Climbing mountains 🏔 and running marathons 🏃🏻♀️
What they have in common and what it means to challenge yourself.
Happy Sunday people,
I hope you’ve had a nice restorative weekend. I mentioned in last week’s post that I had a big challenge coming up. I’m happy to report I survived it 😅 and in a better shape than I had anticipated so that’s a win 🙌
This weekend I took part in a 10-people team to run the Dead to Red marathon; a 242.5km run starting at the lowest point on earth, the Dead Sea, and ending at the beautiful beaches of the Red Sea in Aqaba.
I usually like to listen to an audiobook or podcast while running because it helps keep my mind off the physical fatigue and entertains me enough that I don’t feel the slow pace of time. Ironically, what I ended up listening to resonated perfectly with the challenge I was going through 👌🏼
Who is Nims Purja❓
Nims is a Nepalese mountaineer who spent 6 years as a Gurkha (Nepalis that are recruited for the British Army), and 10 years with the UK Special Forces, before deciding to quit it all and embark on an impossible project: climbing the world’s only 14 mountains that are higher than 8,000m.
Man on a Mission 🎯
Many Nepali boys grow up dreaming of joining the Gurkhas. It is a highly regarded honour and a statement of true grit and perseverance. It also means good financial income for many poor families, such as Nims’.
Growing up in a poor household barely able to afford shoes and only indulging in meat on special occasions like Chsitmas, Nims was determined to help lift his family from their humble circumstances. At 15 years old he would wake up each night at 1am to go train and run 30km before sneaking back in pretending to have been asleep and wake up for school.
Tens of thousands apply each year, but very few get accepted so he knew he needed to train hard and be prepared for anything. This eventually led to him being selected as one of 230 people to join the Gurkhas that year, out of 32 thousand applicants.
A few years into his military career, he set his eye on yet another seemingly impossible goal, becoming the first Gurhka to join the British Special Forces. In over 200 years of Gurhkas, nobody has ever been selected to join the elite unit and he was constantly told it wasn’t realistic. So he upped his training.
For 6 months, he would wake up early, run 20km to the barracks carrying 75 pounds of weight in his backpack, start his workday at the military base, then run back home another 20km, this time without weights. He would get home, do his weight training, cycle 64km on a stationary bike, then finish it all off with 100 laps in the pool.
He worked on every angle and detail he could possibly work on to improve his chances at being selected. he even learned about British humour and what kind of personalities they seek and taught himself to converse in that manner.
6 years later, Nims was the first Gurkha ever to pass the selection for the British Special Forces.
When asked about how he was able to build and maintain his discipline and drive, he said if you want to reach your full potential and achieve something that breaks boundaries you have to be different. You have to wake up early when nobody is forcing you to, you have to be able to go and train when no one is looking. It is these moment that separate you from everyone else 🔑
The funny this is, that’s not the most impressive thing he’s done at all.
Climbing the 14 peaks 🏔
10 years into his special forces career, he decided to quit and pursue what he called Project Possible. There are 14 mountains in the world that have peaks of 8,000m or higher, they call them the death zone peaks because in that altitude, the human body is virtually dying.
The fastest record for someone to climb all 14 mountains was 7 years, 11 months, and 14 days. Nims wanted to do all 14 peaks in 7 MONTHS.
To put it into perspective, what he was proposing is equivalent to having the world record for a marathon at 2 hours, and saying you can do it in 2 minutes 🤯
Being the biggest financial contributor to his family and with only 6 years left on his pension, he decided to give it all up and pursue this crazy mission. He wanted to show the world that Nepali mountaineers were the kings of 8,000m peaks and give them the credit they deserve, and to show the world that nothing is impossible.
To cut a long story short and not to give you too many spoilers about the documentary, he worked day and night and contacted anyone of high position or wealth to try and raise funds for his trip, but was shunned away because it seemed impossible. Even his brother wouldn’t talk to him for over 3 months and called him selfish for quitting.
Eventually he put everything on the line. He remortgaged his house, set up a GoFundMe campaign, and was able to gather some funds to get his project going. With a small team of Nepali climbers, they brought their own camera gear and filmed over 100 hours of footage covering their adventure. One thing led to another, and the documentary ended up being produced Oscar-winning producer and climber Jimmy Chin, and became one of the most watched documentaries streamed on Netflix.
The film covers the amazing journey and the many unfathomable challenges they had to go through to achieve this feat. I highly recommend it - obviously.
Dead to Red 🏜 🏃🏻♀️ 🌊
I’m not going to liken my marathon experience to climbing 14 peaks or any of the impressive achievements Nims Purja did, but I think challenge is a relative term and one man’s Everest can be another man’s walk in the park.
This marathon was something I always thought I’d like to do one day. It just appealed to me because of how tough it sounded (not sadistic, just love the feeling of conquering a tough challenge).
We started running at 4pm. The first few hours were fun, everyone was energetic and bubbly, the runs weren’t too bad, and the weather was nice. But as the night started setting in, it got colder, darker, and more isolated. By 11pm we were only 85km in, with over 155km to go. By 1am we had been running for 9 hours, and were still not even halfway through. Physically I was okay, but mentally I was crumbling. It just seemed never ending and if you know me well enough, you know that being in a van with people for that long isn’t something I’m very comfortable with. Add to that sleep and food deprivation, and it gets very uncomfortable very quickly.
The worst part was getting just enough rest time for all the aches in your body to start creeping up and for you to be able to shut your eyes for 10 minutes before having to go out in the blistering cold of the desert, get a quick warm up in and start your run again. and again and again and again 😅
Being with a team though, I felt a responsibility not to bring the spirit down because I knew everyone was fighting the voices in their head just as I was. You start looking for the beauty in the little things. I made sure to look up and appreciate how amazing the sky full of stars looked, how peaceful the empty road was, the good song that came on and filled me up with energy, and the fact that my body is strong enough to still be able to run after so many hours.
At some point, I got a bad cramp and was just trying to push through the pain when two little girls from a nearby village started running with me. Both were barefoot and could probably run faster than me. It was also when I was listening to Nims talking about running 20km everyday with weights in his backpack. It really put things into perspective for me that what I’m doing here is something I get to do by choice.
I learned that you truly can always push more than you think you are able to. I gave my team a few disclaimers towards the end that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to run my next round because of the aches and pains I was feeling, but each time I went out again I found a way to keep moving.
There’s something amazing about pulling through not just for the sake of yourself but the sake of other people. It’s a silent collective effort and I appreciated every single person’s contribution.
“Put yourself in situations where you care about living, not just existing”
- Nims Purja
Every now and then, find a challenge that takes you outside of your comfort zone and makes you care about living, the finish line is worth it ⭐️
I know this was a longer post so if you are still reading, thank you and I hope you go out and conquer a personal challenge soon!