The last word
Internationally renowned motivational speaker Mark Pollock speaks to EM about his unique life experiences and plans for the future
Mark pollock is an internationally renowned motivational speaker. He draws upon his unique life experiences for his inspirational presentations; these include winning Commonwealth Games medals for rowing for Northern Ireland in 2002, completing six marathons in one week in China’s Gobi Desert, racing in the world’s most extreme marathon at the North Pole, completing the renowned Ironman Switzerland event, kayaking non-stop across the Irish Sea, racing in the Dead Sea-Everest Ultra Running Challenge – the list just goes on and on.
Most recently Mark completed first Amundsen Omega 3 South Pole race – held to mark the centenary of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen’s first successful expedition to the pole.
These achievements and experiences would be extraordinary enough in themselves, but are made all the more outstanding by the fact that Mark is blind.
It wasn’t always that way though. In 1998, Mark was a student and international rower contemplating a fantastic job offer with an investment bank in London when he suddenly lost his sight. As his own website puts it: “he had been on the crest of a wave as he prepared for his final exams in Trinity College Dublin, but came crashing back to earth with the news that he would never see again”.
Since then Mark has rebuilt his life and has actually surpassed his previous achievements. Within six months of going blind he was working again and, two years later, he completed a Masters Degree in Business Studies.
“It’s been a long journey, one step at a time and I’ve had lots and lots of people around me helping me and supporting me to make that journey,” he says. “I went blind in April, 1998 and had a couple of operations over the following three months and it was in July 1998 when I was told they couldn’t do anymore for me and I had two weeks at home. I was in the house by myself for periods of time and I just felt very lonely, very isolated. I lost all of my independence and I was really presented with my life - it could be a life of sitting in a room in my house by myself or if I could find a way out of it, I could possibly live some kind of meaningful life. The big move forward was when I found out I could use a computer and from that point on, near the end of July, I just had to get onto a computer course to use that technology so that was the start, a little glimmer of hope, if I could use a computer then maybe I could work.”
And work he did; successfully building his motivational speaking business while undertaking a series of challenges around the world which most people wouldn’t even contemplate. He says that although he didn’t see it that way initially, the challenges were at least partly an effort to prove something to himself.
“I think in some senses I have been trying to prove some things for the last ten years and I can only admit that now having come back from the South Pole,” he explains. “I wouldn’t have admitted that before I went to the South Pole.
I would have said that I wasn’t trying to prove anything. But when I was in Antarctica, 12, 14, 16 hours a day, on the skis, for four, five, six weeks out there I had lots of time to think, and I think really I had been on some kind of a journey to feel normal again and that journey has brought me to lots of different places that I never would have been before …. the Desert, the North Pole, the South Pole, the Himalayas, the world with my speaking and I wouldn’t have done that if I could see, would have been in London being an investment banker, which probably wouldn’t be a great job right now!”
Looking back to the Antarctica experience he recalls just how tough it was. “It’s very difficult to explain how remote and how isolated the place is, it’s not like being in the Himalayas or the Gobi Desert, you can’t get taken out of there with a quick phone call. It’s 10,000 miles from the nearest hospital, if something goes wrong in the Antarctica there’s no guarantee that someone will be able to rescue you. It really is very remote, minus 50, life threatening temperatures.”
He believes it was thoughts of his two fellow team members and the support he had received from friends, family and sponsors that helped get him through. “At times it was so difficult and my body was so over the edge that I wasn’t really doing it for me at times, I was thinking about the people who were on my flag and in my sledge and those people represented all of my close friends and family, all who had been helping the project and of course the sponsors. I felt like I had a responsibility to more than just me, to my team mates and everyone who supported us, so close to the end I wasn’t doing it for me at times I was doing it for the other people. We all got there in the end.”
And he is anxious to give something back in return for that support. “I think that I have been on a very personal journey in the last ten years and have had an incredible amount of support from lots of people”, he explains. “I certainly don’t want to forget how many people have supported me and now I think it’s time to use what I’ve learnt and maybe use the exposure that I’ve got to try and obviously carry on with my own business area but also to use some of the stuff that I’ve learnt around the world and maybe bring it back to Ireland and do something useful with it. If the last 10 years was all about me maybe the next 10 years could be about getting people involved.”
EM
