Chatting with Graham Napier

When my mobile rang last Friday afternoon I was at work feeling truly hideous after another night out with the Hillary boys and a few Trektators, so it was perhaps not the ideal time to have a chat with the man who took this years Twenty20 Cup by storm.

At the start of the summer Graham Napier was a promising allrounder at Essex and had toured with England A in 2004, alongside Kevin Pieteren and Matt Prior, but after an astonishing 152* against Sussex in June his career is taking off.

Details of the innings itself can be found all over the place, but that is not what I wanted to talk to him about, I wanted to discuss his trek to Everest Base Camp last winter, and it seems I was not the first.

"It's safe to say the Everest trip has proved a popular topic of conversation, and I enjoy telling everyone about it," he said.

"There were times on the trip when I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into, it was seriously cold up there, but the altitude was by far the toughest aspect.

"I was OK,but one of our guys, Cameron, had to be helicoptered off the mountain on the penultimate day, which brought home just how difficult it was."

From my point of view perhaps the best line he came out with was to do with fitness: "it seemed to be the fitter guys who struggled more, because they went off too quickly. Nick Compton is one example, he took on a hill pretty fast one morning and paid for it for about two days!"

When the conversation moved on to the cricket match they played at Gorak Shep Graham gave a small chuckle.

"It was no more than beach cricket really, and a useful distraction because we were all feeling pretty terrible by that stage. For us the cricket was a small aside, it was all about reaching Base Camp."

When I told him what we're planning he was supportive in the extreme, and had plenty of advice to give.

"When I played the game I think I was wearing thermals, base layers, a jumper, fleece and a coat, and it was still pretty cold.

"Night was the worst though. One night I couldn't be arsed to get up and go to the toilet so just peed in my water bottle, which then proved to be a great source of warmth! After that I took boiled water to bed with me every night.

Another tip was to wrap up all your batteries to keep them warm: "you'll want a good camera because around every corner there's another amazing view, and the cold sucks all the life out of your electrical gear, so I wrapped my batteries in socks each night."

I coud easily tell how excited Graham was when he began talking, and the fact that we are taking up around 50 people was something he saw as a plus for us, because the camaradarie is so important in getting through the tough times.

I almost began to wonder if he was serious when he said: "if this season hadn't gone so well I would probably be trying to get on the trip with you!" Well Graham, I can tell you now, there's a spot on Team Hillary for you - we need all the help we can get!

I owe a massive thanks to Graham for taking the time out to talk to me, he was incredibly pleasant to speak with, as was his agent Greg Lansdowne - who I hassled for some time.

Despite the season being over he is still a busy man. On Wednesday he was at an awards dinner at Lords to pick up the Walter Lawrence Trophy in recognition of his innings against Sussex, and he will shortly be heading out to Hong Kong to represent England in the Sixes competition, a tournament he won in 2004, before once again playing for Wellington in New Zealand.

Despite all this he was kind enough to offer to write something for us and lend his full support to The Everest Test, hopefully next time he calls I will be slightly less hungover and able to ask some decent questions!

Gotta get going....

Right, that's it. Honeymoon over.

It has now been two weeks since the marathon and I have to stop living off it or I will be in serious danger of falling back into the old routine of sitting in front of the TV all day and doing absolutely nothing with my life!

Wednesday was the launch of the Everest Test at the Collection on Brompton Road and a wicked night was had by all.

Fortunately I managed to avoid getting too hammered, which is more than can be said for some of those involved - and damn right too I say! Everyone is working so hard for this thing and deserved to let their hair down, plus it was great to get together again, especially after missing the meeting two weeks ago.

Today I have woken up after my first visit to the new Wembley followed by a hideous smash up which took in various bars around London and my mate Kingers 30th, so I feel truly awful and have failed to get to the gym all weekend. It was great going to the home of football for a game and I was pretty pleased that mankinis were banned!

One of the things I said after doing my run was that now it was over I don't have to feel guilty about missing the odd gym session now and again, but it has become again and again over the last two weeks and the guilt has returned.

So from tomorrow morning I am setting myself a new target, go every day. I'll go in the morning before work, do a shorter session, but reckon that lots of shorter sessions is probably better than the occasional longer one which takes days to recover from!

So wish me luck with that, I feel I might need it.

One particularly cool thing that happened at the party was young Zooby put together a video slideshow that was projected on the big screen throughout the night, which finished with the below shot - which I am a big fan of! I am also having serious concentration issues today, so am going to bed...

Back in the saddle

I fell off the wagon last week, which was highly expected. After a month of not drinking there were invites aplenty and so I decided to accept every single one, and thus discovered on Sunday morning that I may have undone four months training in a single week. Oh dear.

Still, I did manage to fit in my first run since Berlin, although that was purely thanks to G Man who basically forced me out on Saturday morning, and after an hour all the old aches and pains had returned(who am I kidding, they returned after about five minutes and I did all I could not to complain about them until we were nearly done).

By lunchtime my legs and knees had stiffened up so badly that the only option was to drink until I could feel the pain no more. Sadly, this did not stop the pain returning on Sunday, along with several new aches and bruises that generally accompany a Drovers Cricket do.

So, away from the past and back to the present. The Trektator party is on Wednesday and should be a good night. Hopefully we've got enough people to make it a good night out, although I am going to be careful not to get too leathered and embarrass myself!

Tickets can still be bought for £30 at www.wegottickets.com search using the word Sagarmatha.

After that I am contemplating heading down to Battersea Park for the Trim Trail with the Everest boys on Saturday morning, although I may put that off until Wednesday and have a session in the gym to try and work out just how much long-term damage I have done to myself by running 26 miles before letting the brothers Sharland go to work on me - I hear they are slightly deranged.

Some of the things that people are talking about signing up to are quite insane. The Toughguy being one of them, have a read through the suggested training routines because they made me laugh a lot....perhaps only because there's no chance in hell of me going down that road!

Done and Dusted

So, on Sunday I ran the Real Berlin Marathon. You may have seen on the news that Haile Gebrselassie broke the world record, so while I was technically competing in the same race, I'm not sure it was the thought of me chasing that pushed young Haile over the line!

I went round in 5.43.27, I could talk you through the race, but instead I'll keep it simple. I began nervous as hell, was feeling good at the halfway point, then my right knee started giving me all sorts of trouble and the rest of the race became a real struggle.

The second half was a mix of highs and lows, the highs perhaps being the cheerleaders around mile 17, and the lows being pretty much everything else!

At this point I should really say thanks to a few people. First of all the guys who texted and called to wish me luck, there's too many to mention but thanks to each of you, it meant a lot. Same to those who have sponsored me, knowing so many people had given money to the cause kept me going at some serious low points!

Special mention to my boys Kirt, Hog and G-Man for believing I could do it, probably more than I did! A massive thanks has to also go to Jules, my running partner. What a compadre, couldn't have done it without your constant jabbering and shouts of "I am the Yeti!"

The biggest thanks must however go to my sister Helen. What a performance. Firstly I wouldn't have entered without her, then I wouldn't have got to the startline, and I almost certainly wouldn't have made it if I hadn't been able to take comfort in the fact that she was suffering just as much!

We were a sorry sight at the end, as the picture shows, but the 24 hours afterwards has amused me no end as we grunted our way back from Germany!

I also cracked open a beer for the first time in a month on Sunday night, and I can tell you now it was enjoyable! Whether or not I'll sign up for another of these I don't know, but at least now I know it's not an impossibility.

As far as Everest goes, there's been loads of news recently. I sat down on Thursday with Kirt and Charlie to debate the Team Hillary captain and eventually all decided that Glen Lowis was the man for the job. Congrats to him, I have no doubt he'll rise to the task.

The website has also gone live, check out http://www.theeveresttest.com/ for all the best bits there.

I'm pretty knackered now, and my mind and body is shutting down, so farewell. I'm now going to have to come up with something else to write about on this blog!

The time is nigh

Hi folks,

This is likely to be my last post before the marathon. How do I feel? Nervous as hell that's how.

Last weekend I went to Dubai on a work jolly, which was great but hardly ideal preparation! I didn't manage to get a run in which was disappointing, but not crucial I don't think. I ran for an hour last night and will go again tomorrow morning, then it's sit back, eat pasta and wait for Sunday.

Helen and I started up our fundraising page last week and seem to be going along quite well so far, as I write we are barely £2 away from the £600 mark, a decent start.

I also recently finished reading 'Every Second Counts' by Lance Armstrong. Now, this guy needs no introduction, he's a proper legend. I can't remember if I said, but I was lucky enough to have him as a guest speaker at a recent company do in Hawaii and he was really inspiring. More than that though, he has given me my slogan - "Pain is temporary, quitting is permanent." There shall be no quitting on my watch!

Work for Everest is coming along well, although I'm gutted to be missing the big meeting this weekend where the captains will be named. Fortunately I'm in the loop with that and will be speaking with Kirt and Charlie on Thursday about who will lead Team Hillary. There's so many decent candidates that it won't be an easy choice, but I guess the good thing about this is that no choice will be the wrong one.

One negative was that I had to send out a nasty email today chasing people for payment, that sucked but needed to be done. Did kind of make me feel like an asshole though.

Anyway, wish me luck and I'll let you know how I got on...if I survive!

Knackered

My oh my, it has certainly been quite a week. I am sitting on my sofa with my feet up watching the football knowing that the last eight days has brought a number of firsts for me.

On Saturday last I got up at 8 am, ran 9 miles then went and played cricket. Admittedly, I hardly lasted very long with the bat, but I did get through a three over spell, comfortably my longest since school!

I then sat in the pub with the boys and did not sink a single beer, then went home to a dinner party, where I also avoided booze. It has now been two weeks since my last beer, and that certainly seems a long time ago. I won't lie, I'm hanging for one, but fortunately I have the Carling I-pint to amuse myself(ask me if you've not seen it - comfortably my favourite toy!).

On the Sunday I had another early start, running the Gyro 10k, in full cricket gear. Have a look at Glens blog to the right for a write up of that.

A fairly uneventful week followed, and then today arrived, and I was up at seven and proceeded to run 16 miles, which, as it turns out, is a bloody long way. I am aching all over, and it took me a pretty long time, but the good news that I finished and my knees and feet are not completely shredded.

It does have to be said however, that the thought of adding another 10 miles onto what I just ran, scares the bejesus out of me. Sadly, that is what I am going to have to do in just two weeks. I had my first meeting with "The Wall" today and I fear it is something I will become fairly well acquainted with in two weeks time.

So, next weekend I have to go to Dubai and again avoid the booze in tricky circumstances as well as trying to get a run in. It's 40 degrees out there at the moment, so that could be fun!!

Until next time!

Addicted to....

A little while ago, I forget when exactly, somebody made the mistake of emailing the old classic Tetris to me at work. I was addicted to this thing at school, and it seems the years have not diminished my enthusiasm for a game that is basic to the point of making me wonder if my IQ is gradually sliding downwards with every passing moment I play it.

All this made me wish I was able to get addicted to things that might be good for me, such as running, cycling, cooking healthy food etc. When I started training for this marathon lots of people said how I would get addicted to running and find it taking priority over everything else. Well, what a load of rubbish that was.

Seriously, all I have got addicted to from this training is buying plasters. I'm not kidding, all I concentrate on these days is finding ways to protect my feet and so far Compeed plasters have proved the way forward. I even bought some surgical spirit yesterday in an attempt to make my feet harder.

It reminds me of that scene in Forrest Gump where Lieutenant Dan tells Bubba and Gump to look after their feet and I know where he's coming from. Am I going to make it round this 26.2 mile course in Berlin in less than a month? I am starting to doubt it. What I am going to do is give it my best, and if I come up short, well, so be it.

Back to the Everest line, I've noticed how proud Glen is about getting himself in the South London Press and how he has been boasting about being the first to get some publicity(we also had a mention on Cricinfo recently) thus I am forced to burst his bubble.

The Wimbledon Guardian carried a story on me back on the second of August, so it's safe to say I am hugely famuos in my local area and spend my days walking around in disguise to avoid being mobbed by the local hero-worshippers....maybe not. Still, read all about me(even more) right here.

Until next time folks.