ONE EXTREME TO ANOTHER

So delighted.” When Alex Honnold became the first person in history to free climb (without ropes) El Capitan's 900-metre vertical rock face in Yosemite National Park, that was his response when the film crew for Free Solo – the smash-hit documentary that tracked Honnold's feat – his girlfriend and family asked how he was feeling. “So delighted.”

Having just risked his life to such an extreme degree, and achieved such a historic goal, it seemed a strange, almost passive, answer.

Yet this nonchalant attitude perfectly sums up the way the majority of us now see and consider extreme exercise. It’s now so ingrained in day-to-day life, we’ve adopted an almost unreactive outlook on people’s endeavours to put their bodies and minds through some of the world’s toughest challenges.

And who’s to say that’s a bad thing? Perhaps our drive to push ourselves, both physically and mentally, is