The ninth of my 40 donations goes to the NHS Charities Together via the inspirational Captain Tom Moore.
Captain Tom Moore originally aimed to raise just £1,000 for NHS Charities Together by completing 100 laps of his garden before his 100th birthday.
Capt Tom began raising funds to thank NHS staff who helped him with treatment for cancer and a broken hip.
With the aid of a walking frame, he completed 100 laps of the 25-metre (82ft) loop in his garden in Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire, in 10-lap chunks well before his birthday on 30 April.
What a guy!
Tom’s 100th Birthday Walk For The NHS’ page is here.
The NHS Charities Together fundraising page can be found here.
Keeping myself to myself as you do when social distancing, enjoying Yoga and considering how I’m going to to do to challenge myself despite current frustrations.
I reckoned to myself that ‘I have good core strength and reasonable endurance, how hard can it be to hold a plank for 40 minutes?’
I managed 4 minutes – a mere 10% of my bullish target.
Not as easy as it looks….!
So I fired up the internet and couldn’t believe my eyes:
It transpires that George is a hardcore former US Marine and DEA Supervisory Special Agent and is no stranger to record-breaking, but he shows it’s possible to push the boundaries at any age with perseverance and a strong mindset.
A study on 168 college students found that your average college-aged female has a plank time of about 1 minute, 30 seconds, while an average college-aged male has a plank time of about 1 minute, 46 seconds.
So then I found John Sifferman’s Totally Unofficial Plank Time Standards:
Newbie: 30+ seconds
Beginner: 1+ minute
Intermediate: 3+ minutes
Advanced: 5+ minutes
Expert: 10+ minutes
Master: 20+ minutes
Wicked Sick: 30+ minutes
Superhuman: 40+ minutes
Olympian: 50+ minutes
Plank Immortal: 1 hour or longer
My current performance puts me in the intermediate category which is not bad. I’m going to aim to get comfortable with 5 minutes (that must be possible) then 10 minutes and see if I can eventually achieve 40 minutes!
The UK Sepsis Trust‘s goal is to end preventable deaths from sepsis and improve outcomes for sepsis survivors. They believe that earlier diagnosis and treatment across the UK would save several thousand lives a year.
The UK Sepsis Trust was founded in 2012 by NHS consultant, Dr Ron Daniels BEM. Renowned for his systems and translational expertise, Ron had spent the previous 7 years developing and disseminating the Sepsis 6 pathway across the NHS and globally.
My Father passed away 7 years ago today and whilst it is clear he was not well as he was undergoing treatment for cancer, I firmly believe he would not have died when and how he did, had the hospital ensured he was administered antibiotics within one hour of experiencing rigors.
Unfortunately, antibiotics were not administered for a number of hours and by that time, the damage was done and his body went into septic shock and he didn’t recover. I commend the critical care staff who looked after him for those painful last few days and am grateful that now practice has changed to ensure antibiotics are administered concurrently with chemotherapy drugs to mitigate the risk my Dad fell foul of.
My earlier post 40+ days of isolation / lock down introduces the challenge and contains links to the detail so I thought it prudent to explain my own approach to completing it.
With social-distancing in mind, I’m lucky to have access to a number of staircases that I can climb. The benefit being that I have some variation in both location / scenery and temperature (it’s getting seriously hot where I am now).
People have asked me how I can do it? Isn’t it boring and one-dimensional?
Well for me, and bearing in mind I’m only 20% through the 30 days programme, not whatsoever!
I trekked to Everest Base Camp in November 2017 and as I follow this virtual route in April 2020, I can picture the places, the people, and the incredible surroundings in my minds eye – it’s a wonderfully nostalgic experience.
When I post a picture on Instagram or Facebook of me climbing the stairs that day, I will then follow up with a picture that I took on my trek in 2017. This will continue until I reach Everest Base Camp, thereafter I personally reach previously uncharted territory!
A map of trails leading to peaks and places of interest from Lukla
I will vary the stairs to try and retain my sanity, I will take pictures and vary my clothing in some way to keep me honest!
I’ve measured each step on the various locations I have available to me and have calculated the total height of each flight of stairs by multiplying the number of steps by the average height of the step rise.
The stairwells I use vary between number of steps and rise of steps but in total are between 2.9 and 3.0 meters per ascent. Then I take the total altitude required to climb in each day and divide it by the height of the flight and that tells me how many repetitions I have to complete, for example:
20 steps @ 15cm average rise = 300cm / 3m
For a total daily climb of 300m, I would therefore have to climb that particular flight of stairs 100 times.
I’ve really enjoyed it so far – I speed up or slow down based on aiming to keep my heart rate around 150-160 Beats Per Minute. The most difficult thing has been keeping count!
If ever I forget the number of repetitions I’ve done, I round down to the last number I can remember.
I found it easier to do sets for example, 10, 20, 20 and then break for a drink and celebrate having completed 50 ascents before starting again. Somehow this make it more manageable and less daunting.
Everest 2020 here we come – all the way from home! #everestfromhome
The thought of being locked down gives rise to fantasy about being a civilian in some war-torn town, pinned down in a conflict zone or may be hiding out in the basement from the zombie apocalypse. Looking back into history, I can’t imagine a lock down was well enforced during the plague for example and here we are in 2020 facing an unprecedented situation with long-term travel bans, curfews, enforced working from home and limited to no socialising!
How will we cope, what will we do with ourselves and how will it affect us, it at all?
Not only is this situation contemporaneous, it’s going to be one hell of a challenge and that’s why I’ve included it as part of the 40s 4 40. I plan to play my guitar more, be introverted, do more yoga and stay away from this damn virus!
F’ Off Corona; I’m ready for ya!‘Multi-Tasking’
Isolation with so many of my bikes took things to a new level!
Of course all this means the opportunities I had to climb another of the Seven Summits in 2020 as part of the 40s 4 40 challenge are getting cancelled and I’m unsure if the planned expedition to summit Puncak Jaya will go ahead but it’s toward the back end of this year so fingers crossed!
In light of all this uncertainty, my friend Nelly has had an amazing idea that could well be the answer to many of our prayers!
If anyone can Move Mountains into your own home, it’s Nelly Attar…
Nelly’s innovative challenge will climb the equivalent of Mount Everest, from the comfort your home, over 30 days. Nelly will be sharing daily physical targets as you virtually ascend with her through the various campsites.
The challenge focuses on the vertical ascent (uphill not the distance). This can be done on a staircase or any elevated surface at home (couch / chair / box).
So whilst this is may not be ‘real‘ mountaineering, it will be great training for the future and facilitates me ascending 29,029 feet ‘virtually’. Add that to the height of Aconcagua 22,837 feet and I’ve bagged over 40,000 feet ascent in 2020!
Remember, it’s not the strongest that survive, it’s the most adaptable to change!
The sixth of my 40 donations goes to Plan International who will ensure girls, young women, children and vulnerable groups are protected and supported as the COVID-19 crisis unfolds.
Plan International‘s crisis response focuses on on communicating public health information, installing hand-washing facilities and distributing hygiene kits whilst ensuring that the needs and rights of girls and young women are addressed.
Like a lot of people, the flights I had booked to get me to the events I signed up to in 2020 have been cancelled, for example:
The Manchester Marathon has been rescheduled to October so that’s something to work with and toward. One small positive is that I should get more time to train…
Ironman Kazakhstan is in late August – could this be OK? Current advice is that it could be postponed…. Will the world be rid of Corona in time for it to go ahead as planned?
I’m assuming a 4-6 month delay to everything, the Government advice to the more mature and vulnerable is to self isolate for 12 weeks so that’s equivalent to 3 months and I suspect this measure is intended to help the health care providers deal with other cases during that time, thereby ‘flattening the curve’.
This is a complex and dynamic situation that requires personal and social discipline that we are not currently accustomed to.
The guidelines changed and as a result, I was allowed out of self-isolation and back to work but now we have a curfew from 15:00 to 06:00 so this has made training outdoors a little more difficult.
The phrase ‘Force Majeure‘ springs to mind so I’m spending time working out alternative solutions and revising the programme schedule to see how much of the 40s 4 40 challenge I can still complete in 2020.
The fifth of my 40 donations goes to Age UK. Age UK provide companionship, advice and support to older people and their loved ones. Unfortunately, it seems older people are more likely to be adversely affected by Corona.
A combination of two things – a weaker immune system in the first place and a body less able to cope.
We know our immune system gets weaker with age.
“The quality of the antibodies you produce when you’re 70 is a lot worse than when you’re 20,” says Prof Hunter.
And there are some suggestions older men may be more prone to high levels of inflammation which can become deadly.
A lifetime of wear-and-tear takes its toll on the body’s organs and that leaves you less able to survive an infection.
“If you’re 95 and your kidney function is already at 60% of what it used to be and then you hit it with something else, then [your kidneys] may no longer be functioning at the level required for life,” says Dr MacDermott.
Damn Corona virus… I now find myself in mandatory self-isolation after a flight back from the United Kingdom almost 2 weeks ago.
Clearly I need to adapt my training to suit this unusual and unexpected set of circumstances but with the threat of events being cancelled, it’s casting a blanket of uncertainty over my current schedule.
For example, the Manchester Marathon has just been postponed, most likely to later this year…
Ironman have written to me stating that they expect ‘substantial and widespread event postponements in the coming weeks and months’ so i can only hope that this blows over well before August!
….and the flights I’ve already booked are now at risk, for example:
I remember a motivational quote that said ‘it’s not the strongest that survive, it’s the most adaptable to change’ so this pandemic and our response to it is going to be a good test of that maxim.
