Tick tock

The months have drawn into weeks now and it will soon be days. When I used to talk about climbing Kili, I was comforted by the fact that I was able to say, its in a few months, I have loads of time to train! Now I can quite literally count the days.

I am delighted to say that we have raised our money, in most part thanks to Nic, his ability in organising fund raising events, getting large organisations to sponsor us has been exceptional.

I think me, harry and Ameer owe in a very big thanks.

On the training side, training has come along incredibly well, everyone is pushing themselves well beyond their limits.
Ameer is pretty much unrecognisable from the overconfident underprepared “yea man” character he was. We actually call him “New Ameer”, because his turn around has been that drastic. He has even called me a few times to lecture me about not training enough.

Harry ,  has no right to be pushing himself this far, the slight fat soft dough boy, has been turned into a machine.  When we were training up Jebal hafeet mountain, he simply left the group when we stopped for a rest, and pushed all the way through.

I still have 2 major fears that are constantly going around in my head. Altitude is still the biggest. Reading the blogs, Ive seen how it has turned grown men into a crying mess. One blog that sticks to my mind, was where a guy actually leaves his wife because she cant make it.

He then spent the next 7 hours crying his way up the mountain....Altitude is no joke, around 5 people a year die on Kili because of it, and there is no doubt, each of us are going to suffer.

Out of every 10 people trying our route up kili, statistically 6 wont make it. I hope that in our group none of us are that 6, but the challenge is such that we have even planned as a group for the very real prospect one of our bodies gives up.
The harsh reality is the rules on the mountain, is if you get too sick from the altitude you have to turn around and go down as the group continues without you.

My next worry is injuries, years of combat sports have meant both my knees have dislocated at some point, and with the extra load ive been pushing through them during training has meant that they constantly hurt.  This is where having great team mates really helps, no matter how much my knee hurts, I think about Nic, who once described the pain in his back as “the devil grabbing your spine and twisting it” When he does 4 hours of stair walks with  body that damaged, I cant really moan about a dull pain in my knee.

Each and every one of us has used this to push ourselves mentally and physically beyond our comfort zones.

There is a proverb about Kili that the same person never walks up and down the mountain, because you are always a different person after completing the challenge, seeing what training has done to me and the team I can really believe it.