Day #6 First stage completed! Again….but wow it was a a pretty tough one aye!

Location- Portillo to Punta del Inca (Argentina)

Distance/time- 42km and time…Ages haha but I made it 🙂 and who cares

Altitude- 2,300 to 3,200m

Song of the day- Sultans of swing

Thought of the day- I wish I could control how and when my body releases adrenaline!

Quote- nothing worth doing is easy

Thank you- Bivouac Outdoors, Yealand’s Wines and Spark my Potencial. Without these legends I would be back home enjoying a New Zealand summer 🙂

Notes- so this was how my day started I remember how walking it two years ago almost killed me, but at the top I told myself “at least I will never have to walk that again”, and in a way I was right because this time I had to run it! For the last few runs I have been compensating for my sore ankle by bearing extra weight on the ball of my right foot, which has really started to take its toll. Rich drove past me once laughing and yelled: “you look like you need to take a shit!”, likely due to the fact that my style has now morphed into a shuffle/limp/spasm. Strangely enough this somehow kept me going, albeit inefficiently. Cars starting tooting and cheering as I got close to the top and “loco” (crazy) was commonly yelled from the window, this too really spurred me along to keep pushing through the pain. When my physio, Fabian, gives my calves a deep tissue massage my reaction to the pain is to start laughing, and so to carry on the tradition there I was giggling like a school girl during the last two K’s, and I promise you nothing was funny at the time! Maybe that is why people were calling me crazy? When I finally reached the top I was greeted with a feeling like someone had sucked all of the blood out of my body. I could only manage the below position for the next few minutes.

I may have made a few sounds that I am not proud of and I am glad only Rich heard (must delete that video). My head was spinning for the next couple of hours and I was fighting off vomit. I took this as a tell tale sign that I should rest now and do the remaining 25km later on in the day. So I had a sleep in the car and I hung out with this view for a few hours

The next leg of the journey would see me cross into Argentina through the tunnel Christo Redentor then continue running until I reach the entrance to Mt Aconcagua. This is where I would also be greeted with my first real view of the beast that owned me two years ago. The only problem was that my mind and body had started to shut down into rest mode as I knew that it was my final day. To counter this I broke the final stage into three separate goals: 1. Make it to the tunnel, 2. Make it through the tunnel, and 3. Get to the base of the mountain. By dividing it up, I could deem the task ahead as realistic, and I built in confidence and pride as I completed each goal. Check #1

Check #2

Check #3

I ignored my gps and just ran until I finally rounded the last corner and was greeted with that indescribable feeling you get when pride overwhelms everything else. I am not a builder but this year I built a shed for my Kayaks and I could not stop looking at that chunk of wood and tin for days. A shed is something tangible so it is easy to be proud of, whereas an achievement can fade and distort with time. I will not lie, I have found this run really tough but the thing I am most ashamed of was not my fitness level but my attitude. For days I have been beating myself up with the thought “why are you struggling? you have done harder things than this!” as I compared this run to what I achieved in Africa. It was only on the final day that I became at peace with the fact that this is a different challenge and I am a different person, and I have come full circle back to the quote that I used on my very first day of this adventure: “A man never meets the same mountain twice, for he is not the same man and it is not the same mountain”. We cannot live in the past and compare things that actually do not relate as much as you believe they might.

This is the time where I please ask to show your support for this journey by throwing a cheeky few bucks or more towards the charity this is all for male mental health. I gain so much inspiration from the messages of support left with the donations. Thank you once again to everyone who has contributed and followed sea2summit7. Follow this link to donate

It is time for me to rest for a couple of days now so I can adequately prepare for the climb ahead! But please remember…. take the path less traveled
Dave