We are going to Everest the Crunch.
37 times up a 242 meter hill over 2 days. Roughly 31-32 minute walks up the Coquitlam Crunch, with a team taking shifts driving us down after each one, to reach the equivalent hight of Mount Everest.
Follow our journey on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everestthecrunch/
We start at 6am Pacific time. Wish us luck!
I don’t want to do it. It’s going to be very hard… it’s going to suck.
I have to do it. I’m going to do everything in my power to be successful… it’s going to suck.
That’s the internal conflict of doing hard things.
The suck in ‘it’s going to suck’ is the part that makes it worth doing.
If it were easier, more enjoyable in the moment, it wouldn’t actually be hard. It also wouldn’t come with as great a sense of accomplishment. It wouldn’t be something as memorable. The internal conflict is real, it might even be necessary. Because if there wasn’t an element of ‘suck’, it wouldn’t be as rewarding. The trick is to embrace the suck, and to understand that it’s one of the hard parts of doing hard things.
That said, do hard things. Not because anyone is watching, not for anyone else but yourself. Recognize that the internal conflict is just part of doing hard things, not a reason to avoid it. And so that challenge you’ve been thinking of doing, or that goal you’ve talked about but haven’t acted on even though you really want to do it… The one that’s going to be hard, that you know will in some way suck getting to the end…
Start it. Do it. And know that the act of doing it is the reward, even though it’s also going to suck.
Despite the fact that we have not actually met at the scheduled time for years, my buddy Dave and I have had a running calendar invite to connect for breakfast every 3 weeks. We’ve kept the invite in our calendars as a little reminder to connect. Pre-covid we actually did meet every 3 weeks, taking turns buying each other breakfast.
Covid ruined that.
Then in January 2021, with loosened covid restrictions, whereby we could meet people outside our bubble as long as we were outdoors… we decided to meet and do the Coquitlam Crunch. This 241 meter hill climb became our breakfast meeting replacement.
Soon our goal was to do at least 40 a year, one for every school week. We have surpassed that every year. Today was our 259th time (although I say 258 in the video) and our next attempt will be our Everest challenge. How did we go from weekly walks to trying to do 37 (the hight of Mt. Everest) in 48 hours?
Dave shares the inspiration for the challenge in this video:
No more training is going to help at this point, it’s just rest, carb loading, and food prep now. Our mantra is ‘one at a time’… each time up the crunch we only have to worry about that one. We’ll get to 37, one-by-one.
Follow our journey on Instagram: @EverestTheCrunch
Dave Sands and I will be Everesting the Crunch starting a week from today. Our training has tapered, and we just need to stay injury free. This morning after a shoulder workout at the gym, we hopped onto the Crunch to do just one, and we created this video inviting people to join us next week.
I mentioned ‘Do hard things’ briefly in the video, this is something that has been on my mind a lot recently as I head into retirement. I’m not just going to the gym, I’m trying to make gains. I’m not just trying to go up the crunch again, I’m trying to walk up it 37 times in less than 48 hours, which involves walking up hill the distance of 2 marathons. I’m not just continuing my daily blog, I’m planning to write a book starting in November.
Hard things.
I think we find more meaning out of life when we try to do hard things. That said, I’m not trying to do it alone. We need to also make connections and maintain meaningful relationships. It means so much that I’m doing this with Dave, and it means so much to us that our family and friends will be there to support us.
This is just me sharing some uncertainty and self-doubt. I’ve shared that in a couple weeks my buddy Dave and I are attempting a physical challenge of walking up a local hill 37 times in 2 days, which will be the equivalent of the hight of Mount Everest. You can search my blog for ‘Everest the Crunch’ to find out more. I’ve also mentioned that the distance travelled will be as far as 2 full marathons (up hill), and involve over 19 hours of walking over 2 days.
Here is something that I didn’t mention. Dave and I have both decided that if one of us can’t make it, the other person will not continue either. We aren’t doing this as some sort of badge of honour, we are doing this as a challenge… together. It was an idea born out of our finding a way to connect during Covid, and we value the opportunity to spend intentional (and healthy) time with a friend.
In fact, that’s why we also decided to raise money for men’s mental health. We recognize how important this time together has been for us. We also know that men usually don’t get together to have a coffee or even a beer and just chat… they usually need an event, be it a sports game, a barbecue, or a birthday… Or a walk or a hike. The act of doing something together becomes the reason to gather, and thus the opportunity to chat.
Dave and I have found this time invaluable. A fun fact about our walks, very early on we created a rule that we could only talk about work on the way up the hill, no ‘shop talk’ on the way down. So, we’ve had a lot of opportunity to talk about life, family, anything and everything; Time we would not have made if we were just meeting for a coffee, although very often we do meet for a coffee after our walks.
So, on August 21st and 22nd, with the support of family and friends, we will attempt to climb the Coquitlam Crunch 37 times. And we will do it together or we will fail together… and that’s where the idea of the weakest link comes in. So far, the most we’ve done in a day is 10 times up The Crunch. That’s just over 1/4 of what we have to do over 2 days. Today we did 5, and we probably won’t be doing more than 2 or maybe 3 in a day leading up to the challenge. Today felt really good and made me optimistic about our chances for success.
But… but it is clear to me that Dave is fitter than I am. His pace is slightly faster, and during the challenging 457 step segment my heart rate climbs a good 20+ beats a minute more than his. Dave knows I need to go slower than him and is very accommodating. I keep track of my heart rate to ensure that I’m not pushing too hard. But I feel like I’m the weakest link in our journey to 37 climbs. I feel like if WE are not successful it will be because of ME.
Dave is awesome, he would not begrudge me quitting. He knows that like him, I know how to push myself. We see it in each other in the weight room 5-6 times a week. He knows that if I can’t continue, I really can’t continue. I’m not worried about external judgement. I am worried that I’m the one that will let our team down.
Maybe it’s years of competitive sports. Maybe it’s just who I am, but the idea of me being the one that lets a team down is haunting. The idea that I could be the weakest link is painful.
The coach in me says, ‘Give it your all and be proud of what you can do.’
The competitor in me says, ‘Win at all cost, failure is not an option.’
Overall, my confidence is high, but I won’t lie, the idea of being the weakest link is unsettling.
It was January 2021 when I started doing the Coquitlam Crunch with my buddy Dave Sands. Two years ago Dave had a holiday in Ireland and on our subsequent Crunch walk he asked me, ‘Have you ever heard of Everesting?’
No, I hadn’t.
He explained that a friend’s son had ridden up a hill a number of times in order to ride that hill for the equivalent hight of Mount Everest… Everesting.
Then he said, ‘We should do this for The Crunch’. He expected me to say ‘No’. I didn’t. We then decided to coincide it with our retirements and his 60th birthday (one the day before we make our Everesting attempt).
37 times up the Crunch will be about 9,000 meters, a bit more than the height of Everest. According to my calculations, to get to that height will require walking the equivalent of two full marathons, at least 19 hours of uphill walking, and over 100,000 steps. We will be taking breaks. We’ve got family and friends to help drive us down the hill, so that we are only walking up, and not down too. It’s still going to be very hard. The most we’ve done in a day is 10, we will really have to push ourselves to be successful.
Please follow us on Instagram: EverestTheCrunch
And follow along on August 21st and 22nd.
We e also decided to do a bit of fundraising:
And if you are local, come join us for one trip up… in a couple weeks.
We just finished going up the Coquitlam Crunch 6 times, and walked down it once. Now we are home for a few hours, then on the Crunch again at 6am to do 2 more before work. All part of our training to do 37 times up the Crunch on August 21-22. Why 37 times? Because that’s the height of Mount Everest. We are attempting to Everest the Crunch.
Here is the poster, with a QR code if you are interested in donating towards mental health initiatives in our community.
One other request: Join us for one trip up. Follow @EverestTheCrunch on Instagram to see what times we’ll be starting our way up from the Scott Creek parking lot, meet us and hopefully join us for one of our thirty seven trips up.
It’s going to be a real challenge, but Dave and I are up for it!
Oh, and tonight we saw a baby bear (no mama, and we were in our cars repositioning then at the top to drive down so we were totally safe), several rabbits, and two deer. The second deer didn’t run when we passed her. She just watched us as we walked by less than 10 feet from her.
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!
Tonight I made breakfast wraps for dinner. Bacon, eggs, veggies, grated cheese, garlic mayo, cilantro, and some hot sauce, all wrapped up in a tortilla. It was delicious.
This got me wondering, why don’t we have more crossover meals? What would be wrong with a healthy granola cereal at lunch? I’d love to have steak frites for breakfast. What about pancakes for dinner, or a nice hot soup on a cold morning?
I think this could be a good challenge to kind of spice up meal time. Pick a food you love and enjoy it for the first time at a meal time that you’ve never had it in before.
The jury is still out on whether my buddy and I are going to ‘Everest the Crunch’ in August, (climb the Coquitlam Crunch trail 37 times in 48 hours, to go up the equivalent height of Mount Everest)… but at least I’ve been back on the trail for the last 4 weekends. Before that I had to take 6 weeks off due to sciatic pain.
A commitment to my physio visits and exercises, regular massage, and of course some extra rest, has all lead to my recovery. Today we did the most we’ve done in a while with 2 trips up, 2 extra loops of the 457 stairs section, and one trip down, (we start by dropping a car off at the top), and seven hours later I feel no pain.
My buddy Dave has taken my injury in stride and isn’t rushing us back to where we were before I had to slow down, and so I don’t feel any pressure to push more than I should. That said, we are just 4 months away from the challenge and if we don’t ramp up soon, our bodies won’t be ready for 37 treks up the hill. I feel ready to push a bit harder, but not ready yet to say this will be a ‘go’ in four months.
Still, the 6 week break was way longer than our previous gap of maybe 2 weeks since we started doing the Crunch in January 2021, and it feels wonderful to be back… and more importantly, pain free. We are crunching again! Whether this leads to the challenge in August or not, this cherished time with my buddy is back on track.
