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Ski marathon next for Polar trek Financial Planner
Not content with recently completing one of the toughest challenges on earth, a Financial Planner is setting out to take on a 26 mile cross country ski race next month.
Having just returned a few weeks ago from completing his epic trek to the South Pole, Patrick McIntosh, 58, will continue to test his endurance, as he aims to raise more awareness about the three kinds of cancer he has suffered and overcome.
The director of Surrey based KMG said taking on the Ski Marathon in Engadin, Switzerland, on 8 March will be simple compared to the Antarctic.
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He told Financial Planner Online: "For me it's going to be a bit of a doddle, having done 220,000km to the South Pole, it's a relatively easy walk in the park."
Asked how he could possibly outdo his Polar achievement, he said: "The only thing to succeed the Polar trek would be to swim underwater from the UK to America."
Mr McIntosh estimates he managed to get his messages about cancer and critical illness cover to about five million people worldwide, with his story receiving covering from national newspapers, including The Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph, television channels such as Sky and BBC, and global online media like AOL.
He said: "It was an extraordinary event and all of the objectives I wanted to get out, I managed. I wouldn't have dreamt of doing all these things if I hadn't been ill, if I'd been physically fit, but I'm just so lucky to be alive I need to try to convey my luck to everyone else. I should have died on the operating table."
He said surviving bowel cancer, the second largest early death killer in UK, was particularly incredible.
He said: "The chances of anybody getting through what I got through, surviving three different types of cancer, is pretty negligible. The chances of being this fit is just ridiculous, I must be one in a billion."
He only discovered he had cancer by chance. In March 2012 his iron levels were shown to be extremely low when he gave a blood donation. This led to further investigations.
He said: "I didn't feel remotely ill - yet I could see this massive growth in the intestines."
Spreading the message of early detection was important to him and that spurred him on to do the Polar trek.
He said: "I did it on the basis that it was an awareness campaign more than anything else. There's a lot of unnecessary early death because people don't realise until too late.
"In a way it was luck I got diagnosed early and was able to get out of the other end."
He added: "The critical illness cover helped enormously."
IFP corporate member firm Aegon, which provided his critical illness policy, sponsored Mr McIntosh's Polar venture and hailed it a "phenomenal accomplishment".
Summing up what he did in getting to the South Pole, he said: "The word is brutal. In terms of the place itself, there's nothing pleasant about being there at all, it's a huge physical effort to do what I've done."
Mr McIntosh set a fundraising target of £220,000 for three charities - Bowel Cancer UK, Prostate Cancer UK, and The Voice of the Listener and Viewer.