It’s a full 12 months since I created the 40s 4 40 blog so let’s get straight to some facts – I’ve completed 42% of the original list and 44% of the ‘new’ list. It’s also my Brother’s and my namesake’s Birthday.
If I assume completion of the challenges that remain ongoing that puts me at a 58% completion rate for the original list and a 69% completion rate for the new list.
I took some time to reflect on what I have achieved over the past 12 months and was reasonably pleased with progress. Some of the major challenges are complete and I can try to focus my attention on improving my running and cycling in advance of the 70.3 later in the year. I feel this is a better approach than trying to do everything and work more than full time, all at once.
Highlights for me have been climbing over 40,000 feet, running over 40 kilometers and freediving over 40 metres deep and long. Following the donation I make after this post I will have made 20 of the 40 donations and have had thousands of visitors from all over the world which I find humbling.
I said I’d have all the challenges done around my Birthday 2021 and I reckon I’m still in with a chance to achieve that. I’ll keep posting about progress against achievements followed by charity donations for the next few months and conduct subsequent reviews.
Thanks for taking the time to read or click any of it 🙂 feel free to reach out and ask any questions…
Humen provide anonymous and non-clinical safe spaces for men to talk, listen and connect on a regular basis across the UK. The HUMEN Space is preventative, practical and plain speaking. No lingo or prescriptive advice. Free one hour sessions where men get together to talk honestly in a confidential space without risk of judgment or ridicule. The right to talk should never be a privilege. Every Monday 6:30 PM (GMT) for any man across the UK.
Their operations have had to adapt since COVID restrictions but this has facilitated their local meetings going online and thereby becoming international.
They meet every Monday at 6:30 PM – you can register via the following link:
It was at base camp that I really gave consideration to the viability of 40s 4 40 and what sort of activities might be included – I decided better to explore my limits than be subject to a series of restrictive resolutions…
For the purposes of this retrospective blog, I am going to post my favourite of the many pictures and videos I took in an order that tells a pictorial story of my journey.
Hopefully the captions will allow the pictures to speak for themselves but if anyone has any questions, just ask!
Proper Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance / A Man With Too Much StuffHappening!My first brush with AconcaguaIncredible to fly below the mountain you’re travelling to climb…Permit Office, MendosaGear rental, MendosaAll my baggage was delayed – MendosaReunited at last!Camp 1 – Penitentes Entrance to the park after securing permitMy permit and the bags I was issued – one for rubbish, the other for human waste (so it doesn’t remain on the mountain)
Confluencia, 3,380 metres (11,090 ft): A camp site a few hours into the national park.
New Year’s Eve 2020
Plaza de Mulas, 4,370 metres (14,340 ft): Base camp – climbers are screened by a medical team to check if they are fit enough to continue the climb.Camp Canadá, 5,050 metres (16,570 ft): A large ledge overlooking Plaza de Mulas.Nido de Cóndores, 5,570 metres (18,270 ft): A large plateau with beautiful views.
Landscapes
Summit Attempt Night Weather Report (80kmph winds and -34c!)
Summit elevation of 6,961 metres (22,838 ft).
My permit with official stamps to prove I summited and returned both bags (full)
Celebration!First bath in weeks proved transformative!
Due to an exchange rate error I missed £1.19 off my seventeenth donation so I have added it to this eighteenth donation, making the total (£40 + £1.19) £41.19. At today’s spot rate on XE.com that equates to 21.236 Bahraini Dinars.
Bahrain has a electronic cash-replacement payment system in place called Benefitpay that seems to work almost everywhere and in any situation!
Thanks to God I have a great friend who made this transaction possible and very memorable. Shukran Habibi.
40 metres deep sounded deep, and believe me, it is. Basic scuba dive qualifications typically certify to around 20 metres, the more advanced to 30 – 35 metres (Padi Advanced Open Water and BSAC Sport respectively) so this challenge was to dive down to beyond both of those limits on only a single breath.
It wasn’t easy. It took a lot of learning, travelling and practicing but I made some good friends and learnt some incredible things that for sure I would not have done otherwise.
Here’s a video that I found inspiring:
Guillaume Nery base jumping at Dean’s Blue Hole, filmed on breath hold by Julie Gautier
The hardest part is getting off the surface but once you have mastered the duck dive and got past the point of neutral buoyancy at around 10 metres you become ‘weightless’.
At around 20 metres you enter a freefall where gravity accelerates you to the ocean floor – this sense of effortless yet continuous acceleration is incredible and probably caused by what Slomo is explaining referring to in the below video in neurological terms at 08:42. I just love the sound of the water passing my ears as I fall.
Slomo: The Man Who Skated Right Off the Grid | Op-Docs | The New York Times
Each 10 metres down from the surface adds a force equivalent to an additional atmosphere on top of the one at the surface. As a result, at 10 metres the lungs half when the pressure doubles from 1 to 2 atmospheres.
At 20 metres the pressure doesn’t double again but adding another atmosphere means your lungs compress to a third of the size they were on the surface and at 30 metres that is 3 atmospheres plus the one at the surface equalling a total of 4 atmospheres. This increase in pressure effectively reduces the lungs to a mere quarter of what they were on the surface. This makes it very difficult to equalise beyond this point without using advanced techniques as all the air inside you is so compressed it is hard to move it around.
At 40 metres your lungs are a fifth of the size they were on the surface and to counteract this, I retain some air in my mouth cavity instead of inhaling it all at the surface in order that I still have some in my mouth to equalise with.
The thing that struck me the most is how much this activity relates back to our roots as aquatic mammals. I have not felt a sense of calm under pressure like I have under the surface, I can feel my body, my lungs and heartrate adapting and I can feel the squeeze of the water as the pressure increases and a sense of unencumbered orgasmic immersion takes over.
James Nestor does an incredible speech at Google on the following link that goes a long way to explain the science behind what effects it has on the human body, how the body has retained some of these sensed and reactions and how it adapts. They are using it to great effect when researching sperm whales and I have experienced first hand how creatures are less afraid of me if I am not exhausting used air bubbles into the water (as with scuba diving):
James Nestor – Deep: Freediving and Renegade Science
I had been freediving of my own accord previously, something that I referred to as ‘skin diving’ but would now denote it as merely ‘enhanced snorkelling’. I made it as far as 15 metres but came to the sensible conclusion that I needed some fellow like minded divers who could reach the depths I could and who I could share knowledge with.
15m ‘Enhanced Snorkelling Video’
It was during one of my enhanced snorkelling sessions that I met a guy called Zak who is a freediving and diving inductor and is the contemporary mortal represtation of the Roman God Neptune. Zak is patient, kind and very forgiving. I really enjoy spending time with him and learning to become a true freediver from him was an honour and a privilege.
I have always been able to hold my breath for a reasonable amount of time and estimated that travelling at around a metre a minute would take at approximately 80 seconds (40 down and 40 back up) so one minute and 20 seconds but it is only by practicing this, by practicing the dive, by learning how to control your attitude and direction in the water that you are able to reach as far as 40 metres. My biggest hurdle is relaxing. Relaxation is key and without it, this is not possible. I still have a lot to learn in that regard.
It’s definitely not as simple as just holding your breath and going for it!
During the course of the next 18 months, I secured my AIDA Level 2 and and Level 3 qualifications and SSI Level 2 qualification. Freediving gave to me something amazing, it expanded my underwater potential and ironically was the breath of fresh air I needed and remains something I want to do for many years to come.
It’s amazing how much progress I made in 12 months with Zak’s instruction:
The dives in this video are to a maximum of 36 metres
Getting to 40 metres was a beautiful moment and I paused at the plate of course to make sure I had made it (confirmed registration on my dive watch!) but also to absorb some of the tranquillity and calm before I was forced to resurface.
Some pictures chronicling my journey can be found below:
21.2 m25.6 m31.4 m36.0 m41.2 m on my 40th Birthday! Mashallah
I cannot recommend my friend, mentor and highly skilled amphibian instructor Zak highly enough, I trust him with my life and am very grateful for his support, energy and inspiration.
The Tree of Life Social Charity Society was founded in the Kingdom of Bahrain in 2012 and offers its services to all segments of the Bahraini community with no discrimination to race, religion, colour, gender or social class.
Their services focus on social welfare, support for orphans, aid for deprived families and health care.
Bahrain and the Bahrainis have always been very good to me and this is a small token of my appreciation for their gracious hospitality.
Now I have to hold my hand up and admit that I assumed the exchange rate before I actually checked the spot rate online and I’m afraid I was one pound and nineteen pence short of £40 so I will make this up in a future donation – oops, sorry!
In the true spirit of the 40s 4 40 challenge a Friend of mine suggested I should be listening to Apollo 440 for 40 days! Naturally, I accepted… but who are they anyway?
Apollo 440 are a British electronic music group formed in Liverpool in 1990. The group has five studio albums and created loads of tunes for films and media. They had ten UK top 40 singles with three top-tens and enjoyed a chart presence all over the world.
When I started to listen I realised just how many of their tunes I already knew but didn’t realise it – like the Gran Turismo soundtrack for example!
I picked tunes at random on YouTube based on song title versus my mood and what caught my attention. I missed a few days when I was out at sea beyond any mobile or wifi signal but in doing so coincidentally managed to complete the 40th day on my Birthday – a tune aptly titled ‘For Forty Days’!
After listening to these 40 tunes for at least as many days, I’m amazed at the wide variety of music Apollo 440 are able to write, record and produce.
The full list of 40 songs, in the order I listened to them, is as follows:
Day 1: Stop the Rock
Day 2: Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Dub
Day 3: Gran Turismo 2 Soundtrack – Cold Rock The Mic
Day 4: Time Is Running Out
Day 5: Krupa
Day 6: Charlie’s Angels 2000
Day 7: Astral America
Day 8: Raw Power
Day 9: Stay Frosty
Day 10: Film Me & Finish Me Off
Day 11: Heart Go Boom
Day 12: Pain Is a Close Up
Day 13: A Deeper Dub
Day 14: Omega Point
Day 15: Hustler Groove
Day 16: Liquid Cool
Day 17: High on Your Own Supply
Day 18: Something’s Got to Give
Day 19: I Need Something Stronger
Day 20: Millennium Fever
Day 21: Smoke & Mirrors
Day 22: Traumarama
Day 23: Tears of the Gods
Day 24: Blackbeat
Day 25: White Man’s Throat
Day 26: Music Don’t Die
Day 27: Yo! Future
Day 28: Stealth Overture
Day 29: Stealth Requiem
Day 30: Disco Sucks
Day 31: Carrera Rapida
Day 32: The Perfect Crime
Day 33: [Don’t Fear] The Reaper
Day 34: Altamont Super – Highway Revisited
Day 35: Are We a Rock Band or What…?
Day 36: Love Is Evil
Day 37: Motorbootee
Day 38: Stadium Parking Lot (Instrumental Version)
Day 39: Lost In Space (Theme) (Instrumental Version)
Day 40: For Forty Days (Instrumental Version)
You can find their official Facebook page via the following link:
The sixteenth of my 40 donations goes to the Lancashire Wildlife Trust who play a very important part in protecting England’s natural heritage by protecting wildlife and nature reserves across the North West of England.
The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside was founded in 1962 by people like me who knew they needed to take action.
You can read more about the excellent work they do on the following link:
“Thank you for kindly donating to The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside.
For the last 50 years we have been caring for wild spaces and species all across our region.
Your kindness will be carefully invested so that we can continue to preserve wild spaces all across our region, protecting vital habitats for wildlife and educating people about the importance of our natural heritage.
From the highest crag where peregrines soar and butterflies flutter, to our endangered sand dunes where the land meets our living seas, this gift has helped us to protect our natural world.
Thank you so much for helping to protect wildlife for the future.
Some people felt hard done to when their Birthdays fell during the first lock down but it soon became apparent that nearly all of use would experience a ‘lock down Birthday’ as this terrible pandemic developed.
I had made arrangements to summit Puncak Jaya with a friend for my Birthday but Indonesia closed its borders and I found myself unable to travel internationally.
Nonetheless, I was lucky to be able to celebrate over the course of a week by travelling to the coast to freedive and driving off-road into the desert to camp overnight. I even got a cake to mark the occasion and am very grateful 🙂
I feel so lucky to have the amazing friends that I do, they made my time so special and memorable.
The alternative Birthday allowed me to spend a lot of time reflecting, catching up with friends old and new on small memories and life events and of course speaking to my Family to let them know how much I love and missed being with them.
It was great to still be able go through old pictures that my Mum had kept – thanks to God for modern methods of communication!
Pictures of me when I was much younger than I am today…
The fourteenth of my 40 donations went to the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration via Nancy’s Girls and their Hot Shot Challenge.
This fundraising team was founded by the daughters of Nancy Hessey, who has been sadly missed since passing two years ago due to Frontotemporal Degeneration.
The Girl’s were raising money and awareness so other families can get more of the help they were so grateful to have had themselves.
