In My Element
It’s just a week to go until Pip’s book, In My Element, is published. So to celebrate we’re sharing an exclusive excerpt from the book. And if you can’t wait until next week, you can pre order your copy on Amazon now.
Exclusive excerpt from In My Element:
In February 2021, I became the eighth woman and the 79th person in history to finish the Vendée Globe race. One of the toughest sporting events in the world, its rules are simple: single-handed, non-stop, no assistance, one lap of the planet. This book tells the story of my race, but it is about so much more than sailing. Surviving alone on the ocean in a high-pressure environment requires much more than nautical expertise. Three months of racing around the world through extreme weather systems a thousand miles from land, surviving on only 30 minutes of sleep at a time, will stretch a human being until their mental and physical resilience is wafer thin. The race requires skippers to face innumerable challenges entirely alone. With both boat and skipper descending to increasingly depleted states of exhaustion over the course of the race, they are tested and pushed to the brink of failure over and over again because mother nature has no favourites. Though the race is concerned ostensibly with the sport of sailing, at its core it is about surviving as a human being. Having to find solutions and the strength to fight through hard times is something we will all encounter at various points in our lives. Over the three months it takes competitors to do a lap of the globe, they must maintain not only the high speeds of their vessels, but also the positive attitude that will enable them to cope with physical and emotional isolation, sleep deprivation, fear, anxiety and endless problem-solving; these challenges are common to all humans in all walks of life and they are what underlies this uniquely tough mental and physical trial. In this book I hope to share, alongside the story of my race around the world, the techniques I used to overcome difficulties, drive performance and maintain a mindset that allowed me to stay focused, happy and optimistic for 95 days. Alone.
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I have had to learn to be alone at sea, to develop strategies to cope with a whole range of potentially destructive human emotions, some of which I outline in the chapters of this book. Perhaps one of the hardest aspects of competing alone for months on end is finding the energy to keep going without the interaction of other human beings. How often in life do we rely on other people to pick us up when we are low? A reassuring nod, a warm hug, a call of encouragement from the sidelines? From the moment a well-cared-for child enters the world, they are given the motivation from their carers to develop and grow. It starts with encouragement to learn basic skills – smiling, talking, walking – in the family setting. Schools, clubs, sports teams and friendship groups soon add to that potential for nurture, where the words and actions of other people continue to encourage us to accomplish new things. Later in life, we transition to becoming the motivators ourselves, with our own families or in the workplace. But how many of us have ever been in a situation where that energy from positive reinforcement is simply not available for months on end? We feed our bodies with food and water to maintain our physical energy levels. Part of my job when I am at sea is to keep eating, to regularly perform a ‘self-scan’ so that I can understand what my body needs to keep moving on physically. This could be food, water, sleep or, in some cases, medical attention. Here, the equation is simple – energy in must equal energy out – and we can feel the effects if this is not the case. Emotional energy, however, is a different thing. It’s not tangible and can’t be measured, and yet a deficit has the power to floor us in much the same way as not eating would. Without emotional energy, our ability to deal with problems, to dig deep and push ourselves through fear or stress, to believe in our ability to find the next level of performance gradually erodes. In my years alone on the water, I have needed to find ways in which to feed my spirit, and in doing so recharge my emotional batteries. In the early days I had no access to satcom, whether I was racing in classes where they were forbidden or in a race where I didn’t have the budget to pay the exorbitant airtime tariffs. I learned instead to find energy from my surroundings, and that skill has stuck with me, both on and off the water, to this day.
