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
12th 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 40th 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!
