It was my buddy Dave’s idea, ‘Let’s Everest the Crunch’… climb a nearby power line trail that we’ve been doing together since January 2021, 37 times to reach the height of Mount Everest. We decided we’ll give it a go over a 48 hours span on August 21st and 22nd of this year, and that we will only be going up, and getting rides back down. We started to increase our volume at the end of last year and then I had to pause for injury recovery.

Last weekend we did 6 times up and we both struggled a bit. We didn’t hydrate enough and while we were eating protein bars, we really didn’t add any carbs to sustain us. Today was different. We were very prepared and we did 10x up (before our traditional last walk down at the end), and it was easier than the 6 we did last weekend. That said it was still challenging and looking at the stats, I can see why.

All along, I’ve been thinking of this in terms of altitude. We’re going up the Coquitlam Crunch 37 times, which slightly exceeds the height of Everest. After doing 10 today, I looked at some other stats and a simple multiplication (x3.7) gets me to the totals for Everesting the Crunch in August.

Today we did over a vertical half marathon and that will mean we will be doing just over 2 uphill marathons in less than 48 hours. We will be walking up hill for at least 19 hours in those two days. And we will be walking over 100,000 steps… again almost all uphill.

I hadn’t realized the magnitude of what we were attempting until I saw today’s stats. Dave has run a marathon and has done a few ultras. Before today, my longest distance was a half marathon, and today I broke that distance record. Over those 2 days in August I have to add an additional 60 kilometres!

It’s definitely going to be a challenge!