ends were incompatible. I did my first marathon in 1999 and it has been all downhill or rather uphill since then as I looked for increasingly challenging events.

In 2000 I had two months off between jobs and spent it trekking in primary rainforest in Ecuador, living in Indian villages. I also learnt how to dive in the Galapagos islands.

In 2002 I ran the Marathon des Sables, a 150-mile six-day race across the Sahara Desert carrying food and all provisions for a week in the Sahara, other than water, in a rucksack.

In 2003, I completed the Kindrocit quadrathlon a 14 hour race involving swimming across Loch Tay, running up and down 8 Munroes (mountains) including Ben Lawers, the highest peak in the southern Highlands, kayaking the length of the loch and cycling round it.

In between these I have competed in triathlons, run marathons in New York, Paris and London and run a double marathon along the Thames.

My motivation for doing the Polar Race, other than being a slight masochist, is a strong sense that what might be perceived as extraordinary achievements are actually within the capabilities of many of us, if we simply put our minds and bodies to it. I am also looking forward to boring my grandchildren rigid with tales of Arctic exploration!

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