Tag Archives: Coquitlam Crunch

Greater in scope than I thought

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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!

It’s going to be tough

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A while ago my buddy, also named Dave, and I decided that we were going to Everest the Crunch: Travel 37 times up the Coquitlam Crunch, which is equivalent to the height of Mount Everest, in 48 hours. We’ve been doing the crunch regularly since January 2021, and today was number 239 since then.

Today was also a day when we went up the Crunch 6 times, and then walked down once (we only count it as 1 crunch because we only went down it a single time). We organized rides and drove our own cars up at the start and after 3 trips up, so that we could drive down as well.

Six is the most trips up we’ve done. We did 5 a while back then had a several week slowdown thanks to m sciatic pain that I was dealing with. The pain is gone, but it did set us back a fair bit. Today I realized just how much it set us back. We are just under 10 weeks away from our attempt to do 37 trips up this hill, and as of today the most we’ve done is 6… and the 6 took a lot out of me!

Like I shared in a video, we didn’t hydrate well enough.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DZlCR2ykv9e/?igsh=ZGZvZGZocWRicnc1

Also, I think we ate too much protein and not enough carbs. But even fixing that next time, going 6 times up, just under 1/6th of what we’ll be doing in August, took more out of me than expected.

I think Dave and I will succeed with this challenge, but I’ll openly admit that it’s going to be a lot harder than I originally thought.

Crunching again

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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.

Decompression time

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First day back from my holiday started great. Woke up, met my buddy and went to the gym for the first time in 12 days. Had a great workout then he treated me to breakfast at his place. Then I had a couple appointments. I met my new doctor for the first time (my previous one is retiring), and I had a physio appointment.

And that made for a full day. Besides that I had a very long nap, and listened to my book. I then watched a bit of tv with my wife. All-in-all a great day. What really made it feel good was just having the time to flake out after a busy morning. No agenda, nothing pressing, no hurry, no worries. Just a good dose of decompression time.

Tomorrow I’ll do the Coquitlam Crunch walk after taking a month off. I hadn’t missed a month since my buddy and I started doing this in January 2021. But my lower back/discs has settled down and I’m not getting any nerve pain down my leg anymore. I’ve done a few completely painless walks, including one that had a bit of a climb during my holiday and so I think I’m ready, and my physio thinks so too.

It wasn’t just today that was about decompression time, it had been almost two weeks of it, and I’m feeling really good. It’s taken me 58 years to figure it out, but a little down time isn’t just good for the mind, it’s good for the body too.

It’s 6am, let’s go!

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We’ve fully reached the stage of finding reasons to go rather than finding excuses not to. I’m not available this weekend to do our weekly walk up the Coquitlam Crunch, so Dave and I met in darkness at 6am to start our trek up the hill.

I’d say we reached this stage a full year ago. It was 2025 that we went from our commitment to doing the climb at least 40 times a year, matching the weeks of a school year, to ensuring we never missed a week. This wasn’t a voiced decision, it’s one we just found ourselves doing.

Now it’s something we just do… And yet it’s a lot more than that!

It’s a chance to to talk, to rant, to seek advice, to share, to listen, to connect.

It’s a commitment to a friend.

We now regularly meet at 6am for workouts anyway, and we often do multiple crunches at a time training for Everesting the Crunch, so to meet on a cold Thursday morning and just go up and down the Crunch once, actually feels like a rest day.

In and out

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I joined a gym, and I took advantage of a deal to get 5 sessions with a trainer, for a great price. My trainer had me download MyFitnessPal, an App to track my calories and macros. I’ve been using this app for 10 days now and it has taught me a lot.

What I’ve learned first and foremost is that I have been totally clueless about my food intake. It’s such an important part of living healthy and yet I have had no idea what and how much protein I eat daily. I’m oblivious to how many calories I eat, and have zero sense for volume or weight of the food I eat… which makes knowing the benefits or consequences of my food intake impossible.

I’ve ranged from 1,104 calories with 65g of protein to 4,554 calories with 186g of protein daily: Basically from subsistence to gluttony eating almost 200grams of fat on my ‘big’ day.

I’ve done this with zero connection to how much exercise I’ve had in a given day. My lowest day also included an hour and 16 minute workout going up and down the Coquitlam Crunch with a couple extra loops of the 457 stairs section.

I need to understand what I’m putting into my body, and also how much energy I’m outputting. I want to know what I do to fuel my body and ensure I’m doing so in a healthier way than I have been. Tracking is a start, knowledge is power, but it’s only a start. Tracking has taught me that I’ve got a lot more to learn.

Follow our journey

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Dave Sands and I are finally sharing our goal scheduled for next August. We are going to ‘Everest the Crunch’. What does that mean? Mount Everest is 8,849 meters high. The path we take when we walk up the Coquitlam Crunch, a local walk that traverses a power line up the Westwood Plateau area of Coquitlam, is 243 meters. To ‘Everest the Crunch’ we will go up the Coquitlam Crunch 37 times in 48 hours.

I’ve written a number of times about doing the Coquitlam Crunch with Dave… and there is going to be more shared as we get closer to our Everesting day. Dave will be starting this trek on his 60th birthday, I’ll be close to my 59th birthday. We have both been on health kicks which have put us in fantastic shape, and we’ve started training.

Today we did 3 trips up the crunch and 2 trips down, which took us 2 hours and 12 minutes. The training sessions will get longer in the coming months. When we Everest the Crunch, we’ll only be going up. We will be seeking support from family and friends to help drive us down so we don’t have to jockey our 2 cars up and down the hill between our upward climbs. We will also invite people to join us a lap or two.

All that and more details to come. For now it would be great to have people follow us on Instagram as we document our journeys, both from now until next August, and especially during our 2-day challenge. Please follow EverestTheCrunch on Instagram.

And the adventures begin…

199, and 200 Coquitlam Crunches

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We didn’t know back in January 2021 that we would still be at it 200 crunches later, but here we are! Dave Sands and I were just looking for a reason to get together during Covid. We started back at school after a Christmas break locked into our family bubble, not seeing any friends socially. The rules did allow for meeting outdoors and so we decided to walk the Coquitlam Crunch together.

We met on a Friday after work, did the crunch, had a beverage sitting 6 feet apart on the parking lot railing, then headed home in separate cars. It felt so good to actually do something with a friend, that we planned to meet the following week. And a new habit was formed.

Starting our next school year, we decided that we would commit to at least 40 crunches a year, basically one crunch for every week of school. And we’ve stuck to this ever since. In fact we are boosting our average up above 42 by the end of this year.

Early on, Friday after work proved too hard to keep up and so we switched it up and met Saturday morning. A new after crunch ritual of coffee replaced the Friday night beverage. Our Crunch walk is something Dave and I often bend over backwards to make work. Last weekends Dave was heading out of town for the weekend and so we went on Thursday after school. The start of this weekend I was out of town so we did our crunch early this holiday Monday. In fact the reason we’re boosting our average by 2 days is because this year I think we only missed one week.

We’ve crunched in sleet, snow, and rain. We’ve started it in early morning darkness, we’ve ended in early winter darkness. In fact, in almost 5 years there is only one absolutely down pouring miserable day that we got to the crunch and both of us were not up to facing the weather. Besides that one time, we’ve faced some awful weather and still decided to commit to heading up and down this hill.

Today was a weighted vest day, and we were planning on doing it twice last week but my back wasn’t up to it after having IMS that day, so we just did one. So, we combined these two challenges and we did the double with weighted vests today. We did crunch number 199 and number 200 this morning, on our first ever double counted day. We’ve done a couple doubles before, not counting them as separate, but we figure if we are doing complete doubles, they should count as two!

Yes, this is great exercise. Yes, it’s an awesome habit to keep. But the real value in doing this activity 200 times is the connection to my buddy Dave. I can’t describe how mentally and emotionally rewarding it is to have this weekly connection to a friend. Not many people get to see a best friend a guaranteed 40+ times a year in addition to other meetings, plans and connections. We both cherish this time so much that we can’t think of valid excuses to not meet up, and we will consistently make up for lost opportunities when life gets in the way of us meeting on a Saturday.

So, we’ll just keep going, week after week, and our Coquitlam Crunch adventures are to be continued… starting again next week!

Approaching 200

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We didn’t know on a cold, wet, and dark Friday in January of 2021 that we would make this a usual thing. Two friends, feeling isolated with covid restrictions decided to do the Coquitlam Crunch so that we could meet outdoors when indoor meetings were restricted to your family circle. Now, over 4 and a half years later, we’ve completed our 190th Crunch together, averaging more than 40 a year.

We were about 50 in when we decided that 200 would be a great goal to achieve before we retired, and now that is all but guaranteed. Did we fathom this when we had done just one Crunch? No. We didn’t even know if we’d go again. But sure enough we kept going, with a goal of 40 a year to match the amount of school weeks in the year.

Now, I can’t think of anything I’ve been more dedicated to (besides my wife of course). We do everything we can to not to miss a week. We usually go out on Saturdays, but we’ll squeeze in a Thursday after school if one of us is away on the weekend.

Imagine being just over a year into a routine and deciding on a 5-year goal… then sticking to it. Sounds challenging, but it’s something I look forward to every week. I’d never have spent so much time with my buddy, Dave, if we hadn’t made this a goal, and an expectation. And there are more goals to come… stay tuned.

Do it anyway

I love this video I found on LinkedIn, shared by Soren Harrison.

“Discipline doesn’t care if you are tired. ‘You’re tired?’

Do it anyway. Right?

Discipline says ‘Oh you don’t feel good.’

Well do it anyway.

Discipline says ‘It’s raining outside and it’s cold. It’s windy.’

Do it anyway.”

It was miserable out today… an ‘atmospheric river’. There is flooding all over the Vancouver Mainland. My buddy Dave and I did our walk anyway. Our 149th Coquitlam Crunch since January 2021.

Excuses are easy. Discipline is doing it anyway… no matter what gets in the way.