Incredible commitment from Ian! Join us in cheering him on through his training, and please support his fundraiser at the link in his post.
At the end of lockdown, I broke three all three major bones in my ankle (trimalleolar fracture). Before I could even walk again, I announced I'd be training for an Everesting cycling challenge to raise money for Hope for Justice and Slave-Free Alliance. With the benefit of hindsight, it is probably the most ridiculous idea I've ever had! Everesting means picking a hill and repeating climbs of it until the total elevation gain matches the height of Everest (8,848m). That's the same as riding up Ben Nevis five times, plus Snowdon, plus Scafell Pike, plus another 61 metres for good measure. I'll be doing it on an indoor bike as I struggle to ride on the road due to various ankle / shoulder injuries involving pins and metal plates. The rules of Everesting require it to be completed without any sleep which, practically, means it needs completing in one day. If I can get really fit then I think it will involve 16-18 hours of cycling in one day. That's like 4 Marathons back-to-back and no..... I didn't realise that, and I didn't really have any idea what I was letting myself in for! Since then I've overhauled my diet, my training, my body composition, and worked hard on getting proper rest and sleep. But training consistency has been hard. Work pressures have got in the way, and at one point I needed further surgery on my foot. A few weeks ago I hit a (metaphorical) wall. I've been training for a long time and was seriously weighing up reasons to quit (and working through my excuses) as progress has been slow and in all honesty, I just wanted this to quietly go away. But I'm always keen to practice what I preach and there's three things I wrote about in Hope is a strategy that I reflected on: (1) hope research in psychology began by studying the opposite of excuses, (2) the idea of a "hope reset" — where you hit reset, you replan, and 'we go again' (to quote Steven Gerrard! #YNWA), (3) the power of scaling down when you're overwhelmed rather than giving up entirely. I'm back on track and I'm starting with the official Everest in a month challenge (I'm at 42.87% today), then I'll work towards a quarter-Everesting (in a day), then a half, and then the full challenge. I did an hour on Ven-Top this morning (the video below is from the final part of that ride), so that was another 370m towards the July goal! I'm doing this to raise money for the brilliant Hope for Justice and Slave-Free Alliance and right now, as part of their 50 Days of Hope campaign, all donations are being matched — so every pound given is doubled: https://lnkd.in/eWvYbaw Any support or encouragement - in any form - is very much appreciated, thank you.