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My elbows...

...hurt.

Robin

Could you be the 'Beast of Beasts!'

Come along and visit us during our week on the road, test your strength and stamina and see if you can win a Beastmaker fingerboard.

The guys from Beastmaker are taking to the road with us in a search for the ultimate chin up champ. You'll have 1 minute to squeeze out as many chin ups as you can. The most chin ups in one minute by the end of the week will walk away with a Beastmaker fingerboard.

Don't worry though, you don't need to be superman to give it a go, everyone's welcome. We'll have a table on our website charting everyones progress so you can keep an eye on where you stand on the 'awesomeness scale!'

And hey, the world record stands at only 53 chin ups, how hard can that be! Go on, give it a go!

Thank You Lucie



Training is a serious business,
we'll have no messing around thank you!

 Just wanted to say a quick thank you to Lucie for spending a whole evening taking pictures of The Big VMT crew. Your help is much appreciated.

Question Time

I spoke to Paul this week and asked him about how he came up with the idea of The Big Vertical Marathon Tour and how it was going so far.

Cherry: What was your inspiration to attempt a vertical marathon?

Paul: I followed Eddie Izzard’s journey closely, as he ran 43 consecutive marathons to raise money for Sport Relief. His incredible effort and determination to succeed inspired me as I’m sure it has many others. Basically I figured if he can do that, I’m sure I can do one little marathon, upwards!

So have you run a marathon before?

I haven’t run a marathon yet but I really want to at some point. I’ve run a handful of half marathons and a couple of 16-mile races but I’m really not built for running, my times are all very average.

What were your reasons for choosing Cancer Research to raise money for?

My grandma died from breast cancer when I was very young but, had the medical profession known then what they know now, we may have been given the time together to get to know each other better. My wife’s aunt was diagnosed with Perth’s disease, (an illness affecting the hip joints which is usually found in young children). She underwent multiple x-rays as part of her treatment. Unbeknown to the doctors at the time, the x-rays that she was having put her at a high risk of developing cancer from the radiation and sadly that is exactly what happened. Alison passed away aged just 8 years old from a cancer that was caused purely by lack of medical knowledge. If Alison were 8 now, she would be undergoing routine treatment for Perth’s disease and would not be at any risk. This, and thousands of stories like it are the reason Cancer Research UK is so important to us all. I believe that their groundbreaking work into all elements of cancer from diagnosis and treatment to prevention is crucial to us and we can all do our bit to help out. I’m not a very good climber, but I’m a much better climber than I am research scientist! So I’m taking on this challenge to help in the best way I can.

Cancer Research is definitely a cause close to everyone’s heart, let’s hope we beat our fund raising targets and help them carry on their great work.

So how is it going so far – from a logistical point of view?

Really well. I’ve had nothing but positive feedback from everyone I‘ve spoken to, however insane they think the challenge is! I’ve been thrilled by the generosity of everyone who has given up their time, money and resources to help us reach our goal.

What has been the best bit to date?

The best bit so far has been the realisation that I have the kindest most generous friends and family anyone could ask for. The amount of support I have received from all corners has been amazing.

And what are you most looking forward to?

I’m looking forward to standing at the top of my final climb and letting out one almighty sigh of relief that we actually pulled it off!

What about the worst bit so far?

Haven’t really had any low points. Finding out how much work is involved in organising an event like this has been a learning curve but I’ve enjoyed it all.

And what are you dreading?

I know this challenge is going to be really very hard and I’m ready for that, as is Robin. I know that my body will ache, my arms will throb and my mind will tell me to forget it and go home. But I’m dreading getting to a stage where my hands will literally not grip a hold, a stage when my forearms just won’t work anymore, a stage where it stops being about mental determination and starts to be about physical limits.

Finally, any other crazy plans for the future?

I’ve got a few ideas, but I think I’ll take a break first. All going well I’ll be graduating from the Open University next year so I need to get my head down and concentrate on that for a while.

Cheers Paul, keep up the good work!

Cherry

Pulling on the plastic!

Now that the training is in full swing I can honestly say that I think my biggest problem on the event will be the boredom and monotony of climbing the same route again and again and again and again and again times loads! Tonight's session was good tho as we decided to lead as many routes as we could graded 6a and below. We don't get the mileage but we were climbing at a higher grade than we will on the event and generally on considerably overhanging walls (as well as stopping for tea and flapjacks!)

Back to the laps tomorrow night tho!

Also, a quick thank you to James for his advice this evening, its cleared up a few things.

Robin

Training

Training is now in full swing. Due to work and family commitments Robin and myself are only able to train together twice a week in October but will up this to three sessions in November. When not together we are running, swimming and traversing on our own. Due to the nature of the challenge it’s important that we get our bodies used to consecutive efforts. So off to the wall we trot on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to pound up the same 4+ routes over and over and over again.



Ready for another ten?

In the middle of a climbing wall packed with climbers going about their business we stand at the same 4+, climbing through the same 15 or so moves. Everyone else stands, studying routes, pushing through hard moves, psyching themselves up and trying that blue route on the arête and pushing themselves to the limit on one single attempt while we carry on climbing, up and down, up and down. I too would love to be trying that blue route behind me but instead I carry on climbing the same route. I guess that’s part of the challenge, the mental focus to take on the mundane over the exciting. This training is a challenge, but a challenge that is so far removed from a normal evening at the wall that it feels like we are partaking in an entirely different sport at times. However strange it is to be training in this way, it comes with a feeling of accomplishment as we finish our hour and a half stint with 110 climbs under our belt and a feeling of relief that we are making progress.

Paul

Let the training begin

After six months of calculating, calling, emailing, meeting, asking, begging, pleading, praying, designing and thanking, everything, (well, almost everything) is finally in place for The Big Vertical Marathon Tour. A big thank you to everyone who has helped so far, from the walls and the hotels to all the companies that have kindly agreed to support the event. Thanks also go to all the amazing friends of the event for helping us way beyond the call of duty. And now the training begins!

Keep checking back in with us for news on our progress, events, prizes, pics, videos and more.

Paul

Website

While the others have been training hard my job has been to put together the Big Vertical Marathon Tour website. Andy over at Print Inc has done a great job with the logo and graphics for the site which has made my life much easier!

I've been working on ways we can get up-to-date news, pictures and video on here during the week itself. We're going to be pretty stretched during the event - Paul and Robin will have their hands full with the climbing. Cherry and I will be trying to keep things running during the day finding and supervising volunteer belayers, belaying ourselves, taking photos and video, and generally making sure the climbers have nothing to worry about other than calloused hands and stinky rock-shoe feet!

We'll be updating during the day using our Facebook Page which feeds onto the front page of the site, and longer blog posts in the evenings. We're hoping to capture some great photos, videos and time-lapse during the day, but getting these edited and uploaded in the evenings will be a challenge as we need to eat, drive to the next location and sleep as well.

It's going to be a tough week!

Justin