Words from Wik

Sharing my Experiences

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

It Starts…

Happy New Year everyone! Now that it’s 2010 and I’m deep into my preparations to climb Mt. Everest I thought I’d share some of them.

I am now training what I consider to be full time. I am lifting weights at least three times a week, swimming at least once a week (for an hour), and trying to get out into the mountains for ‘real-world’ exercise on the weekends. I’m learning about training techniques and strategies, and I am learning a lot about fitness nutrition. There is a lot to it, and there’s a lot of information out there to digest, but I am enjoying it! I enjoy learning new things and I am getting an appreciation for how professional athletes train, how diligently they have to eat, etc. There’s some really cool people who are helping me out which should make it a little easier.

I guess just to summarize what I am doing: when at high altitude I will lose weight, a lot of it being muscle, so with my build I need to build muscle to be better prepared for when I start losing it on the mountain. Maybe I could get away with what I have, but I am taking this trip a little seriously and I want every advantage I can get. My goal is to get to 200 pounds (91 kg), where the most I have ever really weighed is 185 pounds (83 kg). While gaining weight can be easy, gaining muscle is not!

I was looking into satellite phones to try and see if I can get one to stay in touch with people while on the mountain, when I remembered someone saying that Everest Base Camp has cell coverage. So I looked into it further and it seems that Nepal Telecom wants to expand that to give the entire south side of the mountain cell coverage! Click here to see the story. Anyways, I’m hoping that system is working and hopefully I’ll be able to keep in touch with a normal cell phone! How times have changes since Hillary, no?

Another little bit of preparation I did today: I sold some stock in AMD that I had bought previously, I’m starting to get the money together that I need to fund my trip. It was a stock that did not too bad between when I bought it back in November 08 and now.

That’s it for now, take care and make the most of 2010!

posted by Wiktor at 6:16  

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