Training

It should be clear from the basic facts about Aconcagua that you can't get to the top unless you're pretty fit.

To put it in context, with the recent donations from Ian, Rob, Kate and Nick, I've passed the summit of a mountain you've actually heard of (Scafell Pike - the highest in England), but I've only just reached the summit ridge on Snowdon. And Aconcagua is nearly six and a half times higher than Snowdon is.

So, how do you train for a trek to nearly 7,000m?

When I was training for my earlier trek to Everest Base Camp, I joined a gym that had a hypoxic chamber. Inside it, oxygen was chemically removed from the air until it's equivalent to being at about 3000m. I found it fairly easy to cope with. My interval sessions [1] on the Concept II Rowing Ergometer, the instrument of torture of choice for boaties [2] everywhere, were just as horrible outside the chamber as in.

I eventually came to the conclusion that my daily commute was actually pretty good training for the trek. When I can, I cycle to work; 35 minutes in, 35 minutes out, a 15kg load in my panniers and - importantly - a filter mask that keeps out the London smog but also makes me work with a restricted airflow. As the time I was doing this 4 days a week and it stood me in great stead.

This time, I'm going to have to be more inventive. I'm spending 3-4 days a week in Edinburgh, which is not a feasible commute by bike. So I've been cycling into London when I can and thinking of alternative ways to simulate high altitude trekking in a country that is, as far as the Andes are concerned, flat.

Getting on the treadmill in the gym is an OK start; set the gradient as high as it will go, the pace as fast as you can walk and it'll do. But not every hotel has one, and it gets boring after a while. So I've been trying to be more inventive. Here's what I've tried so far:

• A family walk up Box Hill, carrying both my daughters
• A week cycling around Kent with daughter #1 (4, but bigger than some 6 year olds) on the front of the bike. Kent is always much hillier than I remember, but the reward according to the cycle computer was 100 miles ridden, and 9,000 calories burned
• Running up the South and North Castle Wynd in Edinburgh. These steps go from Grassmarket to Castle Terrace. I'm not sure quite how much of a climb that is, but go up them repeatedly on a morning jog and you know you've had a workout
• Walking from Putney to Twickenham for Quins home games (and last weekend to catch a coach to Leicester for the Tigers away game), carrying my son (7 and surprisingly heavy) up the gentle slopes of Richmond Park
• Signing up to help coach said son's mini-rugby team, which commits me to 2 hours of chasing the U8s around the pitch each week.

One thing I'm not doing is anything focused on upper body strength. As a big bloke, I need more oxygen than smaller folks anyway, which is an automatic disadvantage when there's less of it around. More muscle bulk equals more demand for oxygen, so I'm trying not to build up any muscles I don't need.

Any other interesting ideas for training, would be appreciated almost as much as more donations.


[1] The young lady who did my induction wrote "12 x 1 minute on, 30 seconds off x 3 sets" on my training plan. After a few weeks, I admitted that I'd only been able to fit in 2 sets in each of my gym sessions. She vanished with the chart and returned a few minutes later. "I'm very sorry," she said, "I should only have written 1 set." Ouch.

[2] Rowers

Bonus post: it's all Harlequins' fault

Well, maybe not all Harlequins' fault, but they must share in the culpability for tipping me over the edge and agreeing to sign up for this.

To understand why, it might help to understand a little bit about my family's relationship with this ancient and (intermittently) celebrated rugby club. I haven't always been a Harlequins fan. I grew up watching rugby, but only really internationals. Club rugby didn't really enter into it, until Leah, my wife, pointed out that if we were really rugby fans we should probably support a club. So we set out to go to each of the London clubs in the Premiership and see which one we liked the most.

Quins were first, on the basis that it was easy to get from our house to Twickenham. They were at the time a mid-table sort of side, with a cabinet of silverware that included a couple of wins in the 2nd tier European competition (now called the Amlin Challenge Cup) and not much else. But we went along, and enjoyed ourselves, even though we didn't feel like proper fans and were uncomfortable joining in the shouting and singing. At this point, we should have gone to see the other clubs play, but then we realised just how much harder it was to get to them, and bought Quins season tickets instead.

The season in question began with a loss, and then another, and then another. At one point, it seemed as if they could only win when we didn't go to watch them, to the point where a friend and fellow season ticket holder begged us not to go. We stayed away (out of the country for a birthday party in Budapest [1]) for the final match of the season, where the final action of the whole Premiership season - a missed kick - determined that Quins would be relegated.

We followed them through their season in the lower leagues, in the process earning a spot on the "loyalty wall" of fans who had paid the Premiership price for their season tickets rather than accepting a discount. We celebrated as Dean Richards led them back up to the Premiership, and kept them up. The following season, I was posted to India for a year and watched them beat Stade Francais in the freezing rain over a flaky wifi connection in my hotel room [2]. I was there in person when Leinster won by a single point on their way to winning the Heineken Cup (Europe's biggest club trophy), and Dean Richards, through the strategic deployment of a fake blood capsule, left a stain on the club's history that is yet to fade 3 years later. [3]

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that we have supported Harlequins through the lowest and darkest period of their history since the First World War claimed many of their brightest talents.

But if we've seen the low points, we've also seen the highs. 2012 has been a remarkable year for British sport. This year, as Jesse off the Fast Show might have put it, we have been mostly winning things. Wiggins, Murray, McIlroy [4], Ennis, Farah, Hoy, Storey, Weir, Simmonds... the list goes on. But if I could only keep one sporting day, it would be the 26th May. The culmination of the Premiership rugby season. A day that was utterly unique in sporting history.

First, a little more context. Last season began pretty well for Quins. Six wins out of six, top of the table. But oh, said most commentators, other teams have more players away at the Rugby World Cup; they'll soon get overtaken. Six from six became fourteen from fourteen. The first loss, to mighty Toulouse at home, was swiftly avenged with a win in Toulouse a week later. Quins stayed top throughout the regular season, and for the first time made the playoff final. But their opponents were Leicester, who'd finished the season with an equally remarkable winning streak, were the form team and had only ever lost once to Quins in a Premiership game.

The result - Quins streaking to a lead and hanging on to win despite a ferocious Leicester onslaught - was a delight, but there's more. Harlequins' home stadium - The Stoop - is literally a stone's throw from Twickenham Stadium. I'm not aware of any other sporting team who play so close to their national stadium. So Quins did something that, as far as I know, has never been done before. They walked, through an honour guard of cheering fans, from their home ground to Twickers before the game, and afterwards they walked back, as English champions for the first time in their long history, to celebrate with those same fans at the Stoop.

Is it any wonder that euphoria got the better of me?

I was there. Leah was there. Crucially, Jeremy was also there Jeremy is a fellow rugby fan and friend from an earlier trek where we went to Everest Base Camp. Since we got back from that he's spoken on and off about wanting to climb Aconcagua. Earlier this year, he started planning a trip in earnest. 26th May, sat with our beers and reflected glory on the pitch at the Stoop, he and Leah persuaded me that I should go.

So here I am. Jeremy and Leah are at least partly to blame, But mostly I blame Harlequins.

[1] Note: I do not actually have the glamorous jet-set lifestyle that this implies. It's just that one of our friends is actually from a small town near Budapest.

[2] Having found a bar in Beijing that was showing the Aussie Rules Grand Final, I'd assumed that it would be easy to find somewhere to watch rugby in India. Before I flew out, I asked my hotel about it. Two weeks later, they wrote back to me to explain that this was not possible in India. On arrival I discovered why. India has about 11 sports channels, of which at any time 6 will be showing live cricket, 4 will be showing historic cricket, and one will be showing Man United. Fortunately, there's a gadget called a Slingbox that will send pictures from your home tv to a laptop on the other side of the world.

[3] I'm not going to pick over the bones here. Google "Bloodgate" if you don't know what I'm on about, but search Brian Moore's columns in the Telegraph if you want a clear-eyed assessment of the ins and outs of it.

[4] Who doesn't seem sure whether he's British but we will give him the benefit of the doubt.

A huge thank you

I was going to make my second post the full story of how I came to be doing this extreme adventure, but that will have to wait while I say a huge thank-you to all those who have supported me so far. It's only been a week since I began fundraising in earnest and you have already helped me raise nearly £900.

And that generosity brings with it even more good news. My employer's charitable foundation will match my fundraising up to a limit of £750. Thanks to your help and deep pockets, I've submitted an application for the maximum matching grant.

The application has to go through an approval process, but I hope to have some great news to share in a couple of weeks' time.

In the meantime, a huge thank you to Jeff, both Andrews, Nick, all three Pauls, Lisa, Dimple, Ed, Donna, Darren, David, Catherine, Vikki, Karen, Jehan, Tim, As, Adrian, Alan, Kathy, Dani, Thomas and Peter for getting me this far.

But there is still further to go. As you know, I'm aiming to raise £1 for every metre I will be above sea level, assuming I make it to the summit. As you may also know, I am the sort of eccentric, statistics-obsessed Englishman who can't quite work out whether he aspires to be like Dave Gorman or is secretly relieved to be slightly less eccentric and statistics-obsessed [1] . So I thought it would be fun to translate the amounts we've raised into where I would be on the map if I were standing at that altitude. There are, of course, two ways we can do this:

(1) Where I would be on the ascent of Aconcagua
(2) Which alternative summit I could stand on if I chickened out and decided to climb that one instead.

Are you a glass-half-full or a glass-half-empty person? Or can't you decide? [2] Make up your mind, because it's important. If you're a half-full type, then the exciting news is that I'd already have flown from London to Buenos Aires to Mendoza (760m), collected my park permit (more on that later) and boarded a coach bound for Penitentes, our last hotel stop before the walk begins. Quite exciting.

But if you're half-empty, then that's peanuts compared to where we need to get to. In mountain terms, we're at the summit of Aonach Shasuinn, Creagan na Beinne or Sgurr Dhomhnuill. And no, I hadn't heard of them either. I had to look them up on Wikipedia. Heck, I've been up six mountains higher than that on a wet weekend in Snowdonia. Call that altitude? The Andes don't even dignify anything that low with a name, and neither do the Alps, unless it's an hotel or one of those Tyrolean villages they paint on chocolate boxes.

Frankly, it's not good enough. You shouldn't be sponsoring me to go and climb a British mountain we've never heard of and can't pronounce. Sponsorship demands something more, well, demanding. Like a South American mountain you've never heard of and can't pronounce! Much better. Dig deep, donate, get me off that bus and onto the trail. Penitentes is 2,580m above sea level, so we are over a third of the way to the point where I actually have to start walking for your money.

Thanks for all your support, now and in the future,

Jason

[1] Though I would perhaps be more relieved if I laughed at his jokes at the same time as the rest of the audience, instead of slightly ahead of them.
[2] Or are you, as Gary Larson so perfectly put it, someone who ordered a cheeseburger?

Wherefore Aconcagua?

So. Aconcagua. Not the world's most famous, most difficult, or most deadly mountain, or even its biggest. Most people have never heard of it and fewer still can pronounce it. It's a long way away and it takes a long time to climb. You're almost guaranteed headaches, sleepless nights, digestive unrest and some kind of cold-related injury. At the end of all of which, you have about a 30% chance of coming back home and saying "I made it to the summit of Aconcagua" followed by a 95% chance having your friends go "Eh?".

So why do it?

Well, in mountaineering terms, and specifically the sort of lay mountaineering that I go in for, it has a lot going for it. By "lay mountaineering" I mean the an activity that delivers you the views, memories and sense of achievement of real mountaineering but with less of the expense, discomfort and risk of death or hideous injury. In those very specific terms, Aconcagua is pretty much the daddy.

Despite (probably) having once been the Highest Mountain in the World (until those awful nouveau-haut johnnie-come-latelys on the edge of the Tibetan plateau sprung up), Aconcagua's "Normal Route" can be completed without climbing, ropes or ice-axes. You might need crampons if it's snowy on top, and it's sensible to carry an ice axe for emergencies, but when it boils down to it it's a Very Hard Trek rather than a Bona Fide Mountain Climb.

At the same time, while avoiding the technical climbing stuff and the risks that go with it, you can't get to 6,962m (which, by the way, is the amount I'm trying to raise for the NDCS) without encountering a lot of the conditions of really serious mountaineering. The air at the summit is about one-third the pressure of the air at sea level and, as the mountain stands several hundred metres proud of its neighbours, it is buffeted by strong winds off the Pacific. The wind chill can take the temperature on the summit down to -30 celsius. In fact, many climbers use Aconcagua as a way to prepare for climbing in the Himalayas, precisely because you can experience high altitude separately from all the technical climbing.

So, for someone who wants the slog, discomfort and misery of mountaineering without the full complement of bowel-loosening danger, Aconcagua is ideal.

Anyway, that's the post-rationalisation out of the way. The real reason I'm doing it? I blame Harlequins. But more on that next time.