The one where I throw myself off a tower several times...

I love abseiling. I do it every chance I get, even if it means going out after work and helping out with a late night training session here at Caythorpe. I've abseiled off a 100ft (~30m) sea cliff in the Isle of Man, and a 100ft waterfall in Australia. Abseiling is pretty much my favourite thing in the whole world, and most of my friends know that. So when I was planning what to do for my fundraising, obviously I thought about abseiling. But it's not a challenge for me, and it should be a challenge if you want people to sponsor you. There's not a building, cliff or rock face here in the UK that's tall enough to be a challenge for me. So how could I make it a challenge? An endurance abseil! So, I decided to do an hour long abseil session down the 40ft (~12m) tower at work- with the aim of 40 descents during the hour - and set May 12^th as the date. 

At 5am on Monday morning I woke up, suddenly very nervous. My head had just done the calculations - 40ft tower, 40 descents, that meant abseiling 1600ft (~480m). That's a long way. It also means I'm doing one descent every minute and a half - from clipping in at the top of the tower, down to the bottom, unclipping and running back up the stairs to the top again... My head kept spinning - Would it be faster to walk down or jump down the wall? What would be the quickest way to clip and unclip myself from the ropes so that I could get back up the stairs? Oh my, the stairs. Would my knee (always a little bit dodgy) cope with the stairs? Eventually I managed to persuade myself to sleep again and get a bit of rest before the time.

It was an easy morning at work, there were no guests on site, so we had a meeting at 11.30, lunch at 12, and then it was time to go. With my four helpers (Brit, Lewis, Hannah, and Amy), we set up the abseil ropes and I harnessed up, and stepped off the tower, ready to go, with various cheers from people working below me. Lewis checked I was safe, and the timer started. I flew down the wall, Hannah helped to unclip me, and I was back to the top of the wall again in 34 seconds. After 5 minutes, I'd done my first 5 descents. It was only going to get harder though. After about 14 descents, Lewis and Brit commented that I should have said I was doing a sponsored stair climb rather than a sponsored abseil, because that's where the hard bit was. I flew up them the first few times, but a 46 step spiral staircase isn't something to be taken lightly. I soon slowed down, including suggesting I take a nap half way up the staircase at one point. Apparently I wasn't allowed. 

At 25 minutes, I'd done 20 descents - half way to my aim of 40, and Amy took over from Brit at the top of the tower. After about 25 stair climbs, I grabbed my inhaler for some much needed lung relief - definitely worked! I hit 30 descents with about 20 minutes left. I had to do 1 descent every 2 minutes to hit my target. The stairs varied from feeling like the longest staircase I'd every climbed in my life to feeling like I only had to climb 2 stairs and I was at the top. With 10 minutes left, I had 5 descents left so, like any true endurance runner, I sprinted to the finish. I climbed out of the tower for my 40^th descent at 56 minutes, and hit the bottom with 3.5 minutes left, so I headed back up to do one extra one, because there's nothing like beating your target. I took it a bit slower though, and enjoyed it! 

All the way through the hour, I had my friends and colleagues cheering me on, with random shouts of "How many have you done?" and "How long left?" which I generally let Hannah answer because I couldn't breathe! So I'd like to say thank you to everyone cheering from the ground, and an even bigger thank you to Lewis, Hannah, Brit and Amy for their technical support - I literally couldn't have done it without them!

I'd also like to say a big thank you to everyone who's sponsored me so far - Right now, I'm not entirely sure how much I've raised, because there's still money coming in, but I think it'll be around £200. If you'd like to sponsor me in retrospect, you can do so either in person, or on my justgiving here. It all helps to get me to Latvia for my GOLD project!

PS - I also owe a thank you to PGL Caythorpe Court for the use of the tower, and to the Chief Instructor Lana for letting me go for a shower and sit in the office doing some laminating for a while before I went back out to work with the kids - it took me a while to return to a normal colour!