Throughout 2008, Mark Pollock trained harder than ever before and set about raising the €150,000 entry fee. Together with his teammates Simon O’Donnell and Inge Solheim, Mark put in the hours of training, involving heavy workouts in the gym and hours upon hours of dragging tyres across beaches and over mountains. Added to that was the great difficulty of raising the race entry fee as the 2008 financial crash closed in.