![]() ![]() Francis also made some incredible videos of the challenge and Louise from The Internationelles who dropped her kids off at school, joined me late into the night, was up the next day to go again and then drove home to get her kids from school! Lastly I have to mention my partner, Fee and our dog Marshall who have always been there supporting me and all my quite frankly stupid ideas. My mates Francis and Daisy came for a few days to keep me company and look after me giving the support crew a bit of a break too. Emily from Attacus was also always messaging and checking in. They are doing amazing things supporting people by providing counseling to those who may not easily be able to get it. Dion and his family have had such heartache losing Josh but have tried to make their loss into as much of a positive as they can, setting up a charity in Josh's memory called Josh's Lighthouse Project. He is the person who I was doing this challenge for. Then leading on from that we met Dion, a local man who sadly lost his son to suicide. The challenge wouldn't have happened without these three. He has an infectious laugh which would just make me laugh and is an incredibly talented videographer/film man. Andy is such a positive person which is incredible to have around you in tough times. Lastly, Andy who has joined me on several challenges over the last few years. There for hugs and the one who continually kept the airbnb we stayed in tidy too. He's such an incredibly talented photographer and also very much became my 'mum' through the week, making sure I always had food and water. This was the first time Jack had joined me on a challenge. Next I had Jack and Andy who were photographing and filming the challenge. My health and safety is paramount and I can always trust Jimmi to make the right calls even if they aren't the ones I want to hear. He's the boss when I do challenges and ultimately he has my best interest at heart. My main support team was Jimmi from Attacus, who has supported me in so many challenges over the years and knows me better than I know myself. ![]() ![]() My support team were absolutely incredible but they are not the only people who I need to give a shout out to. They are an incredible charity and have helped me personally several times with advice and counseling over the years when I or friends have struggled. I was firstly doing this challenge to raise awareness for the importance of looking after your mental health and also fundraising for Movember and the incredible support and resources they provide people to help best understand how to reach out to someone in need. They used this colour-way to tease people with the new R5 last year. it’s a very special Jumbo Visma frame set which is a gold water transfer over the raw carbon. I ride a size 54 frame but I ride a long stem and a lot of seatpost as I have long arms and legs but a short torso. The reason for the odd tyres is that all the heavy breaking and grinding up the climb caused the rear to wear out and I thought it was best to get a fresh one on after a few days (the transparent tyres were not fresh and had done several thousand km before the challenge, I don’t like waste and want to use tyres until they really need to be changed, it’s not much hassle to install a new one after all and I just didn’t have another transparent sidewall on.) Brakes are the excellent DURA-ACE ones with a 160 rotor on the front and a 140 on the rear. The front is their transparent sidewall option and the rear is a black version in 28mm. ![]() The tyres I used were the Schwalbe Pro One. I ran 50/34 chainrings on a 170mm DURA-ACE power meter. The bike literally slides around the corners with the brakes locking out. The top part of the climb has been resurfaced, so when it's dry it's incredible, really fast and flowy but when it's wet, it's like an ice rink. One point that does stick out a lot to me was the first time descending the hairpins from the top in the rain. We (me and the invaluable support team) were really up against it from the start battling awful conditions. To be honest there really was no easy part in this one. But people often go back and do it again. I guess it's similar to running a marathon in a way. So anyone who has done one shouldn't feel that they have not done something incredibly hard and challenging. And even to me one is already a massive achievement. I think one of the big problems with Everesting is that it's almost become weirdly normalised because of the amount of people who have done them during the pandemic. I still get very emotional when I think about it, which really shows how much it actually meant to me too. I gave myself over completely to the challenge and I really do think that was clear towards the end too. This was hands down the hardest challenge I have ever done. ![]()
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