The dream of an Everest climb began several years ago. My cycling wardrobe is a fairly eclectic mix of items garnered from members of the cycling club – when I began to cycle a bit more and joined the club they were quite quick to cover me up with something approaching decent cycling attire rather than have them bear the embarrassment of my hastily retrieved running gear from several decades back! So when a company offered a reduced price outfit if you could climb the height of Everest in a month it caught my eye. What caught my eye even more later on was that some people had done it in 24 hours (they got the item free!). ‘Impossible’ was my reaction, but as time went past it became a dream that one day I could raise funds for Comfort with a 24-hour Everest climb. The 25th anniversary was a great opportunity to bring that dream to fruition and all through last winter and this spring I’d been pushing the pedals up more and more hills to prepare. The Cairn O Mount is a favourite mountain cycle route for Scottish cyclists and has featured in the Tour of Britain so it seemed the obvious choice.
A few days before the climb we made the decision to go from the north side as the weather forecast was showing a steady northerly and I had read from other attempts that a constant headwind had scuppered people’s attempts for an Everest climb. In the end it was the right choice and when the legs were hurting, the wind on my back was like the breath of God helping me up!
There were two great pieces of advice I received (from several different sources) prior to the climb. The first was to make sure you didn’t fly off too fast and blow up, and the second was to fuel, fuel, fuel throughout the climb. Ailidh, my daughter (with the help of her vet colleague, Scottish women’s cycle team member Arianne Holland) surprised with me a father’s day box of energy bars, drinks and gels, and Izzy, my wife, did lots of great research and made copious quantities of flapjacks, sandwiches and biscuits.
The night before the climb, our friends Mike and Rhona Goss helpfully took their camper van to the bottom of the climb and left me there to catch a few hours sleep before the start. I had not experienced such voracious midges for a long long time. On a long ride like I was facing you lose a lot of fluid so you are encouraged to ‘hydrate well’ the day before. Too well I think! Up four times to pop behind a bush in four hours and rush the gauntlet of an apparently unfed horde of midges I was willing the 2.30am start to come quickly and get up the hill into the wind.
I’d slept in my cycling gear so it was a quick check over the three elevation devices I would take with me, fix the lights for the first hour or two in the dark and a midge infested comment or two for Chris’ camera and I was off. The climb I would be going up and down thirty-four times was 260 metres (850 feet) high and about two and a half miles up and two and a half miles down. After 25 minutes the first one was done and the pattern set, up to the top, shout out the height to Chris, take on any food and drink needed, back down the hill, turn at the bottom and up again. It would be seventeen hours before I was off the bike.
The team throughout the day were phenomenal. Chris Hoskins, our creative manager, spent the night in his car at the top of the Cairn O Mount, woke at 2am and was at the bottom of the hill ready to film by 2.30 sharp. Throughout the day he was like a rock of support, taking the elevation and time every time I reached the top, handing out drinks and food and encouraging me all the way.
The first ten or so ascents were not too bad but around 9am when we were getting into the teens the tiredness from the constant cycling and the 2.30 start were beginning to bite. I had trained up to ten ascents but was now in new territory – twelve, thirteen ascents and the idea of another twenty-one was mentally tough. There was never any real danger of giving up, but it was sometimes a case of ‘get up this one’ and then think about the next. When Chris told me Izzy would arrive around 9.30 the thought of more moral support gave me a real boost. She is an amazing support, vocal in encouragement, and attentive in making sure everything I needed was ready. Our faithful friends and amazing supporters Billy and Fiona McClung travelled up from Dumbarton to be with me much of the day and my pastor from Carnoustie Baptist Church spent his morning with us giving support. As well as those there I was getting regular shouts of how folk were responding on social media.
When I am doing an effort like that it can get really emotional. Riding up and down the Cairn my mind often turned to the people on the projects – child soldiers being nursed back to wholeness after their trauma, street kids breaking through the darkness of lost lives to smile and laugh, the displaced, the traumatised, the poor with no way out finding there could be a hope and a future, and so many others. Combined with the deep emotional and physical reserves needed to go beyond anything I’d done on a bike before, and the really moving support I was getting, I was often cycling on the verge of tears, especially in the middle part of the climb when the end seemed so far away. I am so thankful for the love, prayers and support of so many that day.
A couple of friends, Colin and Euan, from the Carnoustie Cycling Club came up to ride some ascents. It was great to have that support – they talked me through the hours passing and Euan finished up doing the last ten with me. I was taking on food or food drinks more or less every thirty minutes – by the end of the day I had used up nearly thirteen thousand calories and any neglect through the day of replenishing some of that could suck the energy out of my legs and leave me dangerously near drop out fatigue. Any excuse for another flapjack, but even they began to lose their appeal!
As we got near the end the number of climbs up the Cairn to finish was being carefully calculated by Chris. He is a real map-reader and, despite the many fancy GPS devices cyclists use, ordnance survey data is much more accurate. Towards the end it was clear that the Garmin and the two phones with Strava were, as they often do, under-reporting the elevation gained but we decided anyway to go with the Garmin device which would provide public confirmation. He calculated I’d already cycled the right height but one more effort was needed to get it recorded on the device. Mike and Rhona had come back up to support the last bit, Izzy had got some congratulations balloons, Chris was still awake and encouraging and at 8.30 pm after 17 hours cycling I was breaking through the height of Everest to their welcome cheers. So glad to have done it, so moved by such a great team of support, so elated to have completed something I had found hard to believe was possible, and so happy that some more lives can be supported to find a better future, to smile, to laugh.
As I write this I am back in Rwanda. I’ve been talking today with ex-street kids, playing with a toddler now effectively orphaned after his father killed his mother and he’s now looked after by our partners, listening to graduates from the projects who are now at university, and the list goes on. A few painful hours on a bike seems such a small thing to do to give that chance to another and another. And so the ride goes on.
