 Well, they do say that every journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step and my journey to the magnetic north pole Did start with a single step, but it ended more than two and a half million steps later Each one of those taken painfully one at a time Now if you've never heard of it, I took part in in something called the polar race This is a race that takes place every two years You cover six hundred and fifty kilometers as the crow flies on foot Navigating yourself from northern Canada the town of Resolute to the magnetic north pole now most of the journey is actually Over the Arctic Ocean, which is frozen at this time of year So I don't know too many people who can walk on water who are still alive, but I'm one of those And you're expected to to walk on water technically cover the six hundred and fifty kilometers while navigating yourself in a team and Towing a sled with all of your own equipment in it And that weighs about sixty five seventy kilograms with food and fuel and You're expected to do all of this at the average temperature of minus forty degrees Celsius Now if you think that sounds like a strange thing to be doing, let me tell you a little bit about myself My name is Lisa one, and I am a chocolate. I Love chocolate, and I'm gonna put it out there. I also love high heel shoes and I really enjoy a good glass of good red wine So what would somebody like me be doing thinking about walking to the magnetic north pole sounds like an odd thought and you have To ask yourself why? What I'm after is an extraordinary life I would love to be extraordinary Lee not ordinary Lee and in thinking through what extraordinary Lee means to me Regardless of what anybody else thinks I thought well extraordinary Lee has to start by being balanced She needs to be confident mentally emotionally and physically right now mentally emotionally I have no problem with confidence Physically not so much So of course the next thing to do would be to enter yourself into the world's toughest race In order to overcome your shortcomings on the way to extraordinary Lee right and that is what I did So ordinary me from the suburbs of Johannesburg trying to become extraordinary. I had to do a bit of training. You'll appreciate I Needed to basically learn to ski never ski before I needed to become an endurance athlete learn a few things about polar bears and Team up with some guys who would do this with me and I did so I found two strapping young men to accompany on this journey And off we set on the polar race 2011 about this time last year now when it got out into the Arctic I'd actually expected it to look like this I mean how hilly can the frozen Arctic Ocean be right I String all the way to the pole is what I had expected Nice big blue sky to welcome us But in actual fact it looks more like this the wind is so powerful in this part of the world that it carves out the ice So that you're skating along the top of a meringue and it just gets worse and worse Huge boulders of ice to navigate across so the real skill is a combined skill Delicate balance and absolute brute force you're having to get yourself and your 65 kilograms sled behind you over this kind of terrain And really it got worse and worse and the thing that makes me sick is that these pictures look so beautiful But setting out in the morning with a view like that really did terrify me and What's amazing is that we on this journey stayed a little tent together and I thought jackpot camping with two guys This is gonna be good didn't realize we would be wearing the same clothes for 30 days So the tent was a pretty stinky place But the amazing thing about a photograph like this is actually that we are camped in the middle of the Arctic Ocean here In a dinky little tent on a six foot thick piece of ice Which floats on top of a four and a half kilometer deep black Ocean and this is the place that we call home now of course when you go to the Arctic You need to know a thing or two about cold that sounds obvious. They tell you minus 40 That's our average temperature Get used to it and there's no way to actually appreciate what that means until you've been there When you get off the plane actually when you land in the Arctic They say to you a few things firstly keep your mouth shut because your tongue will freeze and secondly Blink more than normal just in case your eyeballs freeze So if I blink a lot while I talk to you That's why not because I'm a bit of a dodgy character and I learned to about minus 40 the hard way I Actually had one occasion where I needed to make some adjustments to my kit took a glove off So I had a bare hand made the adjustment awkwardly in my skis fell over bare hand down on the ice Now they say to you a hand will freeze in under 30 seconds if it's out in the cold I can tell you that if it's down on solid Arctic Oceanic ice It can freeze in 15 seconds took me about 15 seconds to get up Put my hand round try get the glove back on and all the all the blood had basically drained right out of my hand Was frozen solid and it took me two days to get feeling back in my hand So I really learned about minus 40 the hard way and you only need to learn that lesson once and then a couple of days later We got ourselves caught up in the worst Arctic storm of the 2011 season the temperature dropped to minus 79 degrees Celsius the wind had picked up to 14 knots Which is 72 kilometers an hour and how we were Arctic novices trying to make our way to the pole as you do And of course we got ourselves caught up in white-out conditions We're actually two people standing in the middle of that photograph which you can hardly see So you could hardly even see your own hands never mind the company you were keeping and so of course We pitched the tent as you do and it was up skewley. We were stuck in that tent for two days We had to dig ourselves out of snow cover after the two days and really when we were in the tent you weren't convinced the tent was actually gonna hold together in this crazy wind and So of course it was quite a somber mood and I thought well I'll just try and think of home and happy thoughts and thought about my mom as you do She's got a very thick glass region accent and I recalled our last conversation Which she said to me stay strong stay safe and we love you and whilst those words actually did warm my heart quite a lot It's also quite shocking to realize that you may actually be recalling the last words that your mom ever said to you If you don't get out of this situation Which is quite disturbing but thankfully a new day did dawn and we had done about we had about 300 kilometers to go to the Pole and thankful we were alive We raced those 300 kilometers and eventually I reached the magnetic north pole now We did this journey in 22 and a half days. We ended up winning the polar race. How's that possible for an African girl? Thank you But only by a margin of about about two and a half hours So it was pretty tight and in this moment I became the first South African and African woman to reach the magnetic north pole and when I look down to actually see What the time and date was it was five to five in the morning? The date was the 27th of April 2011 this was the you know what that means This was the 17th birthday of our very young and beautiful Democracy in South Africa This is freedom day in South Africa and I can tell you for sure there is no colder place to celebrate a 17th birthday And then the magnetic north pole, but really why I did all of this was obviously on a journey toward extraordinary I came to realize that actually after this whole journey all of the limits that I had on myself physically and otherwise Were in my head and that I was addicted to my limits It made for a very comfortable life actually and so today having gone on this journey. I faced my addiction to limits Every single day What I would ask you is when are you going to face your addiction? Thank you