EVEREST HOME RUN FOR SID
A TOWNSVILLE man has conquered the might of Mount Everest, yet he’s never been to Nepal and he didn’t get any snow in his shoes.
Running coach and massage therapist Sidney Willis has simulated climbing the world’s highest mountain, completing 60 laps, or 88.6km at 21 per cent slope, of the infamous Castle Hill goat track.
Achieving the feat in 22 hours, 23 minutes and 32 seconds, Sidney ran down the hill and walked back up, stopping only for food and drink breaks.
He said he simply did it for fun ahead of his 36th birthday on Monday.
“I like long events, but here at the moment there’s absolutely no races going on locally and a friend of mine mentioned to me he wanted to do Everesting on the bike,” Sidney said.
“I started thinking about it and the goat track is the most iconic place to do it in Townsville, so I first did 26 ascents and realised it was possible.”
He was never alone on the climb as the running community rallied, even joining him along the journey.
One of his friends who finished work at 11.30pm stayed with Mr Willis until 2.30am, but he says the solo effort between then and 5am was one of the toughest.
“With the headlamp it’s very powerful so you see really well, but after a while your vision restricts a bit and that becomes a bit more challenging,” Mr Willis said.
“I may organise an Everesting challenge in teams, because I realised there was a really nice atmosphere with people around.”
Mr Willis logs his data on the website everesting.cc which checks each attempt before being approved.