01 Nov 2021 - ...that is the question

It's been 6 months since I last posted, just ahead of the trip being cancelled for a second year in a row. With now just 5 months to go until what will hopefully be the "third time lucky" leaving date, I felt you were overdue an update.

So, where are we now? Well, things are decidedly looking a bit more positive this year than in the previous two. Nepal has recently been removed from the red list, the Nepalese government appears to be welcoming climbing tourists again and on a personal level I'm all jabbed up. I've been paid up with Jagged Globe for the trip itself since 2020 and have eye-wateringly expensive insurance in place, so provided by 1 April next year that I am fit, healthy and we can travel, then the trip should hopefully be on! I don't want to count my chickens too early, however, so I'm only being cautiously optimistic.

And what have you been up to since February? Well, as I'm sure you can imagine, having the trip cancelled for a second year was challenging on many levels. The prospect of putting my body through another year of physical training at the same level of intensity was draining in itself, as was committing myself again to the pursuit of a goal that may not even be possible to attempt. With that in mind, I've tried to approach things a little differently this year, taking a slightly more relaxed approach to training and preparing. What that has entailed is trying to taper off the intensity of my training to keep me at around 80% of my peak fitness level, spending time doing things that I enjoy more, such as playing football with my brother and his local 6-a-side team, adding in a spot of golf and tennis and concentrating more on cardio activities like running and less on crossfit-style training, giving my body the slight break that it needs and enabling me to manage some recurring injuries that I dealt with over the Spring. Recent highlights have included taking up park running in the Autumn (posting a 5km PB of 19:41) and participating in the Cambridge half marathon in October, where, with a dodgy knee I finished in a respectable time of 1:42:01 together with my brother and one of our oldest friends (see below).

More recently, there's been a second trip to the Lakes with Matt, which you can read about here and at the end of the month I plan to head up to Scotland for the weekend so I can take advantage of their indoor ice climbing facilities and reacquaint myself with climbing on the ice.

Between now and April, I'll be training on the assumption that the trip will be going ahead, which means getting back into crossfit-style training, bringing out the crampons and the ladders again, practising rope and jumar skills, exploring a bit of climbing at my local bouldering wall in Cambridge and some more weighted walks, stairs and long runs/cycles in the crisp Winter months to hopefully put me in peak physical (and mental) condition leading into next Spring.

I'll keep you posted as we get closer to the leaving date and will inevitably throw in some pics and videos from ice climbing, but otherwise wish me luck and if you guys have forgotten why I'm doing all this again, other than it being a lifelong dream, it's also to raise money for a great cause and hopefully inspire those with IBD that anything is still possible despite a shitty (pun intended) diagnosis. To that end, any sponsorship to my justgiving page for Crohn's & Colitis UK would be hugely appreciated!😉