Rest Day

No training today. Im working and later my nephews 18th Birthday BBQ.
Im no longer vegetarian. My diet was looked at as part of my fitness baseline and Im not getting enough protein to sustain the training I will be doing. Plus I dont thing there will be many nice little vegetarian bistros at 17,000 feet!

In the same way that it was an easy transition from meat eating to vegetarian, so the switch back is just as easy. Cant wait for my first bacon and mushroom sandwich. Thats the only real thing Ive missed!

Almost decided on the company I will be trekking with. I think it will be this lot: http://www.walksworldwide.com/

I was attracted to them in the first place after reading this in the Guardian online:
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/feature/0,8806,1120383,00.html (Trip NUmber 7)

They are not the cheapest by any means, but they seem to know what they are doing. Had some good conversations with Helene, she seems to be chief organiser for this particular trek and has done it herself. Very enthusiastic lady and bends over backwards to help - even with some of my more off the wall queries! Very professional website, very professional staff. I think I will trust the trek organisation to them!

Found some nice photos of base camp here:
http://www.everesttrekking.com/base_camp/

I think I will try to sort out my hill walking schedule later. I want to try to get up into the hills about once a month if I can - maybe increasing the frequency as D-Day approaches. I want a fairly early trek up Snowdon to baseline progress. Ive done it before and I cant see the everest hike being steeper. I dont know but I would imagine this one is fairly typical of how each days trek will be. I may be very wrong! Over the coming months I will climb each of the UK's 3 highest peaks as part of my training. None of them are anywhere near as high asI am going, but I think the climb up each of them is probably higher than any individual day on the expediation.
The only thing I am not sure of is how high the start point of each climb is above sea level. Obviously that will impact the actual distance climbed.


Ben Nevis
The Cairngorms
Scotland
1344 metres

Snowdon
Snowdonia, part of the Cambrian mountain range
Wales
1085 metres

Scafell Pike
The Cumbrian Mountains
England
977 metres

Tough Training Day

Gym 8.15am

I dont think we are going to see such dramatic performance improvements from now on. I think they will be there but much steadier. Today was a tough one.

Im drinking much more water at the moment anyway as my coffee intake has now stopped and my tea intake reduced.

Training Starts In Earnest

First early morning session today. I was in the Gym at 7.30

Got very headachey today. Didnt have breakfast before I trained. The theory is that with very low glucose in the body it has no choice but to get its energy by converting fat into sugar. Then afterwards you hit your body with carbohydrate to replace the energy expended, but instead of that being stored as fat, it is slow release that is held as glucose.

I also cut righ down on the caffeine. Just one cup of tea before I started training. That wont have helped. Found this website on caffeine withdrawl http://coffeefaq.com/caffaq.html#CaffeineWithdrawal and thats what I experienced. So the headache was because of one of these things I think. I shall still drink about 3 mugs of tea a day because according to the Ranulph Fiennes Book "Fit For Life" the cancer fighting antioxidents in it outweigh the negatives effects of the caffeine... and I always believe what I want to believe :) Cant imagine not having a cuppa first thing in the morning!

Its important for me to cut down on the caffeine because although I have a better than average lung capacity, I have to get the oxygen into the muscles as efficiently as possible for the effort at altitude. There are 2 ways of doing that. Making your heart muscle pump more blood per cycle (Hence the CV work in the Gym) and letting the blood flow more freely around the arteries. Caffeine constricts the arteries, so by reducing caffeine, they should widen.

Fitness Baseline

Had a full fitness baseline today so we know where we are starting from and should be able to see measured improvement until its time to go.

Lana is printing the results and I'll edit this post when I get them next week to show the numbers.

Fitness Test

Did an informal Fitness Test at the Gym, from a book, before tomorrows "official" one!

Weight 94kg (About what I expected)
RHR 110 (Much higher than normal - must be stress!)
3 min Step Up Test 150
Crunches in 1 min = 31
Press ups in 1 min = 23

Average according to the book! Plenty of scope for improvement as the weeks go by.

1.1 Where I'm Going

Thought I'd better put a picture of where it is that Im actually heading for. Seems along way ahead, but Im sure the next 15 months will fly by.

There is an Advanced Base Camp (Base 3) which is the highest point on Earth than humans can go without having specialist mountaineering skills, but Everest Base Camp at 5,340 or around 17,500 feet is plenty high enough for me at more than 3 miles vertically up above sea level!

Maybe to Base 3 another year!

The Journey Begins Week 1 of 65

Lana from Fitness First Lincoln has the responsibility of getting my fitness to the required standard. Although I have been doing a bit of training, We have 15 months of hard work ahead of us! Lets call this Day 1. Now it gets serious!