Category: steve

Even Rocky had a montage…

There has been a thing going around on that there internet that they invented. It is to do with the fact that in the United States around 22 veterans of various ages commit suicide every day.
To raise awareness of this issue, a challenge has been going around to attempt to do 22 press ups a day for 22 days. The idea is that you video yourself doing it and tag a friend each day to get them to do the same. 
My “friend” Steve Ashley tagged me in one of his videos, which I thought was a bit mean of him. I’m a man who likes a challenge though and so I decided to give it a go.
September also happens to be national suicide prevention awareness month. Anything that can reduce the stigma around suicide, whether caused by PTSD or one of many other factors is a good idea in my book. I think that nowadays 
I decided to do the challenge a bit differently to others. I didn’t want to upload a video on Facebook everyday because I am already narcisstic enough on there already as it is and seeing a video every day is bit like overkill. I also didn’t want to annoy 22 other people by nominating them to do the challenge as well. If people want to, then fine. I didn’t want to make anyone feel guilty for not doing it, or pressured into doing it.
I also thought that a montage would be much cooler. 
I also chose to do the challenge as I know that I don’t do enough exercise and in itself it is a good thing. Having the motivation to do so would be a good thing as I’m usually too lazy to force myself to do exercise. It turns out that doing press ups every day makes you better at press ups. Who would have thunk it? You will notice this if you watch the montage video. 
Raising awareness is just one part of the solution and so I decided that I would donate money to the Royal British Legion. I chose to give them £22 as it was an important number in the challenge, plus £1 for every press up that I missed. One day I was so ill that I was only awake for 4 hours and so missed those press ups, and so I have donated £44. 
Below are a montage video plus a video of all the press ups. If it looks like any are missing, then that’s as a result of my poor editing rather than actually missing any.
Here is my montage video:
Or if you want to watch every single press up:

Bucket List Item #48: Climb Scafell Pike

Once upon a time, I went on a little road trip around England. One of the things I was wanting to do was to climb Scafell Pike. I ended up not doing so. For a few reasons. 
1. It is really big and I am generally quite lazy.
2. I was on my own and thought I might navigate myself to certain doom.
3. The weather was supposed to be bad for climbing mountains.
So instead I did other things. However, climbing the mountain got put on my bucket list as a result of not climbing it. I resolved to do so when I wasn’t so lazy, had someone to navigate me away from doom and when it wasn’t so windy.
Therefore, I gathered a band of intrepid adventures and we made our way to the Lake District on holiday (having previously done a similar thing in Snowdonia at the same time last year) to complete this feat. Due to amazing planning, we were there the week that the wettest place in the country had its summer and all managed to get a little bit of a sunburn.

The mountain is 980 metres high. This doesn’t sound like much until you try to go that high. Then it sounds a lot harder. When you have been climbing an hour and still can’t see the summit, it appears infinite. 

Compared to Snowdon, it is actually smaller, however as a climb it is a lot more intense. Snowdown has more scrambly bits (I learnt that the technical term is scree) but also more flat bits. Scafell Pike is basically a 980 metre staircase. With big rocky stairs. I thought I knew what to expect having done Snowdon but this was a lot more intense. But we all managed it, see! Go team!
Several years ago, I always got confused by people who went up mountains because they were there. Now I am that kind of person, and I can recommend it. You get a great sense of achievement, and you feel like you are on top of the world (both literally and metaphorically) and that you can achieve anything.  I would definitely recommend it, as long as you have some idea what you are letting yourself in for and prepare adequately in advance.
There has already been talk about doing Ben Nevis next year to complete what is one of the slowest Three Peaks challenges, I am just giving my body a little time to recover before telling it about this.