So much happened (more on that later) yet it still feels like yesterday that I came back from my Everest expedition in 2018. I very much neglected this blog since then as there were other things that needed my attention. Taking care of and then ultimately losing my beloved dog to old age in 2019 (of 14.5 years) was the biggest of all. Now I learned (well, still learning) how to live with grief for the loss of the loved ones, and now the pandemic is over, even though the world does not seem to be getting any
When I decided to climb Denali in 2007, I wanted to reassure myself that I was in good shape for the attempt. I just took a VO2 max test simply because it was a popular metric and I was very curious. It is about your maximum rate of oxygen consumption by looking at your CO2 output. However I was confused: I had friends who had lower VO2max levels but I was not able to keep up with them most of the time. So I later learned that it is not a measurement of endurance performance. Nonetheless the Denali climb we
Since even before then, I have been constantly doing ultras, adventure racing, rock climbing, occasional big mountain climbing. In addition, I have been reading a lot trying to learn more about training, new research, etc. However all this came to a point where I felt like I could do only so much on my own: I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I only knew for sure that intelligent training needed to be always guided by goals and I had an ambitious goal ahead of me: to be able to experience the top of the world