Everest CALM: Day 5

To be honest, the level of fatigue in this photo is probably worse than I look! This was after 28 laps of the 36 today. We had my Auntie Grace join us for around an hour and a quarter which was great to see a familiar face.

She had an alcohol free beer with me after we had done 12 laps and then did a walk while me and Paddy managed another 12. I had discussed with Grace before she came about her possibly carrying some fluids while she was with us but I didn’t ask her in the end to do that. Cycling has a kinder word for this than running does. Domestique I’m led to believe roughly translates as servant to another cyclist supporting them to win a race. The only running equivalent term I’ve heard is ‘mule’, luckily Grace had a bit of a sense of humour about this!

Me and Paddy didn’t follow through on our post run beer today, Grace had brought us some alcohol free Punk IPA and we had both brought more fluids than yesterday which was a good indication that we were taking it seriously.

Our pace had slowed slightly from yesterday and we had slightly longer breaks so came in around 3 hours as moving time and just under 4 hours for the total time with breaks. It felt warmer than yesterday so I’m pretty pleased with this. We will have to do 37 either tomorrow or Sunday to reach the required elevation but I am sure we will manage these with the contingency planning we have in place.