It feels rather ironic to be sat in my living room listening to Bob Dylan and wearing a giant plastic facemask attached via a long clear tube to a machine sat humming quietly in the corner. I'm currently sitting quite comfortably at 6560m breathing in oxygen at 78% being pumped into my lungs from the 'hypoxicator' and am now in the second 10-minute segment of a 90 minute long intermittent hypoxic training (IHT) session.
The fingertip pulse oximeter, attached to my finger glows, providing an 82% blood-oxygen saturation (%SpO2) reading and pulse rate of 68... All this to help with my acclimatisation on Everest and to reduce the potential for Acute Mountain Sickness - more commonly referred to as 'AMS' or 'Altitude sickness'...
With "Lady Gaga" booming through the speakers and wishing that I'd indulged in my usual full-fat morning latte, relaxed with my feet up on the sofa, I found myself sat on the familiar and excrutiatingly hard saddle of a stationary bike at my local gym, Body Works West at 8:30am on Sunday morning peddling furiously through the first 'Rise and Shine' spin session of a 12-hour long spinning bonanza, all in aid of Sport Relief. I'd intially only committed to 4-hours but then, somehow, managed to convince myself that peeling the layers of wet clothing off my back four times in one day would somehow be more painful and uncomfortable than actually cycling all 12 spin sessions... so instead settled for a compromise and cycled 11 back-to-back-super-sweaty-spin classes, winning a months free membership to the gym, getting a snazzy David Beckham designed Sport Relief t-shirt and contributed to raising over GBP 1,500 for Sport Relief in the process..!