I climbed Everest to get back on top of my life

August had gone by, 5 weeks since the accident and I had gained a total of 5 kilograms due to the alcohol and excessive dining out. I had finally been offered a great role and complete career change. I need to work on my self, body and mind.

I had the perfect reason to do this, one of my best mates Jamie; who has been there from the start of this journey; was getting married on the 1st of October and I was going to be the best man, this means that I will potentially be in a lot of photos and I would hate to look like I did in my most recent photos with an extra chin and massive cheeks to go with it.

I was starting to move around a lot more and going for walks and hikes all over the place, often running down the hills after walking up them. While walking up Mount Cootha one day, I decided that I would aim to ascend 1,000 flights of stairs in the month which should significantly help me lose the 5KG that I had gained after the crash, this meant around 50 flights per day were necessary as it would be a struggle to do this on the weekend with Sapphire in toe.

By the 4th I was going well and had done about 200 flights before starting at my new job. I knew I should be able to knock this over pretty quickly. In fact is the goal too soft? Well lets see how I keep going.

As I was planning on losing a lot of weight considerably quickly I knew that fitness alone wasn’t going to be the way to do this, so I had to focus on my diet. The easiest way to do this is to properly track what I’m eating. I’ve done this before using the MyFitnessPal app, and found it rather easy to use. The target it had set for me was 1,630 calories per day, however it took into account my exercise and would increase it with the extra efforts.

I will state that I know that this isn’t a healthy way of losing weight! But I found the easiest way to keep my calories down was to have a sugar free energy drink or up to 2 glasses of diet coke for breakfast, potentially skipping lunch and then focusing on having enough for dinner without feeling hungry but trying to limit it to about 1,000 calories, I would have either diet coke or soda water whenever possible if I was feeling hungry.

Two weeks had passed and I was dropping the weight, I had lost maybe 3 KG in the first 2 weeks. I was also up to 1,072 floors, so yeah the goal was a little softer than I had first comprehended. However since getting my new watch I had never done more than 450 floors in a month and the average person only does about 6 per day.

I increased my goal to 2,000, but in the back of my mind wondered if it would be possible to ascend the equivalent of Mount Everest which is 2,950 floors or 8,849 metres. It seems like a bit of a pipe dream but I wonder if its possible?

Another week went by and I was picking up the ante, still doing the unhealthy eating and this weekend I was going to take Sapphire up mount Cootha. I got to do my first parkrun since getting injured. I did it without pushing the stroller which is a strange sensation but also probably a good thing as I have no idea how healed I am, I just knew it didn’t hurt anymore. I ended up doing the 5KM in 22:46 which I was ecstatic with as this was only 1:20 off my PB for the course, so considering how much time I’d had off I was back near full fitness.

Taking Sapphire up Mount Cootha was really nice. She got to experience what I was really enjoying and had her own little perspective on it. She loved parts of it, she loved pointing out things that I would just never see when I was trying to do the hill at speed, such as a little stream, wild life and so many sticks and stones, it was gorgeous.

I was very proud of her, she walked a total of 2km before her little legs got tired and she couldn’t go any further. To put this in perspective, this was about 40 flights of stairs.

Carrying her down you could tell how tired she was, as she was very much a dead weight in my arms. Her treat was that she got to go to the playground afterwards so it was worth it for her.

Another week went by, but now I had discovered the trails at Mount Gravatt which is closer to me and involved no traffic. This was a really an amazing run. Up hill and down dale I was going for up to 3 hours some days to really chew through this ascension. Now I was over 2,000 flights of stairs, I may as well increase my goal too Everest. I have just under 10 days to go, although I don’t expect to do much when in Geelong so I need to knock this over quickly.

I finally got the all clear from the hospital that my injuries had healed, his exact words were “If you want to ask me. Can I . . . the answer is yes” this was amazing news. I was originally told the 3-6 month prognosis so I would be happier if it ended up happening sooner. However in my opinion this actually had a negative effect on me in general, this was because of the way it had impacted me mentally because I would not be able to achieve my goals that I had set out at the start of the year. Also on a side note, my exact weight on this day was the same as the day before my crash.

This weekend I did another ParkRun, this time at Sandgate so it added no height to my day. To make up for this I had to hit the hills again with Sapphire. She wasn’t such a fan this time and wanted to go on my shoulders early on. But again, don’t use your children as an excuse to not achieve your goals, but a reason too achieve them

. I will also say that even though this was hard, it was great for bonding as we talked the whole time, did some counting and nursery rhymes etc.

Only a few days to go and I increased my efforts at Mount Gravatt further until I was down to 84 flights of stairs to go, with only a few days left there should be no issues knocking these over.

Back to eating semi normally now, still watching what I eat but not as strict, I ended up being 6KG lighter on 28/09 than I was on 01/09. I know that over the weekend this will increase with the bucks night and wedding, but I have a few final floors to focus on.

When I looked at my totals on the last day of the month I still had 46 flights to go, turns out travelling and then having a bucks day really did hinder my efforts. Luckily I had seen a flight of stairs just down the road from Jamie’s place about an hour had passed and I was done, no huge celebration for this achievement but on the inside I knew what I had done.

My totals for the month were pretty phenomenal as per below

Floors Ascended 2,951 (8,853 metres)

Total Steps for the month 566,024 (average of 18,867 steps per day)

Largest week 186,741 steps (average of 26,677 steps per day)

What a month that was, I achieved all goals I had set out to, but now it’s a new month and I have new goals to achieve. Come at me October, lets see what you can throw at

Lastly, I just want to say thank you to everyone who reached out to me after my last post to see if I was doing ok, Thank You for that, I hope that me going through those emotions publicly may help even just one person realise that they are not alone and there is always a reason to look forward