REASON TO RIDE
MACKIE: THE EVERESTING JACK OF ALL TRADES
Quite a number of people have turned to Everesting as a way to get their competitive kicks during lockdown – but what if you have already set an Everesting record? Well, you do another one, of course!
Seventeen-year-old Hmt-giant rider Ewan Mackie laid claim to being the youngest rider to do an off-road Everest when he repped his way to 8,848m up the Sheep Pastures climb near Matlock, aged 15, in 2018.
But earlier this month he became the holder of a new junior Everesting world road record, when he recorded 9hr 15 on the Mill Lane/yew Tree Hill climb out of Holloway, also in Derbyshire, the day before his 18th birthday. It placed him 22nd overall on the list of fastest outdoor Everests.
Across the two attempts he has raised close to £6,000 for Cardiac Risk in the Young, Alzheimer’s Society and CLIC Sargent charities.
Asked whether he was afraid of the suffering he already knew was involved in an Everesting, Mackie insisted it was all relative, and paid tribute to those he was raising money to help. “People don’t choose to lose loved ones – they have that pain every day with them. I was choosing to do this to help people who had. I could stop any time I liked… the pain I was going through was all subjective.”
Family and friends turned out to watch him attempt the record, much of which, Mackie says, was fuelled by Soreen bars: “I think I had about 20 of them in the first three hours… I’m a bit sick of them now!”
As to whether he would ever go for the hat-trick, a mother’s concern for her offspring could be the deciding factor. “I promised my mum I wouldn’t… I don’t think she’d hack it,” he says. “But maybe in a couple of years, I might try and go under eight hours.”
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