Bio's

Hi,

I'm Nic, 33 from the UK

I'm a bit of an average sportsman at best. Minor successes playing football, rugby, & Squash. A couple of half marathons in thoroughly average times. My real forte used to be the gym, I was pretty much a professional gym monkey for over a decade often dedicating 3 hours a day, 6 days a week to lifting iron in the gym, it was something I was very good at.

Unfortunately what Ive learnt is that all the heavy lifting was of little us in other sports (bar rugby) and has left me with more injuries than I would have hoped for at this age!

Onto our climb, why Kili? I'm not one to pass up a challenge and also have a low attention span for slow moving things, I love throwing myself in at the deep end and doing things the hard way in order to force myself out of my comfort zone. Ive climbed mountains with limited fitness, done triathlons without any real ability to swim , learnt rugby at an age where my teams mates had been playing for ten years and cycled across three countries with 3 days notice.

Ive spent most of my working life in London, but moved to Dubai 2 years ago in my role as sales manager for Thomson Reuters Legal Division. I work with the three other guys doing the climb in the Dubai TR office.

In London I used to run & cycle to work, about 8 miles a day, but now I live 300 metres from the office and have also fallen into the Dubai lifestyle of boozy brunch weekends, no exercise and too many socials. This has obviously led to huge weight gain and I piled on about 15 Kilo's in the last two years which obviously bears a huge impact on my ability to train harder. If this wasn't hindrance enough I also just over coming a recent injury. I signed up to climb Kili last year, with Gulf for Good. Part way through the training I went to a wedding in the UK, and rather than do the usual late night and many beers, I got up early to go for a run in the countryside.

Nearing the end I jumped over a gate and landed awkwardly, I broke my ankle in 3 places and torn tendons from the bone. I spent months in a cast, moon boot, supports and physio. I still haven't actually regained 100% movement. Buuuuut I'm not going to let that stop me, if anything it just makes me want to get to the top more!

I used to use my personal challenges to raise money, I liked to raise money for a different fund every year and tried to keep it connected to someone or something connected to my life. This year will be the first time I raise for a charity previously unknown and unattached to me. And I couldn't have chosen better

If we raise our target, we can impact these kids lives forever, it feels very personal and something I'm really looking forward to.

Please have a read up of the charity on the home page, Its an amazingly good cause and really puts things into perspective. Whats great is nearly all of the money raised goes straight to them and trip costs are very low.

Please support us by giving a few quid/dirhams/dollars/euro's via our fund raising link on the home page

(if I know you well then take it for granted that I'm going to harass you until you do this anyway :)