100 Pushups - Week 5, Day 1, Column 2

Week 3 passed without too much trouble. I wouldn't say it was a coast, but I got to the end of the week 3 training plan on column 3, and was feeling confident about attacking Week 4.

No such luck. After 2 failed attempts to complete Week 4 Column 3, I was still falling 10 short on the last set. With others catching up fast, I had to admit defeat, swallow my pride, and drop down to column 2 or be stuck there for another week.

This was much better. I was finally making progress again, and the last set of each day was still tough, but achievable. Once I battled through the last set on day 3 with triceps pumped and pecs a-burnin' (the last 5 or so were just... NASTY!) it was time for an exhaustion test to determine which column to start on for Week 5.

I was ready for this, dammit. All the hard work on week 4 should mean that I'd be racing away, right? Must be good for at least 15 more this time round, surely? Right? Riiiiiiiight?

Wrong. After leaving a completely blank rest day in between, I managed a measly 40. That's only five more than I could do at the start. FIVE? FIVE?? Nooooooooo! You're kidding me! All that work just for an extra FIVE??

Well, it's not so bad, I guess. It still puts me right on the cusp between columns 2 and 3 for week 5, so my self-satisfied feelgood factor (and my fragile masculine ego) isn't completely crushed.

I'd been eyeing up week 5 for a long time, in much the same way as people who walk to the North Pole like to keep an eye on polar bears that are hovering just out of range. It looked hard. Even the programme itself says, at the end:

Week 5 was a tough one, and if you've made it this far, you're getting close to reaching your goal.

Well, having tackled Week 5, Day 1, Column 2 last night, I can confidently say, without a shadow of a doubt - it's brutal!. I could feel the lactic acid kicking into my triceps and pecs earlier and earlier with each set. I needed 35 on the last set to call it complete, and by 25 I was shaking, grimacing, grunting, howling and getting slower and slower. I just about did it, but by God it was close. I took solace in the words of Tim Ferris in The 4Hr Body when describing his preferred strength training regime (one set to complete failure):

To Failure doesn't mean giving up at your first moderately-hard rep. It means pushing like there's a gun to your head.

According to Tim, it's the last rep that makes all the difference - that last rep that you can't complete no matter how hard you push, THAT's the one that triggers your body's muscle growth response. Every rep leading up to that should just be considered a warmup for it.

Kind of makes sense. But my GOD it hurts! :)

I also noticed a couple of things that I need to keep an eye on:

1. My right wrist has been getting more and more painful as the training goes on
2. As I tire, my dominant right shoulder tries to compensate for the weaker left side, and I end up leaning over to the left with my right shoulder higher. I should probably do some work to correct that imbalance

I must say, though, that it's having a noticeable effect on my body composition. Having lost so much weight in January (12Kg in 2 weeks) when I got Giardia in Nepal, and my body started to digest its own muscle (see before and after shots - check out the left upper arm skinniness!) it's great to have some definition back again. I have pecs again! And Lise's verdict ?

(with a coy grin) Yeah, it hasn't gone unnoticed...

Yay!

100 Pushups - Day 1 - Initial Assessment #may18_100

I did my first exhaustion test this morning - 35 pushups in one go. Not bad... according to the training plan that means I start from week 3. It puts me at the head of our little #May18_100 pack, but that just means if I don't stay at the head of the pack, I have teh major FAIL !

I took a video, but it was dark, grainy, and missed off my head, so there's just my tracksuited bum bobbing up and down, like a dodgy late night movie on channel 5, probably starring someone called Shannon (see Bill Hicks' classic "hairy bobbing man ass" sketch) so in the interests of taste and decency, I've decided not to post it. I'll see if I can get a better take at the weekend.

HOW many pushups??

Due to a combination of cajolery on Twitter, I seem to have ended up accepting a challenge - the Hundred Push Up Challenge, no less.

Simply put, you follow the training program with an aim of doing 100 pushups in one go at the end. In our case, we seem to have settled on a slightly less intimidating target - whoever does the most on May 18th, wins.

There's mitigating circumstances, and I'm getting my excuses in early - I cracked a rib playing football a couple of weeks ago - but P Biddy has even beaten me in those stakes:

if I'm starting w/a chronic autoimmune disorder that has put me in a wheelchair, I think you can start w/a broken rib!

- and besides, I'm in, I can't back out now.


Apparently videos are required. This perturbs me. But in for a penny, in for a pound, and all that. I also feel like there's an inexorable link between Brits Doing Dumb Challenges and charity, so for every push up I do on the 18th, I'll donate a pound to .... erm, a charity I haven't decided upon yet.

Candidates that spring to mind are:

- Marie Curie cancer care
- CHANCE
- Shelter
- ...?

All suggestions welcome. Wish me luck!

Everest Base Camp trek day 13 - Lurching up to Lobuche

We stood leaning on our poles, gasping for breath in the cold morning air at the top of the steep hill directly behind the lodge, right at the start of the trek from Dingboche to Lobuche.

"How high have we climbed now?" asked Lise, in between gasps for oxygen that just wasn't there.

I checked my watch.

"10 metres," I panted, "only 390 to go..."

"Al..." she replied, "....don't do that."

The mornings were becoming increasingly hard, as Lise's panic breathing (Cheyne-Stokes Respiration, apparently) was getting worse, the temperature was dropping and the air was getting thinner. To start the day with a hill like that on top of everything else, just seemed malicious.

Once over the brow, we had a long section of gentle ascent, with spectacular views of Thobuche and Cholatse just the other side of the small Pheriche valley. We started to defrost as the sun hit our backs, and the morning became quite pleasant.

After a couple of hours, we stopped at the small village of Thukla for a tea break at the appropriately named Yak Lodge, where Lise tried to make friends with the yaks in the field, to no avail and to Bagbir's obvious consternation. We sat in the sun, chuckling at the fact that we were drinking tea in the sunshine at almost the height of Mont Blanc. Then we set off upwards.

The guidebook had said "...the hill immediately behind Thukla can be tough..." so I was prepared for a slog. What I wasn't prepared for, however, was the wind. As we struggled in the altitude just to put one foot in front of the other, the biting, icy wind seemed to cut right through all of our carefully layered clothing and make a complete joke of my midweight gloves. The hill seemed so steep and relentless, the air so thin and cold, the wind so vicious, we were having to dig deep into our reserves of will to keep going.

"I can't feel my fingers!" Lise gasped.

"Me neither," I replied, "...or my toes!"

Bagbir looked concerned. "Please brother, every time we stop, make like this," he started punching his fists together, wiggling his fingers in-between punches. We followed, and managed to get just about enough sensation in our fingers to realise how cold they really were.

Onwards and upwards we trudged, stopping every few metres to catch our breath and shake our hands, starting to think that if we couldn't rewarm soon, then frostbite was becoming a very real possibility.

At long last we reached the top of the hill, but still the wind blew. As we stumbled across the plateau into the field of Everest memorials, I was struck by the sight of so many piles of stones, each one for someone who'd gone to climb the mountain and not returned. The cold, the exhaustion and the feel of so many lives lost all piled on top of me, and I choked back the tears as I leant on my poles.

On the other side of the field the path began to descend slightly, and we were at last out of the wind. Before too long we saw the welcome sight of the blue-roofed lodges of Lobuche. Exhausted, frozen, and dizzy with the altitude, we flopped on the benches in our lodges dining room, and two bowls of tomato and garlic soup appeared in front of us. We ate in a shell-shocked daze.

After soup, we had the energy to head up to the room and sort out our packs. On our return, we saw a familiar face in the dining room:

"Bruce! How are you?"

It was comforting to see a familiar face, and to be able to chat freely in English. Lise and Bruce nattered for ages, I read my book and joined in now and again whenever I could shake the altitude stupor.

After dinner, we got out the travel Backgammon set again. I was determined to improve my abysmal record against Lise since we'd picked up the game for the first time a couple of nights ago - won 1, lost 6, a fact which gave Lise some repeated amusement. After the first game, however, Bagbir came over looking interested.

"Would you like to play?" we asked.

"Yes!" He nodded.

There followed an hour long session of increasing deviousness and undisguised joy at "blotting" each other off the board, at the end of which I was 2-1 up. Lise chatted to Bruce about altitude problems and her panic breathing.

We figured it was a good time to call it a night, as the next day was going to be hard work. Just as he left, Bruce handed us four Diamox, saying, "as I say, never take medical advice from some bloke you just met in a lodge, but if this helps you get a decent night's sleep... well, the worst it's going to do is not work, put it that way."

It worked. Lise got a decent nights sleep at last.

Everest Base Camp trek day 12 - Rest Day in Dingboche

"Human beings just aren't meant to be at this height," said Lise, sitting in front of our room at the Hotel Family, Dingboche, and gazing up at Yet Another Stunning View Of Ama Dablam.

She'd had a bad night, waking up several times in a panic, convinced that she couldn't breathe - a common effect of altitude.

Today's rest day was therefore agreed to be a genuine rest. A gentle 2hr amble up the valley in the morning took us to 4600m, where we scrambled up the start of the huge moraines leading up to Ama Dablam. Another effect of altitude, of course, is that everything looks closer in the thinner air, and though the mountain had looked close enough to touch, we could see that it would be several hours more before reaching the rock. We returned for lunch.

A peaceful afternoon followed, with lots of reading and sorting gear out for the ascent to Lobuche (4950m) the next day. There would be no more hot showers until we returned back to Namche, so we made do with wet wipes.

Everest Base Camp trek day 11 - Carry On Up The Khumbu

A cold start, with all of our water bottles partly frozen and ice covering the window.

"What kind of nutters," asked Lise, pacing around the dining room to keep warm, "come to the Himalayas in January? I mean, seriously..."

"Seemed like a good idea at the time...." I shuddered.

"You know it's minus four in here?" The wall thermometer said as much.

"Well according to my watch it's a nice balmy 14 degrees"

My watch - a snazzy Suunto job with compass, gps, altimeter, barometer and all the works, was great at everything except the temperature. It had told me it was 18 degrees in the middle of a Cairngorm winter blizzard, and was something of a running joke. In the middle of the night, however, I had checked it just to see, and it had said -2. Draw your own conclusions about the true temperature...

We ate our bowls of porridge hungrily, eager just to get started and stop freezing our nadgers off. I asked the lodge owner for some hot water, ruefully offering my nalgene flask with its half-litre of solid ice in the bottom.

In a slight daze, we set off for Dingboche, our fingers and toes chilled in the early gloom, desperately waiting for the sun to hit our valley. Songs began to play in my head, acoustic power ballads by Frank Turner - the kind Lise refers to as "dog on a string music" - and I began to feel strangely emotional.

The early part of the hike was easy enough, but by 10 o'clock the steady ascent was starting to take its toll. As we entered Pangboche, a pretty, laid-back village in a flat part of the valley, I was feeling dizzy, achy, and sick. I had to sit down.

"Please brother, rest," said Bagbir, his eyes once again studying me for signs of AMS. "I think, if you are not feeling good, maybe we stay here tonight?"

I knew that would put paid to our hopes of reaching Base Camp and ascending Kala Pattar. We would have to cut one of them, or - dangerously - our one remaining rest day.

"I'm OK, just a little light-headed," I said. "In terms of general co-ordination, I'm fine - look!" I danced a little jig, knowing that if I showed signs of becoming uncoordinated Bagbir would probably insist on taking us back down - and he'd be right.

I finished with the classic Bruce Forsyth slap-and-step-forward-with-a-grin. Lise and Bagbir looked at me in silence for a painfully long second.

"I think," said Bagbir, very slowly, "maybe we try one more hour....?"

So on we went, taking lunch in Solame seemingly right at the foot of Ama Dablam. Bagbir had told is that a Korean team had summitted it just a couple of days ago, and just below the top I could see what looked like tracks. Unfortunately neither the camera nor the binoculars could get quite enough zoom to be sure. Bagbir said they climbed on the other side anyway.

As we continued our relentless plod up the Khumbu valley, we found ourselves in a broad flat plain at around 4100m surrounded on all sides by mammoth peaks. Lhotse looked all the more frighteningly huge from this closer distance. We could see Everest's yellow band over the Lhotse-Nuptse wall, Thobuche to the left, with Pumori just visible in between.

"It feels more like we're properly in the mountains now," I said to Lise.

"Yeah," she agreed, "this place is amazing!"

Eventually, we began another gruelling ascent up the final 250m to Dingboche, with the huge scree heaps leading to Ama Dablam on our right. As we topped out, Dingboche appeared to us, plenty of lodges spread out through dusty fields.

We checked in to the Hotel Family, and immediately liked what we saw - a large-but-cozy dining room, a twin room with space, comfy mattresses, and even a private toilet. OK, so it was an Asian squat-style toilet, but I'd been practising my aim, and hell, compared to the last place, this was like the Hilton.

I changed up to clothing level 2 - fresh, thick, Patagonia base layer tights and winter-lined Craghopper trousers. Lise, meanwhile, had well and truly nested, a defiant cheeky grin poking out from behind layer upon layer of fluff - fleece, hat, sleeping bag, blanket, nearly all of it at least partly pink.

"I'm happy," she announced, "I'm not moving!"

Later, as the light began to fade, we moved into the dining room to order dinner. Bagbir took our order.

"How are you feeling now, brother?"

"Good, thankyou!"

"For dinner?"

This was a big test. I'd been pining for potatoes for the last few days, but since I'd got sick, every time I'd ordered them he'd politely suggested that plain rice "maybe better" - sometimes politely suggesting several times until I got the message.

I took a deep breath. "I'd like... the fried potatoes with vegetables and cheese!"

His eyes met mine, again searching for signs of my condition.

The universe held its breath.

"OK"

It was my turn to be happy.

We sat around the stove in the center of the room, warming our hands, swapping small talk with the others - an amiable mix of trekkers and their guides all swapping tales. At one point, a sudden loud bang from the stove made us all scatter with assorted expletives, as a piece of fuel - dried yak dung - exploded in the heat.

We talked to a young sherpa, guiding a solo Japanese client, who was worried about his ascent up to Lobuche (4950m) tomorrow without the usual rest day here. "My boss, he not have time," he said, "he say no."

We felt a little concerned for their safety. It was a sobering reminder that the sherpas put themselves at just as much risk as their clients, and if a client was insistent on ignoring the standard acclimatization schedule, what could they do?

As the evening drew to a close, we turned to bed. Chastened by the previous teeth-chattering night at Deboche, we'd worked out a plan. Before turning in, we filled our Nalgene flasks with hot water drum the kitchen and wrapped them in Lisas thick socks.

I wore my thick base layers and fleece, pulled my microfleece sleeping bag liner around me, climbed into the sleeping bag, wrapped my down jacket around the feet, pulled the provided blanket over the lot, and topped it off with my midweight gloves and beanie.

I woke up several times in the night to take layers off. Still, high class problems and all that.

Everest Base Camp trek day 6 - Phakding to Namche

I'd worked today out from the map - it would be 3hrs trek to Jorsale with little altitude gain, then we'd probably have lunch there, as after that it would be 3hrs hard slog, 800m up to Namche at 3450m.

And that's how it turned out. After a gargantuan bowl of porridge, we set off at 8am under a clear blue sky. The suns heat grew slowly stronger as we followed the beautiful Dhud Khosi river up the valley, its constant gentle white water gush mixing with the tweeting birds and the clang of yak bells to make a soundtrack so relaxing you could sell CDs of it in a Brighton hippy shop for fifteen quid a time.

Counterbalancing that, however, was our own heavy breathing as we trekked up, down and across wobbling metal bridges to swap sides of the valley.

After about an hour, we began to catch glimpses of jagged snow-capped peaks beyond the already pretty high valley. Bagbir pointed out the name and height of each one as it appeared, and with each successive appearance we felt more like we were actually there - really, genuinely there at last, in the Himalayas of which we'd read so much.

Although the heat was strong in the sun, the air itself was cold and the altitude was already starting to have an effect. Every time I thought I was doing fine, we'd meet an "up" section that left me humbled and gasping at the top. The dry dusty air was starting to give me the infamous Khumbu Cough, and I was careful to make sure I drank enough water. This, however, had it's own side effects.

"Bagbir, I need to go again.... is there a good spot nearby?"

Bagbir, of course, knew all the best spots, and pointed them out to me in the same easy going way he pointed out the rhododendron trees, or the waterfalls.

In Monjo, we stopped at a teahouse for some sweet black tea, sitting on a terrace in the baking sun with a stunning view down the valley, and mighty Kungde in the distance.

"My cousins place," said Bagbir,
with a proud grin.

"Have you got cousins all the way up?" we asked.

He just smiled and nodded.

After Jorsale, the trail got steeper as we ascended towards Namche. Conversation grew thinner with the air, but when we took rest stops, we talked to Bagbir about his impressive 11yrs of experience, starting out as porter, then cooks assistant, then sirdars assistant, then full sirdar. He'd been part of a 2008 Everest summit team, and had got to the south col at 7000m, but had to turn back as his client - who went on to the summit - had used too much oxygen lower down. He couldn't stop shaking his head with a nervous chuckle as he described ascending the Khumbu icefall in a state of utter terror, crossing massive crevasses on tiny ricketty ladders to the constant creaking and cracking of the shifting ice.

About two-thirds of the way up, we came across three local women selling oranges, where we stopped for a refresher and got our first clear view of Everest in the distance.

Eventually, legs and lungs aching in equal measure, we rounded a bend and Namche lay before us, many levels of almost identical-looking white houses with blue or green roofs on steps cut into the hillside, in a manner that made me think of Spanish villa resorts. The views were spectacular - Kungde, Thamserku, and the holy mountain Khumbi Yul Lha framing the village on three sides, with a glorious view down the valley on the fourth.

We checked in to "The Nest", a very new lodge at the bottom of town with a large alpine-style dining room, a broad menu, and - oh joy, oh rapture - a hot shower.

That evening, over dinner, we couldn't help admiring the language skills of the lodge owner as he joked in Japanese with a large group.

"How many languages do you speak, Bagbir?" asked Lise.

"I think... maybe.... 15, 16?"

"Wow! How did you learn all those?"

"No education, just by guiding"

I felt suitably humbled.

Everest Base Camp trek day 5 - Lukla or Bust

By 12 o'clock, our 7:15 flight was looking increasingly unlikely. Every hour, they delayed it one more hour, and this was the last day we could get out there in time to get to Kala Pattar and back with still one day's leeway in case of delays on the return.

"I reckon we go for plan B," I sighed.

Lise was not giving up so easily.

"Maybe we can get a flight tomorrow and just not go as far as Kala Pattar?"

"It's been 3 days now, and there were people on our first day who'd been stuck for three days before that. We've got no reason to think it'll be any different tomorrow, and then we'll shave another day off the trek, and then another, until we're just going to Namche and back."

"Well we still have to wait until they officially cancel it at 2"

This was true. So we were going nowhere either way.

The exasperation, lack of breakfast and lack of sleep the night before was catching up with me. New Years Eve in Thamel is a deafening affair even six floors up, and no respecter of early morning flights or musical tastes - I had laid awake dreaming of calling, in Marcellus Wallace's fine words, a couple of hard pipe-hitting so-and-sos to go to work on DJ Utzi with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.

"I'm going for a walk," I said.

I set off for yet another tour of the departure lounge - two small but exorbitantly overpriced kiosks selling Pringles for a fiver and an array of postcards taunting me with lurid close-ups of the mountains we weren't going to get to see, plus one smoking room with air so thick it might have been on fire and an array of middle-aged men outside it seemingly performing the 1812 Overture scored for phlegm-hawkers, wheezers and coughs.

On my return I found Lise talking to Bruce, an amiable English chap we'd exchanged a few pleasantries with earlier, who was also waiting for a Lukla flight. He was pretty experienced in the region, and suggested a couple of alternative shorter plans - e.g. from Gokyo, go back via the Henjpo-la and down the other valley.

By 1pm, we were told by the information desk that the flight would certainly be cancelled, but they just wouldn't make the announcement until 2. We sat there dejected as Bruce went off to the ticket desk to change his ticket, leaving us with "So I'll probably see you in Pokhara then!"

After a few minutes of shared sighs and slow head shakes, I rang Yalamber to pick us up once more.

"Just come back through security," he said, "I'm already at the check-in desk"

As I rang off, Lise came over with Bruce, and a slight smirk. Bruce said,

"I've just been offered a chopper for $250..."

Lise and I looked at each other.

"What do you think...?"

Half an hour later we were being rushed through a side door with the chopper profferer heading onto the tarmac with our luggage, but a security guard insisting we go back through security and out through the gate.

Yalamber was looking genuinely worried for the first time.

"I don't know this guy," he said, "check the bill, make sure it's right, OK?"

We were waved through security without even a cursory inspection - the guards were getting to know us by now - and five minutes later, having swiped our credit cards on a windswept flimsy fold-up table by the runway, and checked that the bill was indeed what we'd agreed, we climbed into the 4-seater helicopter and hung on for dear life as it took to the air.

Bruce had warned us that it would be a bumpy ride, so I took the precaution of opening an empty plastic bag in front of me as an improvised sick bag. I looked across at Lise with an excited grin, and made the scuba diver's sign for "Ok?" She just looked back at me with a trembling bottom lip.

The flight was indeed bumpy, but once over the initial nerves, quite exciting. The pilot rode the updrafts as we crossed the mountain ridges - sometimes by a margin of what seemed like just a few feet as he stayed just underneath the thick clouds above us.

Then suddenly, out of the clouds appeared Lukla airstrip, right in front of us. It looks tiny from a plane, but when you're doing a dramatic sweep over it in a chopper from a height of about 10m.... it looks even tinier, and makes you very glad you're in something that can land vertically.

We were greeted by our sirdar Bagbir, a tall thin man in his thirties, with smiling eyes and a constant sideways nod, and his brother Malang, who would be our porter. Malang was shorter and younger, and shy. We said our goodbyes to Bruce and went inside for a cup of sweet black tea and an introductory chat with Bagbir.

"Tonight we sleep in Phakding," he said, "maybe three hours from here."

It was already 3 o'clock, and with sundown around 6, we had to get moving, so once we'd finished our tea we set off. Lise and I put on our backpacks - maybe 6 kg or so each - and felt suitably humbled as Malang strapped both of our duffels together for a combined load of 30kg plus whatever else was in the two smaller bags for he and Bagbir.

At 2845m in Lukla, I was feeling a little light-headed at first, but soon settled into a medium paced hike through Lukla village, noting with a wry smile the Starbucks branch there.

We passed through village after village, peopled with exactly the kind of red-cheeked, white-smiled, huge load-carrying Nepalis we'd seen in countless photos, plus an assortment of unbearably cute small dumpy children in huge woolly hats. Bagbir pointed out apple trees and vegetable patches, and schools being built through foreign aid.

We had to push the pace a little, so there was no time to stop and chat en route, but we did squeeze in a tea break at Bagbir's cousin's house where we were served a plate of Nepali donuts - like yum-yums without the glaze.

"You have a headtorch?" asked Bagbir, with a note of concern in his voice as he eyed the gathering gloom outside.

We finished our teas and set off again, pushing against the tiredness and breathlessness, until we gratefully arrived in Phakding in more or less full darkness, and checked into the Beer Garden lodge.
Our previous reading on lodges in the hills had led us to expect little more than a shed with some bunks, but this lodge had a twin room with a couple of lightbulbs, two relatively comfortable mattresses, and a western-style porcelain toilet across the steps - all spotlessly clean. No heating though, and the night was cold and surprisingly damp after the dustiness of the trail.

The dinner menu was extensive, our Nepali hostess sang a constant ditty in a sweet voice, and after a delicious meal of Dal Baat, we retired. We climbed gratefully into our sleeping bags, thinking that fleece liners were the best invention ever, and were asleep by 8:30, for night of altitude-induced vivid dreams and numerous trips to the loo, up at 6 for the long next days hike to Namche.