You just needed to quit the excuses and try
Sky dives and bike rides, how it all began
As I was perched on the summit of Everest early on the morning of 19th May 2016 I wondered, at the grand young age of 45, how on earth I had got there. I was never supposed to be a mountaineer, I was never supposed to tackle a climb like this. I had never even thought I would climb Snowdon, let alone sit on top of the highest mountain on our wonderful planet.
This is the story of how it all began and is part of my chapter published in The Bigger Book of Yes, a wonderful collection of adventurous stories from other Yes minded people. It’s well worth a read! (more details at the end of this blog)
Where it all started
In 2003 I was a risk averse, no saying, height hating comfort lover. I had a steady job as a Business Advisor for Business Link in the Home Counties and, although I would often say I was off to do various exciting things on holiday, I would end up staying at home instead. My confidence in life had taken a major knock 10 years before when I had given up the career with horses I thought would consume me forever and that confidence was very slow to return.
August 2003 saw me standing at the edge of the doorway in a small plane at 12,000’ with an ex-RAF PT strapped to my back, wondering for the first of many times since then, how on earth I had got there.
A month before I had been bored at work one day and, being in my early 30s, thought I had better do something to ‘conquer’ this fear of heights that I felt was holding me back. ‘I know, a parachute jump will do just that’ I pondered as an advert for a charity jump for Asthma UK caught my eye. Who on earth was I trying to kid?!
A good friend of mine, Caroline, offered to drive me up to the jump site ‘just in case you can’t drive back’ and I didn’t stop talking the whole way there, simply gibbering and jabbering through fear. As my Instructor and I fell out the aircraft I remember opening my mouth to scream but all that came out was a stream of phlegm which of course went straight upwards and probably into his face, poor chap. The only other things I remember about the jump were ‘when is this going to end’ and ‘god that hurt’ as the parachute opened and the force of the harness stopping us from free falling jolted against my groin. It was a tad painful to say the least.
Fortunately I had a safe landing and as Caroline drove us back to Aylesbury, she said, “Brilliant… what’s next?”
“Ohhh noooo! That’s it for me, thank you. That was my one and only adventure.” And we drove on.
A couple of weeks later a flyer from Asthma UK dropped through my letter box, back in the days when good old paper and post marketing was still the in-thing. I took the envelope with me to open at work and that was really when everything started to change. As Caroline walked into my office, she spotted the flyer on my desk. It detailed a fundraising bike ride in Peru, a cycle ride of around 450km from Lake Titicaca to Machu Picchu, or there abouts!
“Brilliant!” said Caroline. “That’s what’s next!!”
“Ohhh no!” I replied once again, my default answer to pretty much everything at the time. “I don’t have a bike. I am not fit. I could never raise that amount of money. I’m not sure how I would deal with the altitude and the biggest problem is that I don’t have the deposit so I’m out!” I exclaimed.
“Blimey Jo,” she said back. “Barriers dear, barriers! We can work everything else out but I can solve your biggest problem.”
“Oh?” I replied with trepidation. I instantly knew my get-out-of-jail-free card had just been torn up.
“I will pay your deposit so that you can sign up now, and you can pay me back in instalments. Easy!”
“Oh, ummmmm, thank you, I think,” I said very quietly.
Time to train
The ride was taking place at the end of April 2004 so I had a good few months to sort out my long list of excuses as to why I shouldn’t take part and turn them into exciting reasons for saying yes. I had a lot of work to do.
First, I had to find a bike to use for training. Another kind friend offered to lend me a mountain bike he had gathering dust in his shed. It was a lovely Kona mountain bike and just the right size so I simply had to learn how to ride a bike again and to do it properly this time.
Second on the list, which really ought to have come first, was to give up smoking. I didn’t think that a smoker fundraising for an asthma charity and then heading to altitude was a marriage made in heaven so I quit there and then. It’s been the best decision I have ever made.
I was rather unfit too, so I decided to join a gym and spent the first couple of months gaining strength and fitness using a programme designed for me by one of the trainers there. When I went in for my induction my body was a tad on the wobbly side with more insulation than muscle, but I certainly did not expect what was said next.
“What are you training for?” asked the instructor. “Do you have an event you are planning on doing?”
“Yes,” I replied nervously. “I’m cycling 450km in Peru in 6 months time and I need to get fit.”
“Oh. Cycling 450km? In Peru? At altitude?” he asked in a rather more quizzical way than I expected. “You’ll never do that,” he said.
To say I was shocked was an understatement. I thought they were supposed to be there to help me, not to put me down. Despite his comments, we carried on with the ‘how to use the equipment’ explanations and I never saw him again. I went to the gym religiously and started to feel my fitness improving so I put my Brave Pants on and start pedalling a proper bike in the great outdoors. Back then I didn’t realise that you weren’t supposed to be able to sit on a saddle and put your feet flat on the floor at the same time, or that you weren’t supposed to wear pants under your cycle shorts, or that wearing walking boots wasn’t ideal footwear, or that…..and so the list went on.
I struggled on through the winter, training on my bike during daylight hours and gradually increasing my distances with each ride, searching out for steeper and longer hills and finally enjoying the feeling of getting fitter.
Meeting the team
January came quickly and I drove down to Salisbury for our challenge training weekend. The bike ride in Peru was being run by adventure tour company Discover Adventure who are based just outside the city and with a few steep hills nearby it was a great training ground. I was a little late due to an inordinate amount of faffing due to nerves at home that morning so I skidded to a halt in the hotel car park and grabbed my bike out of the boot whilst everyone else was waiting patiently. We headed off for a much longer bike ride with much bigger hills than I had done before and I soon realised that I was definitely the slowest and least experienced of the group. I still didn’t really understand how all of the gears worked, I was still riding too low, still wearing my walking boots, still wearing pants under my cycle shorts but I learnt a huge amount that weekend.
We bonded as a group of 22 thanks to a few beers on the Saturday night in a city centre pub. I had my saddle height sorted, I was advised to buy some cycle shoes and maybe try some clip in pedals and Dear Lord, please get rid of your pants! “You don’t want to chafe!” said many of the more experienced cyclists.
I felt much more confident as I drove back home on the Sunday afternoon. I had a little over 3 months until we met again at Heathrow and although I thought I was fit before the training weekend, I learnt that I still had a long way to go. I didn’t want to have the sweeper bus right behind me on the trip itself and certainly didn’t want to get in it unless I was injured. Pride was kicking in and it was a great motivator!
Off to Peru
Three months on and I remember standing at Heathrow with a mild panic rising up in my belly whilst we were being given an enthusiastic briefing by the founder of Discover Adventure Jonathan Bryan about how the adventure started here.
Arriving in Lima late at night meant that we went to a hotel before getting on an early morning flight up to Juliaca the following morning. We were met in arrivals by Dougie, our very tall Scottish leader and his co-pilot, Caroline. With 22 cyclists, our guides and Helen our doctor, our charity rep plus local crew all trying to put the bikes on the roof of a van in the dark, it was quite a baptism by fire. Dougie gave us a quick briefing before we headed off to bed that night. We were to get up early, head back to the airport and then take the short flight up to the Juliaca airport not far from Puno in the high Andes. Puno sits at 3,827m so we would have gone from sea level in Lima to significant altitude in a very short time. Our bodies may object so we had a day and a half to get used to the lower air pressure and all it entails before we headed off on the bikes.
‘Yikes,’ I thought. ‘What happens if my body goes on strike? What happens if I can’t do this? What happens if…’
“Oh be quiet girl” I said to myself. “You said yes to being here. The rest will take care of itself.”
Arriving at Juliaca was indeed a shock to the system. You go from nearly 100% oxygen to nearly half that amount in an instant. Straight away you felt the chill in the drier air and instantly found it was harder to breath, even whilst walking on the flat. Being dehydrated from the flights was exacerbated by the dry air so a headache kicked in pretty quickly. Trying to take the stairs at the speed you would bound up them at home was out of the question and even getting out of bed to go to the many visits to the loo was a huge effort. This altitude lark was hard work I mused.
After being a tourist for a couple of days, we were mostly coping well with the altitude and I was pleased to have acclimatised fairly quickly. Breathing was harder but my headaches had disappeared thanks to the extraordinary amount of water I had been drinking. “Water is the best medicine,” said Helen. Your body goes into rapid diuresis when it realises there is reduced air pressure and less oxygen gets into your lungs because of this lower air pressure. There are many changes that occur at micro levels within your body, but the main thing was to drink plenty of water which also meant that you’d be peeing like a pony and oh, how true that was!
Our first day of the bike ride saw us heading back to Juliaca and to our start point, a petrol station on the edge of town. Our bikes had been put together by Dougie, Caroline and our local crew of experts and a paper map was given to us. Not for navigating with but just as a reference. The first day had a straight line on the A4 piece of paper. ‘It’s straight all day’ was written on the paper and it was!
The roads in Peru were a dream to ride on. Smooth with no potholes and the drivers would beep at you, not in anger but simply to let you know that they were coming. The scenery was stunning with huge open vistas and mountains in the background hundreds of kilometres away and as far as the eye could see. They looked untouchable and I had no inkling that I would be climbing any of them in the not-so-distant future.
Getting into the swing of things
Dougie’s greatest announcement during our first day’s ride was that it never rained here in April, and about half an hour later with huge black clouds coming over the horizon, he quickly made an excuse that this was an unusual year as hail and rain pelted down on us. We were huddled behind the luggage truck whilst the worst of it swept through and I started to cry. Fortunately, no one could see the tears running down my cheeks as we were being soaked to the skin. I was really frightened, not because of the rain but from thinking what on earth had I let myself into. Once again, Negative Nelly popped up to tell me to get in the truck. Who was I to think that I could complete something like this? What a muppet!
The drenching finished as quickly as it had started and the sun soon came out, drying our soggy clothing just before we arrived in camp. I use the word camp in the loosest sense of the word. Back then I thought that camps had proper toilets and showers and were situated well away from the side of the road. We were more on the wild side of camping. This was to be a real adventure!
We were still at a fairly high altitude so the temperature that night dropped dramatically. There are a few things that happen to the environment and you whilst sleeping at altitude.
1 – it’s really, really cold.
2 – because you have to drink plenty of water during the day you pee a huge amount at night. If you need to pee, go pee. If you don’t, you’ll start shivering which you think means you are cold but in fact it means your body is screaming at you – GO PEE!!!
3 – it gets colder during the night and especially before dawn, it’s really, really, really cold.
4 – you can get something called Periodic Breathing where you or your tent buddy will stop breathing for a few seconds but it sounds like they are never going to start again. You, or them, then takes a sudden and rather large intake of breath, scaring either yourself, or them, or both! You both fall back to sleep for it to then happen again, several times over. It’s all part of the acclimatising to the rarefied air and passes in time but it can terrify you in the process!
I remember vividly how bone chillingly cold it was that first night. My sleeping bag wasn’t as warm as it needed to be and I had all of my clothes on plus a blanket over the top. Another schoolgirl error on my part. What I was supposed to do was to go to bed with warm skin, strip off my clothes down to pants and a t-shirt along with socks and a beanie then quickly jump into my sleeping bag. My skin would warm up the sleeping bag which would then keep me toasty all night. Ahhh, the benefit of actually taking the advice! By wearing all of the clothes that I had sat in in the mess tent, I did have warm skin under it all but slipped into my sleeping bag fully clothed therefore not allowing my lovely warm skin to be the radiator. As my sleeping bag wasn’t being heated up by my body, my body simply got cold and it was a miserable first night and another big lesson learned.
Our adventures continued on a daily basis. We were cycling for 6 days and our highest point was at 4,335m over a high pass. I seemed to be burping a lot during the cycling and hadn’t realised that this was also part of being at altitude. It’s in the medical books too, High Altitude Flatus Expulsion, it’s a thing! It happens because the lower air pressure allows your bodily gasses to expand and they need to come out somehow. Oh how they did, for everyone!
My 4 legged Guardian Angel
One day I was riding on my own for a short period, cycling down a long descent into one of our camps. Dougie had warned us about the dogs in Peru. Most were not pets and some not always friendly especially to cyclists who were simply there to be chased. Now, being a dog person, I hadn’t quite believed this and once again, how naive I was. Merrily freewheeling down this descent on a super smooth road through a small village I spotted a dog eyeing me up in the distance. He was initially lying down but soon got up and started at a pace towards me. ‘Oh crikey’ I thought. ‘What am I going to do?’ I was on my own and the advice had been to get off our bikes and find some stones to lob near the dogs to put them off. It all happened quite quickly so I had no chance of stopping, getting off, finding some rocks or similar and frightening off this very determined dog. The dog was heading towards me a full pelt with great intention of doing some harm and I was starting to freak out. Suddenly, out of nowhere, another dog shot across the road barking wildly and chased off my intended killer (probably a tad dramatic but that’s what it felt like). I simply couldn’t believe it and all I wanted to do was to stop and give my four-legged Guardian Angel a hug, but my brain kicked in to say, ‘Get out of here and quick!!’
In for a bumpy ride
Then came the off-road mountain day and my nerves went into overdrive.
The night before, when Dougie did the briefing, he mentioned the various route options for us that following day. It was a huge climb with a bumpy descent, so they had to give some get-out-of-jail-free cards.
Option 1 was to head around the mountain pass and ride 25km on the roads to the next camp. I knew that I had more adventure in me than that so listened to option 2 which was to be trucked halfway up the mountain and then ride on from there. Again, I thought I had more in me than that.
Option 3 was to start at the bottom and do the whole lot and this is the option I plumped for. An unusual response from me as I was used to taking the easy option but as I was here, as I had become pretty fit and as I thought I wasn’t going to come back, I felt it best to at least give it a go. I knew that there would be a minibus following the cyclists at the back little did I know before hand that that rear cyclist was going to be me! I wasn’t sure whether Dougie, Caroline and Helen would let me do the whole thing, but it was worth asking and, to their credit, they said yes!
Yes, I spent that night worrying if I was actually capable of cycling such a distance and to such a great height. We had already reached a 4300m col on road but, apart from the rarefied air, the tarmac had made for easy cycling. This col was a similar height but the whole way was on rough tracks and fairly rocky. I was not a skilled mountain biker, I was a little bit scared, but I got on my bike and off we went.
It didn’t take long before I was quite a way behind the other cyclists who had also chosen to do the whole lot. They were not only fitter than me but also used to riding on this type of terrain. I was cycling at between 6 – 10km/h. which is painstakingly slow but, given the altitude and the loose and bumpy surface, not too bad for a beginner. Dougie, who had the job of keeping me going, didn’t seem too bothered until we hit a short downhill section. He shot off and expected me to be hot on his heels. I gradually bumped and slithered my way down to the next ascent with fear etched on my face, at which point he said, “We’ll get you to the top of the col but you’re in the bus all the way down.”
“Not a problem at all,” I replied. “Quite happy with that!”
At the top of the col we all had a huge hug and I shed another tear or two. It was the biggest climb I had ever done and I had survived! My bike was swiftly taken off me and secured to the roof of the bus, in I hopped with a couple of my fellow cyclists and down we bumped all the way to Pisac, where we were staying that night.
The final day of cycling came all too quickly and our destination, Ollyantaytambo, loomed into sight.
“Right. Well done, everyone. Today is going to be a toughie, not just because of the cobbles in the last 2km into the finish but also the headwind. Keep those legs going and you’ll get there,” said Caroline in our briefing that morning.
She was spot on. As we were pedalling hard down a long and winding descent a local chap was freewheeling up it. We stopped just short of the hill into Ollyantaytambo, the finish point to our 450km cycle for Asthma UK. Cycling up the hill, we left the lovely smooth tarmac and were faced with round headed cobbles – yikes! This was a finish and a half! We rode in convoy into the main square of this ancient Incan city, dumping our bikes and offering each other a huge hug of congratulations.
All we had to do now was to pack up our bikes, have a shower and head to a bar to celebrate. As I walked to my hotel room after packing up my bike I was in floods of tears. I simply couldn’t believe that I had cycled 99% of the challenge and if anyone was going to take away the 1% of the off road downhill, more fool them.
A fellow cyclist walked past me and said, “What are you crying for? That’s a bit wet.” Ugh. It had been his third or fourth cycle and to him it was now his normal. To me, it was my Everest.
Ready to fly?
With the first of our celebrations over, we boarded a train to Aguas Calientes early the next morning where we then hopped on a bus up the zig zags to Machu Picchu. I hadn’t appreciated just how exposed the bus ride would feel or simply how exposed Machu Picchu actually was. My fear of heights and exposure kicked in, the type of vertigo where you felt like you wanted to throw yourself off the edge and fly which wouldn’t end well. I put a lid on my fear for the first half an hour or so, long enough for our group photos to be taken, and then I broke down in tears, snot running down my nose and my wobbly chin. Proper fight, flight or freeze fear. ‘That was it,’ I thought. ‘I’ve blown my one and only chance to see this amazing ancient site.’ I hot-footed it back to the café and then got the first bus down to town, back to terra firma and the comforting streets of habitation.
Life is a continuous learning curve
After we arrived back in Blighty I tried to convey to family and friends just how amazing it was but they just didn’t get it. I had been sucked into a new and exciting world of adventure. I had discovered that I was capable of surviving 6 nights in a freezing tent and the same number of days in the saddle, at altitude, in the rain / sun / wind and snow. I had eaten guinea pig, had wild wee’d and drunk beer with a few of my fellow cyclists in a local’s house in the middle of nowhere. I’d been to high altitude for the first time, I had become used to ditching my pants and going commando under my cycling shorts and I’d learnt how to ride my bike properly. I finally understood about drafting, that Guardian Angels come in all forms and that, at the time, I was pretty rubbish with heights and exposure. Once back from Peru, I had the adventure bug and even I wondered ‘What’s next?’
Roll on to 2021 and how life is oh-so different. Little did I know then that I would head back to Machu Picchu another dozen times and relish in the marvels of that ancient city, the vastness of the mountains and enjoy all it has to offer, even the exposure of the glorious walk in.
I didn’t go straight from cycling in Peru to being on the summit of Everest in one hit. There were many incremental steps along the way. From cycling in New Zealand and Cuba to crewing adventure rides in Europe and leading international treks in my spare time. From leaving my corporate life in the Home Counties and moving to Wiltshire to live more adventurously and taking my ultimate leap of faith and going freelance to spend my time leading overseas adventures up high and teach in the great outdoors.
As I sat writing this story, with torrential rain pouring down the windscreen of Bimble, my Adventure Van, and my DofE students safely tucked up in their tents in a soggy field in South Wales, would I have changed any of the lumps and bumps or highs and lows that went along the way?
Absolutely not. Each step has made this journey possible, even if I didn’t really know what was to happen next. I had no idea that when I said yes to this bike ride, or even the parachute jump, that it would lead to anything else. It’s happened organically and with the support of my wonderful family and friends and those who I worked and work with.
In talks that I deliver I speak about Champions. Not the person who gets first place kind of champion but the kind that is there to guide you along. The kind that has got your back, the kind who simply wants to see you succeed and to say you’ve got this even when you think you haven’t.
Look out for your Champions. They are closer than you think.
———————————————————————————————————————
** There are 3 amazing books of Yes full of amazing stories which all started with this three letter word. All can be bought from Amazon with all profits being donated to Action for XP (formerly The Teddington Trust)
