What I’ve learned over the years is that the path less traveled always makes for a more interesting journey. If you simply do what everyone else is doing, how can you ever expect to excel and create something wonderful and unique in your life?
To get ready to climb Everest, I did a lot of hill running with a daypack on and a lot of underwater swimming. I would swim a couple of lengths underwater and then a couple above. It gets your body going with limited oxygen.
Life’s full of lots of dream-stealers always telling you you need to do something more sensible. I think it doesn’t matter what your dream is, just fight the dream-stealers and hold onto it.
I train five days a week hard – but it is short and sharp – 30 to 40 minutes of functional and pretty dynamic body-strength circuits, then I do a good yoga session on the sixth day, then I rest.
I miss him still today: his long, whiskery eyebrows, his huge hands and hugs, his warmth, his prayers, his stories, but above all his shining example of how to live and how to die.
When I’m in ‘Man vs. Wild’ mode, it’s not pleasure. Every sensor is firing and I’m on reserve power all the time and I’m digging deep – and that’s the magic of it as well, and that’s raw and it’s great.
