Everest CALM: Day 6

Today was a slight and expected decrease in pace than previous days. We had shorter breaks so our total time for 37 laps was largely similar to the 36 yesterday. We set off at quite a steady pace and it didn’t fall off a cliff as much as I thought it would at some point today.

We had a can of pop each at 12 laps which was a nice incentive to look forward to. My plan was that Grace would magically appear like some sort of mirage around 24 laps. She had promised to bring us Coke and Lucozade. Near the top of the hill on lap 27, I spotted her orange footwear at the bottom of the hill and cheerily pointed out to Paddy ‘Grace is here, Grace is here’ like a small child!

My plan for breaks today changed slightly when we decided to get the 37 lap day out of the way. We had breaks every 3 from 28 onwards and this was marginally easier knowing you had a beginning, a middle and an end lap in each set.

There have been a few random acts and offers of kindness this week, that I want to make sure make it into the blog. On multiple occasions people have offered to give up their seat on a bench, people have taken a genuine interest in how many laps we are doing each day and provided encouragement, once they got over the initial shock and realised we weren’t joking! Although this wasn’t our intention, we gained more sponsorship for Paddy’s Everest CALM page from some of these as well. Finally we had an offer from 2 guys to buy us our post run beers from a local shop yesterday, which we politely declined (regrettably now!)

I have given Paddy control of the blog for the last entry tomorrow. It seems a fitting end to a challenge he has taken up with so much dedication over the past 2 months.