Climbing Everest From Training to the Summit

Earlier this year two young Irishmen, Ian Taylor (28) and Graham Klnch (28) - set out on an ambitious venture to climb 4 monstrous peaks across 4 separate continents. These were:

•Mt Blanc

•Kilimanjaro

•Aconcagua

•Everest

This was a challenge which both men were eager to take on, and in the process they aimed to raise the €85,000 required to build a school in a small Ugandan village.

Their story is one of determination, risk and success – ranging from the hills of Ireland to the summit of the worlds highest peak; Mt. Everest.

Graham and Ian, you both set out to take on the enormous challenge of climbing four serious mountains on 4 continents - in one year. What was it that initially inspired you both to put together and then pursue such a goal?

Ian

I love exploring, if it's Everest or the Wicklow mountains, going to places where few people have been or just seeing as many things as possible is exciting. Also the physical challenge of seeing if I could fully prepare for a challenge like this is a short period of time.

Graham

When we were on a trip to Peru in 2005 the idea of Everest was born. At that point our climbing experience was very limited and so we wanted to see if it was possible with only 2 ½ years of intensive training to be ready. In Peru we were just amazed by the beauty of the mountains, the uplifting experience that comes from being among them and the sense of achievement when you reach your goal. We knew that to prepare for Everest we would need to do a lot of training climbs in a small window of time and so we created the plan to climb an equal balance of technical and non-technical mountains with ever increasing altitudes and ever increasing times at altitude i.e.

•Mt Blanc c. 5,000m – 1 week

•Kilimanjaro c. 6,000m – 2 weeks

•Aconcagua c. 7,000m – 3 weeks

-Can you paint for us a bit of a picture of your climbing experience previous to deciding to take on this challenge?

Graham

Before the year (June 2007 to June 2008) began, we had done a lot of high altitude trekking (Peru – Inca Trail, Nepal – Everest Base Camp) - as well as climbing Mt Elbrus in Russia and ice-climbing trips in Scotland. We had also done a bit of rock-climbing as well.

-Was there a particular person who was an inspiration to you when you were putting your plan together?

Ian

 Robbie Fenlon from the 1993 Irish expedition was someone I knew about, and he had taken on Everest at the same age as us. Also Ian Mc Keever was someone who pushed himself to succeed and achieve big.

Graham:

When we first set upon the idea we didn’t know where to go. It’s hard to find people who can give you direction and encouragement (though it was easy to find people who told us we were mad and tried to talk us out of it!). We wished that someone had produced a book, ‘Everest for Dummies’ or ‘how to prepare for Everest in 2 ½ years’ - but they hadn’t. Ultimately we guessed what type of prep would be needed in terms of physical training - as well as nutrition, psychology, technical and altitude training. We had personal fitness training, physiotherapist sessions, mountain skills training, technical rock climbing and rope training. We also had technical mountain training, nutritional advice sessions, first aid and wilderness medicine training, team building, sports psychology and well as high altitude hypoxic chamber training!

It’s great to be on this side of the expedition and be able to say that there is nothing we would have done differently.

-I'm guessing that you must have been in great shape before you began your expedition, what kind of training and preparations did you do in order to be as ready as possible?

Ian

I trained for two years, training an average of 18 hours a week - in the hills, on the stepper, the treadmill, with weights and on the bike. This was mainly made up of long slow sessions with a mixture of interval training added in as well. In the lead up to Everest, I slowly moved to intense interval training and finished off with 3 weeks Hypoxic training. (It is a lot more detailed than this)

Graham:

We were already in very good shape from previous trips, having done a lot of cardio prep for Mt Blanc. After that, we set ourselves a 3 phase prep plan between the remaining 3 mountains. We were in base phase leading up to Kilimanjaro - which involved mainly cardio and a bit of resistance training which primarily focused on stability and core muscles. Between Kilimanjaro and Aconcagua we were in build stage, doing intense cardio, 2 days of resistance training working primarily on upper body. We also utilised interval training to push the lactic our thresholds and VO2Max up, as well as max heart rate.

I managed to push my max heart rate up to 210 and get my resting heart rate down to 48. The trouble with mountaineering is that you are an awkward hybrid of an athlete. You are too heavy and slow to be a sprinter or good long distance runner, yet too light to be like a rugby player or weight lifter! This means that your training plan is an unusual mix. After you come off a high mountain of about 6,000m the recovery time can be up to 3 months. At altitude your body can’t digest protein, it doesn’t recognise fat as a food source and the result is that you get a lot of muscle wastage.

It can be quite soul destroying after reaching a high level of fitness to then come back off a trip, fatigued but needing to get straight back into the training - feeling you are starting at square one. After Aconcagua in the lead up to Everest we were in the peak stage of our training. This entailed slowing down a lot more and doing longer sessions at lower intensities. This equated to about 18 hours a week as per the attached schedule.

Endurance: The ability or strength to continue or last, despite fatigue, stress, or other adverse conditions; stamina