Ben Nevis Challenge

Dave has been writing on his blog recently about all his days up on the Ben training for a new route. I’ve been following him up there quite a bit and I can safely say that I am absolutely knackered by the time I get down. My plans for getting fit (see post below) are coming along slowly but surely but I don’t think I’ll ever be as fit as I need to be, more effort will always be required to keep up with the MacLeod.

Speaking of effort, I got a call a couple of days ago to see if I could film a guy called David Burdus take part in a wheelchair race up Ben Nevis for ITV. David the wheelchair leader was helped by a team of 5 (Andrew Yule, Lisa Renwick, Rachel Gibson, John Pope and James Forbes) who pushed, pulled, hauled and heaved to the top in an outstanding display of grit, determination and stamina from everyone involved.

Where normally I’d have stopped for some lunch or a wee drink or a breather, they just kept on going. David was in a specially adapted wheelchair with handlebars on the front for steering that he said was like doing a hundred thousand press-ups on, on the way down. I don’t fancy my chances at doing one push-up, much less a hundred thousand. We got up in 6 hours 24 mins in 3rd position, spending 13 hours on the hill with the winning team summiting in 5 hours 45 mins. Eight teams started out but two had to turn back before they reached the summit which goes to show how hard going it was. All in all, over £100000 (no, not a typo! Maybe a pound for every push-up David did...or a penny for every midge bite the teams endured!) was raised for charity and I know that at least one guy realised a dream and was on top of the world for the day. Inspiring stuff.