AN UPHILL BATTLE
ONE IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGE. TWO WEEKS TO TRAIN. GO
LONGER AGO than I care to remember, I bragged to a girl that I preferred running up hills rather than down them. At the time, I was training for my first marathon while living in the country, where I had an endless supply of both gradients and rubbish chat-up lines.
It’s a small mercy that youthful remarks of this kind rarely come back to haunt you. However, in my case, the girl to whom I was bragging is now my wife. When calls to hand me my first assignment as the Adventurist – a 400m sprint up a disused ski jump in Slovakia – she is thrilled and only too happy to
