Prepping for Denali: 4 months to go

Part three of my monthly countdown for Denali. Read about what I did last month to get ready for my Denali expedition. Part three of the series: Prepping for Denali: 4 months to go.

Physical preparation

I’m definitely in a good program again! While last month I experienced training as hard, dark and wet, I currently enjoy my workouts a lot. I now have so many training options I can choose everyday what I want to do. This mostly results in the weekly program below:

Monday	Workout in the gym with run to the gym
Tuesday	Workout in the gym
Wednesday	Boot camp – Be Your Best
Thursday	Indoor climbing
Friday	Workout in the gym
Saturday	Part 1: Boot camp – Be Your Best Part 2: 3-hour – endurance bike ride
Sunday	Rest day/short run, depending on how I feel

The workouts in the gym are intense, but very good. In combination with the Be Your Best-program, my core stability has dramatically increased last month.

Overall, I feel my training is a lot more structured. I have been reading extensively in Training for the New Alpinism. The book is really helpful and confirms my current schedule isn’t that bad. At the same time, the book has plenty of tips and tricks to improve my program.

Another improvement is that I got a Polar M400 heart rate monitor. This device gives a lot of insight into my training intensity. Funny enough, I mostly learned my training sessions where to intense.

Last for now; I’m starting to hike more. After all, this is the real work. I hiked two days of the Twentepad (50km-walk in total) and am planning to do a part of the Eifelsteig next week.

Equipment

New items arrived!

	Little Hotties hand and feet warmers. Apparently the huge boots and mitts may not always be warm enough. In that case, these little hotties have to make sure warmth is where it should be!
	Ayacucho Army Cap, to protect my head from the sun, and make sure the sun won’t burn my face too much.
	Mountain Equipment Wet & Dry Bag 140L. To be honest, I got two of these now ;). Because I still have the option for a stopover in Iceland, I will bring some extra stuff (Tent, hiking shoes, etc). I can take up to 50kg in the plane. These bags should make this possible.
	Osprey Drysacks. Remember you needed something from your rucksack and you couldn’t find it until you took everything out? This is where these drysacks come in. They allow you to put some organisation into you rucksack. As a bonus, they will keep your stuff dry.. even after days of rain.
	Oakley Custom StraightLink. On Elbrus, I broke my sunglasses. I still believe there’s only one brand that makes really good sunglasses, so here are the new ones. They are custom-made, so do not match the image exactly!

One big item is still missing; the sleeping bag. I’m waiting for the new Mountain Equipment bag to become available.

The expedition

(Almost) everything is set and done! Flight tickets are booked, reservation for the Fireweed Station is done, snowshoes are hired. What’s left? Just my initial night in Anchorage. I still need to book a hotel for that night.

Iceland

I have been looking into making a stopover at Iceland for a while now. I believe Iceland is a very beautiful country, definitely worth a visit. But Iceland is (very!) expensive, and I do arrive a bit early in the hiking season for Iceland. This makes it unsure if all routes are open yet.

So I decided… not to make a decision yet! My flight tickets are flexible, allowing me to stay a week in Iceland on my return from Anchorage. If weather is good, and I still feel strong enough, I will make a stopover at Iceland and do the Laugavegur in 4 days.

That’s all for this episode of Prepping for Denali: 4 months to go. Keep coming back for updates on my preparation and stuff related to climbing Denali.

February 16, 2017February 15, 2017

-110 degrees at Freezlab

Last week I broke a record… twice! I did summit some pretty cold mountains last years. But I was pretty sure Denali’s going to be the coldest place I ever went to. Until I learned about the coldest place in the Netherlands: Freezlab.

The people at Freezlab are experts when it comes to cold places. They believe Cryotherapy, exposing your body to extreme low temperatures, helps boosting your immune system. And since Denali is not exactly the warmest place on Earth, I decided this is a great test for me.

The Freezlab experience

Visiting Freezlab for a cryotherapy session is easy and takes a surprisingly short amount of time. After registration you need to take a blood-pressure test, because cryotherapy with a high blood pressure is not a good idea. Surprisingly, it took me 3 takes to pass this test (need to keep an eye on that!).

After I successfully passed the test, it was time to get (almost!) naked. Wearing only my underwear I was escorted to the Freezlab itself. My ears, hands, feet and mouth needed to be protected, because I was about to enter a room of -60 degrees Celsius.. almost naked! After 20 seconds Freezlab decided this was not good enough and they told me to enter the next room. And this is the magic place.. -110 degrees Celsius and one needs to stay there for 3 minutes.

Getting cold

These 3 minutes are very interesting. I cannot compare it to any other place. Yes, definitely, it’s cold. But there is a very low humidity in that room, which makes your stay a little less uncomfortable. I could feel every hair on my arm erect and my arms and legs started to tickle. This is because your body starts to protect your vital organs against the cold. And your body does this by cutting the blood supply to your limbs.

The three minutes passed by surprisingly fast, so time to exit. The best thing to do next is to get your blood flow start again. This is why Freezlab has some trampolines to jump on. So after 10 minutes of jumping I was nice and warm again.. and feeling very refreshed!

Was it worth it?

Yes, most definitely! I visited Freezlab twice now and am certainly more aware of temperatures. I can feel warmth and cold more intense and have better control my body’s reaction to it. And this will definitely help me to bear the cold on Denali!

Want to visit?

That’s a great idea! Freezlab is located in the Olympic Stadion in Amsterdam. A reservation is mandatory before visiting. But this can be done using their excellent website, read all about it here.

February 3, 2017February 3, 2017

So what is this thin line?

There’s a thin line between pleasure and pain. I keep writing about this line, without really explaining what it means to me. So what is this line?

To explain this, I need to tell you something about the way I live my live, including my struggles and the dreams I pursue. I have already wrote a blog on how my life developed over the years. Read all about it here. This blog dives a little deeper inside my head.

My life is dominated by two main topics. And they do not line up. This creates an everlasting struggle in my mind. Here they are:

Feeling free

Feeling free is very important to me. I can’t live without it, which makes it one of my basic life-needs. But the important question is what makes me feel free. This mostly comes down to feeling independent and not having to take care of anybody else.

This is the exact feeling I get when climbing mountains. Unfortunately, I live nowhere near the mountains. And, like everybody else, I have the mandatory obligations. Like work, family, sometimes friends, etc.

The balance I try to find between feeling free and complying with the obligations can be seen as the line; feeling free is on the pleasure-side (obviously), obligations on the pain-side of the line.

I keep on organizing my life in a way I experience as much freedom as possible. This means I sometimes make choices that are not understood or appreciated by the people around me.

Connection

While my need and feeling of freedom strongly comes with only having to answer to my self, I do need people around me whom I connect to. I need to have some close friends whom I can fully trust and be accepted by. My friends don’t have to understand or agree with my choices, but do have to respect them. In my experience, this is hard for a lot of people, which again is hard for me.

This often results in struggles in my head; is this friendship worth my energy, when the choices I make aren’t respected?

So how to combine feeling free and needing some connections? Is this possible by the definitions I use? Or will this be a conflict?

I’m sure there is a way to make them both work. I have experienced this once or twice. The question is how to recognize the conditions required to let me feel free and have the friendships I need. But, more on this later!

What’s next?

This is the first part in a series of blogs about what I see as the thin line; the why, what and how’s in my life. In every next part I will explain more on the things I do, and the choices I make.

Curious? Keep checking for updates!