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Chronicles of K2 with Jon Lawrie and Martin Zhor: Part 2
7.8k Plays1 year ago
In the second episode of Chronicles of K2, Steve, Martin and Jon discuss Jon’s specific training for the mountain and his background before coming to work with Uphill Athlete. The three breakdown Jon’s progression from unstructured gym work to establishing an elite endurance base. They also work through an injury Jon sustained prior to his K2 training block and how he mentally dealt with the training progression from injury. Martin discusses his approach to acclimatization with Jon and how Jon managed to accomplish the climb without supplemental oxygen. This episode reveals the hard work and progression of a climber from beginner to elite athlete.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the uphill athlete podcast. Our mission is to elevate and inspire all mountain athletes through education and celebration. My name is Steve house and I'll be your host today. And I am joined once again by John Laurie and Martin Zor. Welcome back, John and Martin. Thank you. Thank you,
High-Altitude Climbing Experiences
00:00:27
Speaker
Steve. So we just heard,
00:00:29
Speaker
John, tell us about his, mostly his summit experience on K2. Martin, you were there this summer on Broad Peak, and what were your feelings? What was your experience listening to John's story? Yeah, thanks, Steve. So it was great to listen to John's story about climbing K2 without oxygen. We actually didn't meet. I was there a bit earlier in the season, and that's another story. We can talk about it another time.
00:00:59
Speaker
I really appreciate it, listening to his story, how it's kind of went and just also having seen the mountain actually just from the base camp of Broad Peak, which is right next to K2. So it was really powerful and just appreciating maybe like hearing what actually went through John's mind and also physically what he was going through up there and just
00:01:27
Speaker
Maybe it is really hard for people to imagine what it takes. And those last two, 300 meters above the bottleneck to the summit, it was like the whole chapter. At least it feels like it for me and I can appreciate it because I went through some experiences on the mountains and high altitude.
Physical and Mental Challenges of Mountaineering
00:01:46
Speaker
So yeah, just wanted to mention that because it certainly was, I guess you're slowing down.
00:01:55
Speaker
You're really way above the 8,000 meters and physically it's just so hard. And all the factors that John mentioned that you cannot control. And then also listening to the way out of the base camp to Ascoli, it's really a long way. It's beautiful that you really just want to go home and just want to get to the comfort and to your family.
00:02:20
Speaker
But it is 100 kilometers of really hard track. And it's like the last thing you want to do. And also then, John, what you went through also physically with the lungs. And so, yeah, I just wanted to mention that before we move to the training and the preparation, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, look, in terms of that final little bit to the summit,
00:02:48
Speaker
you've passed the traverse, you've sort of passed the technical aspect, let's say the tricky aspect, and now it's a snow ramp to a saddle and then another snow ramp right to the summit. And that really for me was where a lot of, I really got the experience that I was looking for. And that was this experience of everything
00:03:18
Speaker
really else in my world was sort of somewhat out of my mind. And it was really me in that moment, you know, with my psychological, you know, sort of, let's say my mental and my physical sort of challenges, you know, going on, just working with sort of what I had to get this task done.
00:03:47
Speaker
And there's something I find very refreshing about climbing in general, and that is that it's extremely engaging. And this was the absolute epitome of that. I was so engaged in what I was doing. And I was beginning to feel like this was going to happen and that I was going to get this done.
00:04:17
Speaker
And, but I needed to continue, you know, working with my, you know, I obviously had the, the body that I have, and I had to, had to get that body to the top with the fitness ability, fitness and the ability that I, that I, that I brought. But then also my, my mental strength as well to, to keep pushing and, and just, just, just that, that mix and, and for that final 5 or
00:04:46
Speaker
six hours or whatever it was, was although very challenging, it took me right to what I truly believe was the edge of what I was capable of. It was exactly the experience that I was looking for. And I think, reflecting back now, I think that's part of why I feel so satisfied with the entire K2 experience for me, because it took me so close to that edge or right to the edge of
00:05:16
Speaker
and with such a representative experience or outcome to my ability, and just that it was just that very acute, powerful experience pushing that final five hours, five or six hours to the very summit.
Training and Personal Growth in Mountaineering
00:05:45
Speaker
So yeah, I couldn't have asked for more in terms of how my body and how I sort of coped through those final few hours and the experience itself that I had.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think this is so interesting and it touches on so many aspects of being an uphill athlete and whatever mountain sport you're engaged in. I think that when people talk about mental training and as I listen to you, John, I think about like you said, it took you right up to your perceived limits and
00:06:27
Speaker
I think in mountaineering and especially high altitude mountaineering, this is really the essence because what you're doing is you're trying to do something that you're not sure that you're capable of, but you're sure enough that you're going to try. And in this case, there's no backup. You're in a situation where you can't actually do it.
00:06:58
Speaker
you know, you're going to die. It's quite simple. And so it's this push and pull between confidence and knowing that you can do something and safely return.
00:07:17
Speaker
And this is, I think, what a lot of people talk about when they talk about mental training for climbing. And as I've written and talked about before, I think that this is 80% of mountaineering is knowing where these boundaries lie within ourselves. And the reason it's so scary and so hard is because the price of being wrong is so high.
00:07:39
Speaker
one of the things that I see time and time again with every epilaphlete and, you know, me and another coach, myself and another coach were having this discussion just yesterday with a person who he was coaching who climbed a traditionally protected 5'8 route and how that person was feeling about that. And, you know, it's
00:08:02
Speaker
The training is where you learn how much more you're capable of than you may think you are. And it gives you the confidence to do these things because you're stretched a little bit on a daily basis and I think that the mental
00:08:24
Speaker
let's call it training, is very analogous to the physical training in the sense that you just have to kind of consistently stretch yourself a little bit and a little bit and a little bit. And you start to realize that what you're capable of is much more. A, it's much more than you imagined. And B,
00:08:46
Speaker
The only way to expand that is to keep expanding it in these little bits. These expansions don't happen in giant steps. It's just like training. You don't become 20% fitter through one workout. You become 20% fitter through 200 workouts. The expansion of your own belief in yourself and what you're capable of
00:09:10
Speaker
is exactly the same way. It doesn't happen in one day. It happens in many little incremental steps that when put together end up being these huge reliefs. And I think that that's analogous to so many things in life. And I don't know and I don't believe that you're
00:09:30
Speaker
mental fortitude and mountaineering necessarily transfers to your abilities to handle yourself in interpersonal relationships or maybe in your work life or something. There's not a direct
00:09:45
Speaker
If you're good at one, you're not necessarily good at the other, but in all of these ways in which we show up in the world, this process is universal. That's where I think being an uphill athlete is so interesting and so useful.
00:10:03
Speaker
So, frankly, irrelevant as to what level people are at, whether it's climbing K2 or climbing a mountain behind their house, if that's your stretch goal, that's your stretch goal. And if that stretches you to that one little next level, then that's a win.
John's Training Evolution
00:10:19
Speaker
And you don't get to take K2 by starting with K2.
00:10:25
Speaker
And that maybe brings us around to where I wanted to start today, John, because we first chatted back in 2016 when you were contemplating going to climb Everest, right? It's actually the whole seven summits with Manaslu as well. And you had done Manaslu as an 8,000-er. During that year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So take us back to that, like, and specifically, like, how was that experience of training for Everest different than
00:10:54
Speaker
know, this time around training for K2? Yeah, so I mean, I had, I would say I was a completely different, a completely different athlete than I had done quite a lot of fitness other, you know, I was probably doing a lot more weights in a gym and other sort of recreational activity, but nothing
00:11:19
Speaker
anything structured or with a particular goal in mind at that point, really, in my life. And so I got in touch with, with you, Steve, and we did one-on-one coaching for probably about 8 months, 8 or 9 months, I think it was, prior to the commencing the 7th Summit's attempt, which was Denali.
00:11:47
Speaker
in the middle of 2017. And at that point, really, you know, when we started out, really, I probably had very different needs or requirements from a coach. And that was, you know, I needed some structure put into a training schedule. I really needed to be accountable for those workouts and then
00:12:18
Speaker
Um, also just being able to basically understand how to, how to train what, what, you know, something is something as simple as understanding that I needed to limit myself to zone two heart rate while I was doing, you know, anything from one hour to several hours on a treadmill or with a pack on my back or, or running. I mean, that was something I, it seems very,
00:12:47
Speaker
logical and sensible now to me, but at that time, I didn't know that. So those would have all, those were all really what I needed back then. Fast forward then really to, to now, you know, I would, I kept up a lot of the aerobic fitness over the last, over the sort of the five years since Everest. I got into,
00:13:15
Speaker
Can I interject something that I just wanted to touch back on 2016 and 2017 and just say, I think this process is really normal. It's the difference, and I've been through this with a lot of athletes, where it's essentially you learn how to train. Prior to working with me, you worked out, you exercised, you were fit,
00:13:43
Speaker
but you didn't know how to train, especially for an aerobic endeavor.
00:13:50
Speaker
mountaineering. And that's what you learned through that process. And I know we had a lot of communications about that. And you're like, hey, why am I doing all this? It doesn't make sense at first. And that's completely normal. It typically takes athletes coming from that background a couple of months to actually get bought in, honestly. And I don't try to force anything down anyone's throats. I trust the process. We've done this before. This is how this works.
00:14:17
Speaker
What do you want to know? What would help you to understand? Here's the physiology, here's the background, all that stuff. And then one of the things that I think you're about to tell us that I think is really interesting is you stopped working with me as a coach after you climbed Everest, but then you continued to do a bunch of other endurance sports. And yeah,
00:14:43
Speaker
And actually, before I, before I touch on that, I just, just remembered that back prior to engaging with yourself back in 2016, I'd already, I'd started my own training. And I, you know, and I had felt that I was going to be able to train on my own. And I had basically the sequence of events there were,
00:15:13
Speaker
I decided today's going to be the day I'm going to start training. And I went out and started running, went out and ran for an hour. And then the next day, went and ran for another hour. And then on the third day, went and ran for a third hour. And then I had such severe shin splints that I spent probably about the next 3 weeks unable to run at all. So, you know, I, that just probably,
00:15:40
Speaker
can paint the picture of how naive I was at that point in my own journey. You've never seen an athlete do that, have you, Martin? Yes. I certainly had the ambition and was willing to start enduring some pain and discomfort. And I think at that point, I believed that training
00:16:07
Speaker
had to be uncomfortable and painful to be worthwhile. These were just all things that I learnt as the months played out at that point with uphill athlete. I would like to maybe set the context here because I only started to be involved in your preparation and training in the last months leading to K2 expedition this year. There is this story since 2016.
00:16:36
Speaker
Maybe it'd be good to mention to listeners where you actually live. Because that is one of the most impressive parts. You live in Australia and so there's no mountains around, at least not very close. And how do you prepare there to climb the mountains? I think that's what many listeners can relate to quite a lot.
Adapting Training During Challenges
00:16:58
Speaker
And it is possible and it's challenging. But then all this journey to K2 without oxygen, I mean,
00:17:06
Speaker
This is impressive. Your story is really impressive. So maybe talk about it a bit. Well, I think probably the part you maybe were not aware of was when I was training for the seven summits, I was living in Muscat in Oman. So I was living in the Middle East. And I mean, if Brisbane in Australia, where I live now is flat,
00:17:35
Speaker
where I was living in Muscat in the Middle East was dead flat. And so that was a challenge. And hot, if I remember right. And hot, yeah, that's right. So, you know. Going to Denali from there. Yeah, for seven, eight months of the year, you know, you're talking about the temperature getting over 100 degrees Fahrenheit by 9 a.m. So, you know, if you want to go and do
00:18:06
Speaker
workouts, they've got to be either in a gym or, you know, very early. And so, yeah, you feel pretty, you feel like a real outcast when, you know, there was, there was a bit of a slope behind Muscat, probably went up about, I don't know, 200 meters or something like that. And, but there's no trail or anything, nobody ever goes up there. But I used to just drive to the bottom and then
00:18:34
Speaker
you know, basically just hack my way to the top on loose rock and dirt with a pack because that was what I had to work with. And then this time around, yeah, I'm based now in Brisbane in Australia. And I really didn't want, probably one of the things I was dreading most about training again with Steve was getting back on the Stairmaster.
00:19:03
Speaker
I had nightmares still thinking about some of the long five hour sessions on the Stairmaster back in 2016, 2017. So I think when Steve gave me the, well, reassured me that this time around we could try and keep a lot of the pack carrying sessions to outdoor, that was certainly a huge relief. And I was able to find
00:19:34
Speaker
a section of trail, probably only about 20 minutes drive from home that had about 120, 140 meters of vertical that I could basically climb and then dump water out, return to the bottom, fill water up again on a bubbler, on a public bubbler, and then back up again and do laps.
00:20:02
Speaker
And then not one stair master session in a gym had to be done. Yeah. So let's talk about those intervening years between 2017 and 2022. It was also as a coach, it was a bit of a shock for me because we hadn't really communicated in that interim. And so for me, you were still frozen in my mind as that athlete I worked with whatever five years prior.
00:20:31
Speaker
And then you come back and frankly, it took me a little bit to realize like, Oh wait, this is like a completely different person now. Yeah. So I think through, through all the lockdowns, I mean, I, look, I, I maintain to my fitness after, uh, Everest, um, it now really really was valuing maintaining a level of aerobic fitness, um, that I probably didn't really value prior. Um, and.
00:21:01
Speaker
Then with all the sort of COVID lockdowns and all of this, I got right into road cycling and into triathlons. Well, the triathlons came a bit later, but certainly the road cycling was a sport that I could get into when I couldn't travel to climb mountains and I couldn't go overseas or anything like that. And with that,
00:21:32
Speaker
built up, you know, I was probably doing about 15 to 20 hours a week of cycling, and that was probably 80% of it was on an indoor trainer. And which, friends of mine would all say was, it was a crazy way to spend time, but I always sort of would say, well, it's not nearly as hard as an indoor Stairmaster. So I built up a reasonably strong engine, I think, through
00:22:01
Speaker
a number of years of cycling and then transitioned then into some triathlons. And I think at that point, you know, I think at that point I felt like I, you know, it's now a long-term, you know, now I see myself as being more an aerobic athlete as opposed to prior to the seven summers where I was probably just looking to gain as much muscle mass as I could and had other objectives.
00:22:31
Speaker
And so yeah, so then kicking into the training for K2, it really felt at that point like I knew how to push myself for long, aerobic sessions. I knew how to train. I knew how to train for an event and how to put together a bit of structure to a multi-month program.
00:23:01
Speaker
I think what I didn't have and will probably always struggle with is an ability to avoid overreaching or overtraining. I am probably that personality that when I get excited about an objective, it's all I can really think about. And it's all I really want to put my time and effort into achieving. And that
00:23:31
Speaker
has led me on down a sort of an unfortunate or negative to a negative outcome time and time again. And usually it's with some sort of injury that really is just trying to ramp up too much too soon. And so. And can I stop there because I want to say like you were injured when we started working together. Tell me about that. Remember that?
00:24:00
Speaker
So how, again, paint a picture for those listening, you know, how you presented when, you know, you first started talking to me about working towards K2. Yeah. So I had, uh, actually I broke my foot in, at the end of November last year. And it was just a, just a, it was, it was a silly accident. Um. Yeah. But nevertheless, you had a broken foot. Yeah.
00:24:30
Speaker
And I had, again, you know, it was around the same time that I'd said, right, you know, I want to go for K2 in the following seasons to sort of seven, eight months ahead. So, you know, three weeks after breaking my foot, I'd take the boot off, the big moon boot off. And I sort of felt like that, that's usually how long people wait with broken, broken, you know, bones and before they get back into activity again. And so I started running and, uh,
00:25:01
Speaker
Of course it hurt and I sort of tried to push myself through it and, you know, really excited about this goal of K2 ahead and trying to push myself straight back into hour long, 90 minute long runs and see the pain didn't go away. And then went to see it, went back to see a doctor and they said, look, you know, this is, this is just far too soon. You know, you need to, you can't, you're not going to be able to run at this
00:25:30
Speaker
three weeks or even four or five and I ended up think I think I ended up having to wait about nearly nearly 10 weeks before I could even go for short runs. Yeah and we were talking during this period because you were anxious to get going right and you know I was I was
00:25:49
Speaker
I was counseling to keep playing the long game and we'll let this thing heal. And then when we started back, you remember the runs we started back with that I prescribed when we first started? How long were they? 15 minutes. You were about to reach through the screen and throttle me when I told you that. I only wanted you to run for 15 minutes. I was feeling so, um,
00:26:17
Speaker
So uncomfortable with it. I don't know if that's even the right word, but, but yeah, that I almost went and did runs and didn't upload them or something, you know, to training peaks, you know, almost went and did like, you know, unreported runs, just because my, my, my, my, just couldn't get my head comfortable with
00:26:39
Speaker
you know, the thought that all I was doing now was 15 minute runs. I mean, I was doing cycling. That was obviously the, the work around a bit for the, for building that aerobic, uh, fitness, but yeah, duration we're getting, we were getting some, you were getting some longer, you know, indoor cycling, you know, so super safe, uh, on the train or you can fall over or something like that. But yeah, there was some definitely workarounds with that. Yeah.
00:27:07
Speaker
And if you could say something to that John of almost a year ago, what would you tell him? Yeah, don't stress out about the little bumps that occur. You know, I am always, you know, I think in some ways training, I find training
00:27:32
Speaker
bit of, it's almost, it's therapeutic, because it makes me feel like I'm doing everything I can to get to that goal. And when I, when I'm denied the opportunity to train, it does, it does bring a lot of, I would say brings on a bit of anxiety that I, I probably don't do a good job of managing, you know, exercising when I've got colds and
00:27:59
Speaker
flus and whatever, because I, when I really don't need to be doing that, because at the end of the day, you know, you're, you're, you've got a seven-month horizon or something to your goal or whatever it is, and, and just being a little bit disciplined and stepping back and saying, Look, I've just got to focus on getting well, getting, getting back. And that, and in fact, it's, it's
00:28:28
Speaker
It's by stepping back and allowing yourself to rest properly that actually gets you back quicker and then training properly again quicker and probably gives you a better chance of being where you need to be come game day. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And you know, it's really hard to
Coaching and Judgment in Training
00:28:48
Speaker
do for yourself. You've never had an athlete do this, right Martin? Oh, we certainly recognize.
00:28:54
Speaker
uh, myself in there and I think many clients also, you know, there's this therapeutic aspect of training, but then we, there is a difference between training for training. I call it, you know, that you just get out because you just love the feeling and, uh, and maybe like also helping with the anxiety, maybe in the mental stress throughout the day. So you just want to go and move and train and it feels good.
00:29:20
Speaker
But it's not always the smartest thing to do on a given day. We need the recovery. We need the training, like the smart plan for the training. Right. So there are those two aspects. So I really recognize a lot of what you're saying, John, that, you know, sometimes it's a.
00:29:39
Speaker
It's really hard to stop. The setbacks feel hard, the injuries and your anxiety. Am I doing enough? Will I be ready in time? And all of that. But now, retrospectively, I guess you know that, wow, it all made sense. And yes, I lost a bit, but it doesn't take that long to get back. But yeah, it is not perfect. We are not perfect. And it's just good to be out there and pushing yourself.
00:30:10
Speaker
And I'll add onto that. I mean, you know, we, I'm thinking about the upper athlete coaching staff, you know, we've got four athletes, four coaches who are really active in the athletic careers right now. And, you know, you Martin and Alyssa particularly competing and doing things on an ex on a world-class level. And I think Martin, you're the only one of those four that don't have a coach like the other three all have a coach.
00:30:40
Speaker
And these are coaches that have coaches. And the reason is it's really hard to have that perspective. You are absolutely forgiven if you need someone to do that. Because there's also this saying, the reason a coach has a whistle is to tell people to stop, not to start. And it's so true.
00:31:03
Speaker
It goes both ways. Sometimes people need motivation and accountability, and sometimes people need to know what's the smart thing to do. And this was absolutely, for me, a really hard period of our relationship, John, because I know that you hated it in terms of starting out. And I know you thought I was being too conservative.
00:31:26
Speaker
And I was telling you, look, it doesn't matter if you do a 15-minute run right now or a 30-minute run right now. On the day you summit K2, that is not what's going to make the difference. What's going to make the difference is if your foot's still broken or not. And I know that's hard to hear. And it really is powerful to have someone
00:31:50
Speaker
kind of holding the reins and someone that you trust. And I think that that's, that goes to the heart of the coaching relationship. You really trusted me and I have to thank you for that.
00:32:02
Speaker
and there's only so much I can do. I can explain, I can talk, I can cajole, I can send you messages, I can try to sweet-talk you, I can try to threaten you or scare you with what might happen if you don't kind of, you know, stick to the kind of quote-unquote right path. But ultimately, it's your decision to trust me as your coach that that's the right thing to do.
00:32:25
Speaker
You were able to do that, so that's not easy. We got through that. It was a tricky period, but we got through that. Perhaps to tie that back to probably one of the primary reasons why I got in touch with you back in 2016 was I wanted to feel comfortable,
00:32:55
Speaker
that everything that could be done to prepare me for this mountain as best as possible was, was now being done. You know, I was being advised on how, on all the fitness-related steps to take to get, you know, to prepare myself as, as well as possible. And as soon as I, I can still remember it, it's eight, seven, eight years, seven years ago when I, when I first got in touch with you and, um,
00:33:23
Speaker
And we had a call and when I hung up after that call, I remember immediately feeling a sense of pressure come off my shoulders that I've now felt like, okay, now I don't have to feel anxiety that I might be training the wrong way or that I'm training, over training or under training or whatever. Now I feel like somebody who absolutely understands this is going to control that. And that was,
00:33:52
Speaker
You know, that was a huge weight off my shoulders. And by the same token, you know, fast forward now to earlier this year, I had to recognize that, you know, I wanted that. I wanted to bring in someone that I trusted, and then I had to recognize that in trusting you, I have to trust every decision, you know, everything you're telling me.
00:34:22
Speaker
So, so, yes, it was, certainly, I found myself thinking, is this really going to be enough for, you know, for this mountain in 5 months? But I think, you know, and I think there's probably, there was also a part where I was thinking, completely honest, I was kind of thinking like, Steve doesn't, Steve doesn't know who I, like, doesn't know who I am, doesn't, you know, he's like, maybe he, he doesn't, he's not
00:34:53
Speaker
recognizing that I've gained all this fitness since last time we spoke or something like that. And, and so, you know, all those sort of thoughts go through your head when you, you're looking forward to a workout tomorrow and it's, you know, posted in training peaks as a 15 minute jog. It doesn't, doesn't really feel like it's, uh, doesn't fire you up. No, it's not, it's not kind of what I'm certainly not, um,
00:35:18
Speaker
telling all my friends that, you know, this is what training looks like for K2, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's not made for TV, but yeah, it's yeah. So once we got your kind of confirmation that your foot was healed through a kind of, I would say there was a two-pronged approach. One, it was these, these easy runs and just continuously checking to make sure that there was no increase in pain.
00:35:46
Speaker
and you're tolerating the movement and going back to the doctor and getting some film and knowing that it was healing and you weren't. There could be a situation with a foot fracture that isn't allowed to
00:36:05
Speaker
heal properly where part of the bone can actually die because it's not receiving enough blood flow. And that's obviously to be avoided at all costs. That has like lifelong consequences, especially for an endurance athlete. So that was in the back of my mind as a worst case scenario that we wanted to steer well clear of. So now go into the, let's fast forward a little bit and workouts start to get longer.
Muscular Endurance Training Methods
00:36:31
Speaker
You did a lot of training on your bike.
00:36:33
Speaker
because you do live in Australia and Brisbane and it's part of your life and part of your social network and your wife ride together and things. Then I want to fast forward as we get this typical progression where we start off very generalized in our training, but the workouts need to become more and more specific, look more and more like the event.
00:36:58
Speaker
As we got into the spring, we started to shift things around and try to get you on your feet more. And then we brought in Martin as well for some help. Let's talk about those foot porn workouts first. And you mentioned earlier, you know, about the weighted carries. Um, you know, how, how did that go for you and living in Brisbane, I mean, Brisbane's, you know, there's topography there, but it's not, it's not, you know, big mountains right out the back door.
00:37:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. So there was those pack carry sessions, which I was able to do on a local little peak, which were probably 120 meters vertical. I think one of the real benefits I was getting out of those workouts was, as you instructed me to do so, I just walked
00:37:57
Speaker
trail running shoes rather than really supportive hiking boots. And in doing so on the, moving on the uneven, on the uneven surface up, up sort of quite, quite steep, quite a steep incline. I could really feel that that was demanding a lot of stability through my knees, my hips and ankles. And so I think probably one of the real benefits that I got out of those sessions was
00:38:27
Speaker
was building up that stability. Perhaps, you know, even the aerobic gains I was getting then might have even been secondary to the, to the, to the benefits that I was getting through building up all of that, a lot of that, that stability. Otherwise, the other, the other workouts certainly that I feel like I got a lot of benefit from were these muscular endurance workouts. I'd never done anything like these before.
00:38:57
Speaker
And perhaps just to quickly summarize what they look like, I would do these once a week. And I would start off just with no weight at all and progressed up to about 20% of body weight in a vest on my chest. But I would start by doing 20 step lunges and then straight after the
00:39:27
Speaker
20 step lunges, I would do, sorry, it was 20 jump lunges. Then I would have a, say a one minute rest, and then I'd repeat that, and then have another one minute rest. And then I would do about eight sets of that. And then there was eight sets of jump squats, and then eight sets of box step ups, and then eight sets of
00:39:57
Speaker
normal lunges with weight. And with each week, either the weight that I was holding would increase or the rest between each of the sets would reduce. And right up to, I think, about week 14, I'd be doing, after my 20 jump lunges, I'd have a 10-second rest.
00:40:27
Speaker
And that would be with a 20 kilogram or 18 kilograms in a vest. And then again, another 20 and then 10 seconds rest. And that really was something I really had to build up to. But once I achieved, even by about week eight, nine, 10, I noticed that when I would go for my weighted pack carry sessions outdoors that my
00:40:56
Speaker
Resistance to fatigue was had increased him Dramatically so I could you know, I could hike up for whatever it was 15 minutes and you know, I had quite a pace with 30 kilograms in a pack and I just was not feeling that burning in my legs that I would always have expected to to feel and I would It was
00:41:27
Speaker
And I really feel like these workouts played a big role when I then went on to K2, which is particularly, as everyone would know, is a particularly steep climb where it is very intense on those working muscles in your legs. And that resistance to fatigue that I'd been able to build up was really,
00:41:56
Speaker
really helpful as far as not burning myself too much during those days, not arriving into camp, absolutely wasted and in need of, you know, all this, you know, several days of rest or going down to base camp to rest properly, I could, I could bounce back again the next day and, and, and do it again. Um, and so, so yeah, those, those workouts, I think were, were very, um, made it, made a big difference.
00:42:26
Speaker
Yeah. Martin, I'd like to hear your perspective on this because John did two kinds of muscular endurance workouts. We did the gym based and we did the outdoor. And this is frequently a question that people have. Maybe they're using a training plan and both are presented as options.
00:42:49
Speaker
And people always have a lot of questions about this, like which one should they do? Should they switch back and forth? Talk to the audience, talk to the listener about these muscular endurance protocols and how you use them as a coach for an athlete like John.
00:43:10
Speaker
Yeah, this is the good point. So I would start maybe with the specificity, as you mentioned. So I started to help out with John's plan in maybe three months before the expedition. So that's really the period where you need to be specific towards the goal. And the goal was K2, a really steep mountain. So how to best prepare for it? What do we include in the plan? What we don't include in the plan to really make the good use of his time.
00:43:38
Speaker
I had to look at the plan how much time, John, you have for training per week, per day, and then really determine, okay, usually I do it as a key workout, so usually there's like two workouts per week that are like kind of making the difference in that training block, right? And then the rest is really mostly zone one, zone two, zone two training.
00:44:03
Speaker
So in this last blog before the expedition, one of the key workouts is the muscle endurance because that really is very impactful. As John, you mentioned that you really felt the difference within maybe a couple of weeks and months. You really felt it already during your outdoor uphill hikes.
00:44:23
Speaker
The second, then the other session, the other option is also the outdoor one. So I usually try to mix it with my clients or also for John that I know the mental aspect, the impact it has on clients to do it indoors, but sometimes there's just no other option, right? The best would be if the client, if you live in the mountains, if you live in Chamonix or in Boulder, Colorado, or I don't know, close to Mount Rainier that you can actually train
00:44:52
Speaker
in the mountains and you have the specific terrain really right at the door, but that's usually not the case. Actually, I think most cases our clients live in the cities or in a very low altitude. So how do we connect the dots? How do we make it specific? So it's a lot about inventing, but sometimes you just need to do the work. You need to stay in the gym and you need to relay.
00:45:18
Speaker
stress the importance of those workouts and that really the adaptations coming out of those will make a big difference and so I would say that back to muscle endurance it's I think one of the kind of how to say signature workouts of uphill athlete they are really making a big difference and then the rest of the workouts was really to keep the volume even increase it
00:45:43
Speaker
But then also, we were coming closer to the expedition. And so there's this really important factor we needed to address. And what's really challenging was the altitude, right? So how to acclimatize. And ideally, before we talk about acclimatization, Martin, sorry to interrupt. But before we talk about acclimatization, I just want to stay on the muscon endurance workouts for a moment, because you're right. It's a signature workout.
00:46:09
Speaker
And as John pointed out, it makes massive difference. Your legs just don't get hired. And, you know, when you've experienced the benefits of this, it's like, Oh, okay. Yeah, I get it. This really works. And it's really valuable. One of the things I like to tell people when I talk about these workouts is, you know, why is the gym
00:46:30
Speaker
base muscular endurance worked out good. It is good because it's easy to control all the parameters. We can adjust by two kilograms. We can adjust that load. We can adjust those work rest intervals. And we can get kind of, let's say, geeky about what the load we're prescribing.
00:46:55
Speaker
Why do we choose a particular load? Well, because we're looking for a particular response. So as a coach, when you're looking for a particular response, you can go into the workout and make small adjustments that as an athlete, you might not really notice like, oh wait, we went from like a 60 second rest to a 20 second rest. Why is the coach doing that? You might not even think about it.
00:47:19
Speaker
but as a coach you're like okay like now we've we've done this this many times i've seen this kind of response i've gotten this kind of feedback i'm gonna make these kinds of adjustments to this workout or the work rest interval or the weight carried and it's also always in relation to the goal right like how heavy is that pack going to be how high is john going to be
00:47:41
Speaker
you know, where's the, where is the lowest hanging fruit for this athlete in terms of making a significant game between now and their goal. And these are kind of all the, all the things that a coach is thinking about. And I don't have a recipe. Like, yeah, you have to actually sit with hundreds of athletes and go through it and you know, you get a feel for it. And a lot of it's communication, right? What John is telling me, what's he writing in his comments, what he's writing about his rest, all of these things.
00:48:07
Speaker
And the good thing about the outdoor workouts is you said Martin is like mentally it's just more fun and it feels more like climbing and you're, you know, it's fun to go hard. It's fun to do these things. You get to see views, you get to see the sunrise, you get to, or the sunset or whatever. Like it's, it's easier to, to do a big workload. It's, it's harder for all of us to at least I think,
00:48:35
Speaker
motivate to do these workouts in a gym setting. So it's okay to mix them back and forth. If I'm just putting on my geeky scientist hat, I would prefer to do them all in the gym where I could tweak all the little variables and try to maximize
00:48:52
Speaker
You are optimized as athlete but that's actually there's also not a robot athlete is a human being and has other has emotions and you know other needs and it's important to feed those as well and i like to burn out so there's just there's just balance and push all of this and some athletes i just honestly will only have them do.
00:49:14
Speaker
outdoor workouts, muscular neurons workouts, even because their limiting factor may not actually come down to optimizing the physical part. Their limiting factor may be
00:49:26
Speaker
coming down to optimizing the mental side of things. These are all the considerations that go through my mind when prescribing and working with these different types of muscle endurance workouts. You need a community. On the coaching team, we talk to each other. Martin, you became my partner coach with working with John and gave me a conversation partner to talk to someone about
00:49:50
Speaker
bounce ideas off and just have discussions around how to proceed and how to optimize for John. And I think if you're working from a training plan or a training group, it's really helpful to have some kind of community of people, whether it's on a forum or with friends or on similar journeys and to bounce ideas because there's no
00:50:13
Speaker
You know, there's a there's a worst case scenario and there's a best case scenario, but most of the scenarios are somewhere in the middle of the bell curve. And that's where we live most of the time. And that's where we want to stay. So just wanted to kind of put that all out there. Yeah, I agree.
00:50:28
Speaker
There's just so much to talk about here about how we work as coaches and on the individual coaching level especially. So the individuality is really important, as you mentioned. So what is the responsiveness of the athletes to training? So that is different for everybody. So it usually takes quite a long time to actually figure that out.
00:50:51
Speaker
Comes to communication and just following the process of training so obviously it helps if we have this long-term relationship as you have with John and so listening to the to the history of the athletes he or she comes from more like from the strength power background or from endurance and so,
00:51:11
Speaker
But then also mentioning the muscle endurance gym based and the outdoor based, I like to think about it also like a spectrum from let's say maximum strength to endurance, right? So it really comes to let's say one next squad. So the maximum strength is really the
00:51:31
Speaker
the individual movement that you can do like a maximum of what kind of weight can you carry doing that. And then it comes to basically running where you, the load is so small that you can just do like repetitively for hours and hours on end. So it really is this practice from strength.
00:51:46
Speaker
endurance and so the muscle endurance is somewhere there on that spectrum and so I would say that the gym based one is closer to the maximum strength because you're doing lower amount of repetitions right and with more weight and as you say it's controlled and it should be also because
00:52:03
Speaker
there is a chance of getting injured also if you do a bad movement and with heavy weight. And maybe then the outdoor based, it's usually longer. It is about going up the hill with the weight on your shoulders. A good thing about it is really specific to the mountaineering. But I would say it's a bit closer to endurance on that strength endurance spectrum. That's how I like to think about it. That helps me also to determine, OK,
00:52:30
Speaker
When should I start the gym-based one? Maybe further from the event, from the objective, from the climb, and then really introduce the outdoor base a bit later. How long it should be, those sessions, how long should they be? But it's very individual. It comes also about what the objective actually is, what does it look like. So it's not a one-size-fits-all approach. It always needs to be individual.
00:53:01
Speaker
John, for you, you know, I think that going back to connecting to some of the things you said earlier, for me, as I was coaching you through this, you know, two things I had to adjust to. One, when I first worked with you in 2016-17,
00:53:20
Speaker
You were more of like a gym rat learning how to endurance train. And then in the interim, you'd suddenly gone off and become like a really good endurance athlete and done all this really long, you know, long duration cycling and triathlons and stuff. And you were, I would say, um, you were always good. You were never lacking motivation. I never had to like.
00:53:42
Speaker
You know, you always did your workouts. That was not the thing with you. Um, the thing with you was making sure you didn't kind of do too much. And that can be hard for a coach because when I'm trying to tell what, what, how, as Martin said, the individuality of your responsiveness to the workouts, like how is the workout actually affecting you? You know, your responses are always like, I feel great. I can do more.
00:54:10
Speaker
And that's really hard for a coach because I'm like knowing that that's always the response I get and I would always have to ask like more questions or dig in like, what about this or what about that? Or are you feeling this? Because I'm looking for, you know, and for people working with a coach, you know, the best thing you can do is just be really truthful with them.
00:54:34
Speaker
for you and everyone's different, right? Like you're an optimistic guy, John. So you, you know, you're, you paint things in that, in that way. And I learned that and, and I, I tweaked and knew that, you know, the other piece of it is as a coach, as an athlete gets fitter, there's less and less that you can do to make them better. And there's, um, more and more you can do to make them worse. There's more and more you can do to make it.
00:55:00
Speaker
make them regress by stepping over a line. So the fine tuning becomes more and more fine.
00:55:10
Speaker
And it's like, I just gotta, I gotta stay on the side of the line. Cause when I go over the line, he's, he hit K2 is all right. Like, so I'm trying, you know, there's always like this little, little judgment. So the other piece of that now that I want to go into is that, uh, hypoxic, uh, training and with you, John, you know, we wanted to, this is something that,
Hypoxic Training and Acclimatization
00:55:34
Speaker
you know, in the past with a pill athlete, we've been very skeptical of the benefits of normal baric hypoxic stimuli of all different kinds, whether it's sleeping in a hypoxic intent or using one of these restrictive masks, and there's a bunch of different modalities. Because the jury was really out, and one of the things that we've kind of
00:55:57
Speaker
settled on over the years is we've realized through just the good old school of hard knocks that coaching athletes while they're sleeping in a tent, for example, use that case, they just can't recover because the quality of sleep is so poor. And there is a kind of a conventional wisdom out there that what is it, Martin, you need around 300 hours.
00:56:28
Speaker
In a tent, is that the number that people are throwing around these days to get an effect? That's a lot of hours. We say, okay, we'll do this with people, but training-wise, we'll have them in a maintenance mode while they're in
00:56:49
Speaker
this pre-acclimatization phase, whether sleeping in a tent or whatever. And with you, we couldn't get a tent to Australia. So we elected to use a mask. And Martin, you want to talk a little bit about how you helped set that up? And then John, I'd like to hear about your experience. Yeah.
00:57:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's such a huge topic. And so why he stepped in to help out with John's plan, again, two, three months before. So that was really about the time to ask those questions. Can you acclimatize? How long will you have from the mountain? How will you actually be in Pakistan? So there is a lot of these informations that I need to know before if we actually should invest into the pre acclimatization, I call it. So doing it at home.
00:57:48
Speaker
And so, again, another question I can ask, can you, John, maybe travel to some mountains like a trip before Pakistan, where you can train, where you can maybe even work online or something, just being away from home, but actually acclimatized in the real altitude.
00:58:07
Speaker
That's so many questions to ask first before we actually start talking about using the hypoxic tense or the mask, right? So there is a difference. There is the hypoxic tense. It's a normal baric hypoxia. So the altitude, the difference between that and the altitude is that the pressure changes when you go to high elevation.
00:58:31
Speaker
And that really affects how you get the oxygen into your body. So the options for John were limited for traveling. And so we needed to try to use the hypoxic machine. And then as you mentioned, Steve, the tent wasn't possible. So we had the mask. What is the difference there is actually that the tent allows you to spend quite many hours per day.
00:58:58
Speaker
Once you sleep, once you sleep in the, in the tent, so you can make maybe seven, eight hours per day. And so then the aim is to really accumulate enough time for the body to go through the first stage of the acclimatization. And for that you need about at least 200 hours, but ideally 300 hours before you leave for the expedition. And if you count what that means is actually about 12 days, I think.
00:59:23
Speaker
you know, 24 hours per day to 300 hours. So it's really as if you went to the mountains and acclimatized in a classic way, classic way, tracking, tracking in or climbing some acclimatization peaks there and a lower, lower altitude, three, four, 5,000 meters, really going up gradually. But you cannot do that. So you need to try to accomplish that using the tent.
00:59:47
Speaker
Then it wasn't possible. So then the next stage is to use the mask. And so sleeping with the mask, I've tried that with clients. It's not great because you can imagine that it's just not very comfortable and the sleep quality is really reduced. And so there's always this cost benefit, as you mentioned, Steve, that yes, we are getting the acclimatization effect, but we're really losing the recovery effect of the sleep.
01:00:15
Speaker
So there's always this discussion to be had, you know, but we really need to make sure that the client is prepared the best possible. And I used to be skeptical about it as well in the last years, but actually in the last couple of years, I've been studying altitude physiology.
01:00:33
Speaker
at school and just learning about it, the new research coming out and all of that. So, now this last year I had this great opportunity working with Apple Athlete as a coach to use it with many clients and the results are just pretty, it's just confirming it works. It's really the best we can do if there is not the option to go to the rail mountains and the rail altitude.
01:00:57
Speaker
Then going to using the mask. So it's really the protocol where you're exercising with the mask on and with the reduced oxygen content in the area of breathing. So you're actually creating this hypoxic situation. Your body senses it and starts to adapt. And so body adapts on many levels. The physiology of the acclimatization is very complex, but it really is. You're getting the EPO effect, the erythropo 18.
01:01:26
Speaker
in the process but is trying starting to acclimatize by forming the red blood cells, increasing the hematocrite and so increasing the oxygen carrying capacity but also there is an
01:01:43
Speaker
there are really important processes happening in the muscles actually because you are exercising in the hypoxia. So for me, that's a very important factor where you are actually doing something really specific. You're training in the hypoxic situation. I would like to actually hear from you, John, like how did it actually work for you? Because we couldn't really accumulate the 300 hours. That's the ideal situation to try at least 12 days.
01:02:12
Speaker
in the total amount of time of acclimatization before K2. So we couldn't do that. You were only able to use the mask. So how did you actually feel up there? And also, how long did you have before the actual climb? And then also, how many rotations did you do before the summit push? Because the conditions also were really complicated for the acclimatization process on the mountain, right?
01:02:41
Speaker
Yeah, so I guess the initial advice that I got from you both was to try to source the unit and the tent. I could, being in Australia, probably a lot less opportunities to rent the unit and I couldn't
01:03:11
Speaker
actually find anyone who would supply a used or new tent in country. So that was then going to have to come from the US, which I think was going to take, I think by the time we decided that I was going to do this, I think there was about eight, eight or nine weeks before, before I was off. And I think, you know, I was going to probably end up burning two or two weeks just getting the tent and then the, I think the cost of
01:03:38
Speaker
getting a tent was suddenly made the whole exercise quite a lot more expensive. So I rented the unit and just with the mask, and then I did the two different types of sessions. So either on the bike trainer, stationary trainer with the mask on for
01:04:05
Speaker
anywhere between, I think, 20 and 40 minutes. I think we sort of worked up to about 40 minutes by the end. And on other days, I was doing the intermittent breathing. So just sort of on the, on the couch at home, I'd have the mask on for, I think, about 4 minutes, and then off for about 2 minutes, and then repeat that about 10 times, I think, because I think, or maybe even slightly more than that by the end. But for about an hour. A bit of a progression, that's right. Yeah, about an hour.
01:04:36
Speaker
Um, and, and whilst doing both of those, I would have the oximeter, uh, on my finger. So I'm measuring the blood, uh, the oxygen saturation real time. And I'm effectively adjusting the oxygen on the hypoxico unit to ensure that I was, uh, had a oxygen saturation at the particular target, which was usually at around 80% or, or
01:05:04
Speaker
maybe a little sometimes 78% I think I was sort of aiming for. Start probably a bit conservatively so that we don't. 95 or something initially or something and then and then working down. Yeah, yeah, certainly want to do it started in about like 90% usually tried to really let it drop down so that that's actually
01:05:24
Speaker
the reflection of the body senses the, you know, the lack of oxygen. And so you offset these adaptations, the first stage of adaptations, and then you can allow yourself to, we try to let it drop down to even the 80, 85%. So, but that's really a bit later in that process. Yeah, and I can say that the, it was a real learning curve for me,
01:05:53
Speaker
to, to using the machine. So I, you know, I would get on the trainer, uh, the bike trainer and I would warm up without the mask on. And then I would put the mask on and I'd be trying to, trying to keep my heart rate where I wanted to sort of keep it and keep the saturation where I wanted it to be was, was, was, I found it was quite, it was quite tricky. And it probably took me two weeks at least of workouts that were quite ugly.
01:06:23
Speaker
just trying to work out how, you know, there was obviously there's the volume of air that's coming through that you can control as well. And so sort of working out how I could breathe timed with the pulses of air coming out of the unit. You know, I would say for anyone who's listening that if you're using one of those for the first time,
01:06:49
Speaker
You have to expect a bit of a learning curve. I mean, in the first week or two, I was getting frustrated that I couldn't, you know, I couldn't figure it out. And then, of course, you know, if you just take the mask off and stop, you're not actually getting any closer to figuring out how to balance everything delicately. You kind of just have to keep persevering through that workout and just keep doing those little fine adjustments to either your intensity, so I'd be adjusting the watts.
01:07:17
Speaker
on the trainer or adjusting the sort of the knob on the Hoxico unit. But I would say that those sessions that I got on the trainer really, I felt I was getting a real benefit. Look, I'm sure there was a great benefit occurring on the level that you just described there with your red blood cell count, but I could
01:07:47
Speaker
what I was actually finding was I was getting more and more comfortable breathing air in a sort of in a restricted capacity. And so initially I would be almost panicking a bit when I couldn't get air in, when I wanted the air and I'd be tearing the mask off and gasping for air. And then I found that as things evolved, I got more comfortable with that sensation of really having to suck air in
01:08:17
Speaker
And I have this sort of belief that that paid, that had a secondary benefit, perhaps, when I was on the mountain, and I was now in this oxygen-depleted, deprived, you know, environment, and I was really having to suck the air in quite actively. So yeah, that was a, I felt like that was another benefit. I think it's great to hear your experience, John, and I think I want to kind of
01:08:45
Speaker
Zoom out for our listeners for a second and kind of make a general observation about training that this is sort of how things progress. We don't know exactly why this works. And we don't know how well it works. And honestly, we're not even sure if the benefits truly outweigh the risk, because there are things, just so many factors that we do not understand. And that's how this all progresses. And it's typical of, I think, the 100 years of endurance training
01:09:15
Speaker
you know, research and practice that's been done is, you know, coaches and athletes work together and they're trying to figure out better ways of doing things from preparing for events. And, you know, you try things and they're awkward and clumsy and, you know, difficult and frustrating and all of those things.
01:09:44
Speaker
And we think they help. And then like, it can be that years later we find out, you know, Oh wait, well what we were doing, man, that's actually really bad. And now like everybody who did that is going to have, I don't know, like permanent problems with their hematocrit or something like who knows, like, you know, there's, you know, one of the things that I remember about, I always think about when I think about how to do that, a patient is, uh, some unpublished research that I've seen.
01:10:13
Speaker
by Dr. Robert Schoeni, who's a researcher based out of Colorado, where he's doing these series of long-term studies on people going to roughly, I think it's a little above 5,000 meters, and he's mapping the human genome of these people as they go through the acclimatization process.
01:10:38
Speaker
Forgive me if I get these numbers wrong, but I think it's like there's six thousand switches on the genome and I think like the I think like he said, you know of those six thousand three thousand are Sort of down regulated in two thousand are up regulated like there's far much there's far more going on in the human Adaptation to altitude than our old models said like it used to just be this model around
01:11:09
Speaker
you know, you know, we're respiring more so that we're breeding off more carbon dioxide. So that puts us into, you know, changes our respite, you know, changes the balance of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the bloodstream. And this causes, you know, blood, athodosis and da, da, da, like it used to be,
01:11:36
Speaker
It was a model and it was relatively simplistic. And there are certain observable things about that that we can say, yes, that happens, but there's a ton more that is happening. And it's interesting to think about what you were just saying, John, like, okay, like your comfort with breathing and you just wanted to rip off the mask and you became more comfortable. Like what's actually happening there? Like the reality is like, we don't know, but this feedback that you have that I became more comfortable. And I think it helped me when I got to high altitude.
01:12:05
Speaker
Like we also have to give that weight. Is that a measurable thing that we can like, you know, write to, you know, nature and publish a scientific finding on? No, of course not. It's totally anecdotal, but this is kind of the way we kind of progress and we probe and we figure things out and we think, okay, this is working and Martin's involved in really interesting research in his master's program.
01:12:27
Speaker
on other things about high altitude adaptations and trying to understand the role of the, in his research, if I may say, the human spleen and what role that organ plays in a conversation and how that might be a factor and how that might be something that we could actually stimulate and measure and another thing that we could tweak in terms of preparing people for high altitude.
01:12:56
Speaker
It's really interesting. I feel like we're on the ground floor, or not really on the ground floor, but on one of the first floors of building this piece of human knowledge around how we acclimatize. We started with, it wasn't that long ago, people thought that if you went to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen, that you'd come back permanently brain damaged and never walk and never be able to talk again.
01:13:21
Speaker
I was literally what they told Reinhold Messner and Peter Hapler before they went and climbed Everest without oxygen for the first time in 1978. And obviously, those guys are both still alive. They're super competent. They're super charming. They're highly functioning individuals. All that was false, right? So yeah, it's just fascinating. It's just so cool to be part of this. I get so excited about it. Yeah, it is fascinating just to anecdote here that
01:13:50
Speaker
Now I'm involved in the research, in the study, and so many journal articles, even the recent ones, usually finish with, okay, so we observed whatever, but the mechanics behind this are still obscure. We just don't know why it's happening. It's just observed that acclimatization, people experience this, but we just don't know why.
01:14:20
Speaker
And that's completely normal. That's the way this process works. We don't know why. And then later they figure it out and say, oh, this is fine. Yeah. Okay. So maybe I would like to ask, John, how did it actually go on K2 then? Were you going back to the mountain now? What was the protocol? You already sat in the previous podcast that the hike in took you about a week.
01:14:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. It was about a week. The actual expedition itself was about 10 days shorter than pretty much all the other expeditions or all the other main expeditions. And I think when Steve and I had a call a little bit before I left and I sort of just started to sort of
01:15:18
Speaker
introduced the possibility of trying to attempt without oxygen. Steve sort of looked at the start date of the trip and when we expected to be at base camp versus when the summit windows typically come on K2. And he basically said, look, I think this is not enough time. You won't have, you know, you'll need to get a rotation up to within a thousand meters of the summit. And
01:15:47
Speaker
in the three and a half weeks that I had at base camp, it was not going to be sufficient to do a summit push and then probably what would have needed to be two rotations. So obviously, so I'm sort of perhaps somewhat regretting being on an expedition that's got a shorter total duration and, you know,
01:16:17
Speaker
feeling, I guess, like my hand was now forced with this start date that I would have to climb with oxygen. So anyway, did the hike in? I mean, the trek in is, as sort of mentioned on the previous podcast, it's a challenging trek in. It's nothing like an Everest base camp kind of trail, defined trail or anything like that.
01:16:46
Speaker
Yeah, quite uneven, quite not defined. And really for probably more than half of it, you're just on rocks that are moving underneath your feet. And so you can't really move very fast. And although you don't gain a lot of altitude with each day, I think the actual trek itself is challenging enough that it's probably already
01:17:16
Speaker
kicking that acclimatization process off. Um, at least, at least that's sort of how I, how I kind of felt. Um, and then we got to, we got to base camp and, you know, we couldn't really move for the first four, four, four days or five days because of just, just snowed. It was just effectively a blizzard for four, five days. Um, we had, uh,
01:17:45
Speaker
you know, nearly probably about consistently about 10 inches of snow just sitting at base camp. And of course, with that, everyone, all the negativity starts to spread around base camp that this is not gonna, this is not gonna go this year. But then when the snow did, then when the sort of the storm passed, we started with, you know, just a,
01:18:14
Speaker
I walk up to advanced base camp and then a day later went for a rotation. So we went and spent one night at camp one and then one night at camp two. And my hope was to get beyond that, if I was still to keep any hope at all of being able to attempt without oxygen.
01:18:44
Speaker
However, the weather came back in again and we, after those two days on the mountain, we had to descend back to base camp. The Mingma who runs Imagine Nepal, the expedition I was on, he was supportive of my ambition to attempt without oxygen and so he
01:19:14
Speaker
offered to, offered me to do another rotation when the weather cleared. And it just so happened that the weather cleared after I'd only had one day in base camp. And normally, you know, you would have come down from, you know, 7,000 meters having really put yourself under a fair bit of stress.
01:19:40
Speaker
And you'd be wanting several days at base camp, eating base camp food, enjoying the 5,000 meter altitude and all that oxygen. So I was certainly nervous about only having a single day before going back up onto the mountain and effectively having to get significantly higher on that next rotation. And look, there was one other guy in the group as well who wanted to attempt without oxygen, but
01:20:09
Speaker
he just didn't feel that the one day in base camp was enough. So I went with a Sherpa and we went up and we did one night at Camp 2, straight to Camp 2, and then we did a night at Camp 3, or this Japanese Camp 3, and then we
01:20:33
Speaker
did a day trip right up to the actual camp three. So we were now, we'd now got up to about 7,500 meters or so. Um, and then back down to base camp. And I mean, those two rotations, I found, I would say very challenging. I would say they were, I was, I felt like I was, obviously I didn't, we were, we were pushing, I think as far as,
01:21:01
Speaker
a climate and acclimatization schedule, um, a rotation schedule. You know, we were probably being quite aggressive there with minimal time in base camp before going for rotation one and then almost no rest before going for a second rotation. Um, but with, you know, with the second rotation, I felt at least the first, the first up to camp two felt easier. So I felt like I was, I felt like things were improving, but
01:21:31
Speaker
still feeling pretty nervous about the prospect of going any higher without oxygen. But anyway, completed those two rotations and then back down to base camp, knowing that there was potentially just enough time to recover before the sort of potential summit push might go. Okay. That's what we talked about, what you can control and what you can hold those factors there.
01:22:00
Speaker
the scale of the mountains, the conditions, the weather, it's just totally out of your control. So it comes to really be prepared physically as much as you can, which you did. And so then the acclimatization plan, you can have a plan, but then the plan also goes out the window because the weather just doesn't play out. So you need to do the best you can. So I think I think the the what I tried to tell what I what I had
01:22:30
Speaker
told myself with, before I even started training, was I want to reach a level of fitness so that I have, you know, I have the options to be able to potentially go for a short wind, the weather window. Or, you know, if the weather window suddenly we're at base camp and suddenly a weather window appears in
01:22:59
Speaker
two or three days from now, I have the fitness to be able to get up the mountain quickly and be able to participate in that. Or I want to be able to have the fitness so that I'm not completely wasted when I arrive into camp. And despite being at altitude, I'm capable then of resting enough
01:23:27
Speaker
that I'm able to get back to a point where I can go again. And that was, that was always sort of the logic I was, I was just trying to, trying to, trying to go by, you know, that, that I can do, I guess, tick all the boxes that I can tick as far as preparation. And, you know, I guess with the training ticket, so comprehensively that I could potentially accommodate some of the,
01:23:57
Speaker
things that I can't control, like a short weather window or that sort of thing. And then, you know, and then go to the mountain knowing that I've done everything that I can do. And then, you know, there's going to be these other puzzle pieces that really, you know, need to need to fall into place and they're a bit beyond my control. This is really, John, will you summarize what Apelosse and what training for the new alpinism was really
Fitness and Recovery in Expeditions
01:24:25
Speaker
built upon with that first book, which was how I approached my expeditions, which is this core thing that people need to understand is one of the hallmarks of fitness is that you recover really quickly. So this is where like you touched on, like you would be able to turn around and, uh, you know, make use of a short weather window.
01:24:52
Speaker
when I was climbing, doing things alpine style, the recovery was sometimes six or eight hours in a tent and on a bivvy ledge. So it's a similar thing. And I would often sort of look to things like the race across America or long three-week stage races like the Tour de France or something like that, where
01:25:16
Speaker
As an athlete, you're performing at a high level every single day. Could you show up in one day and ride faster or climb faster or harder or whatever? Sure.
01:25:24
Speaker
But that is actually the objective. The actual objective is your K2 base camp for six weeks. You don't know which day is going to be the summit day. You don't know how many rotations you're going to get. You don't know what's going to happen to you on those rotations. Are you going to be breaking trail? Are you going to be drafting? Or is it going to be icy? Is it going to be deep snow? Like there's so many variables. And so, yeah, the fitness you're gaining is really one of kind of a
01:25:49
Speaker
of a high level of resilience and ability to bounce back, given all these factors. Altitude, of course, is a major one, but it's still only one of them. Yeah, I would like to maybe just, these are great points, Steve. Sometimes I think about it and when I'm coaching athletes, bring the adversity, a bit of adversity into the training as well.
01:26:13
Speaker
just to prepare yourself physically and mentally for these moments when you just have to get out even if you're so tired. So be ready physically but also mentally for when it gets hard, when there are just really bad days and things are not perfect, they will not be, especially in the mountains and specifically in K2 without oxygen. So I think all those setbacks that you had maybe the last year with the injuries,
01:26:41
Speaker
all the anxiety you felt, but you still pushed through. And maybe it wasn't perfect, but it prepared you also for this, the adversity of this climb. Yeah, certainly. Yeah, that's a great point. Great. Now, I want to thank you, John, for all your time and willingness to share your story and everything you learned along the way of these years of training and climbing.
Podcast Closing
01:27:09
Speaker
Martin, thanks for
01:27:11
Speaker
Showing up today, being my discussion partner, my sort of co-coach for working with John. It was a lot of fun to have those conversations. And I always learn a lot in working with my fellow coaches and hearing other perspectives. So thanks to both of you for being here today. Thanks. No, thank you. Thanks for the opportunity, guys. Thank you. Thanks, John. It's not just one, but a community. Together, we are uphill, Ashley. Thanks for listening.