{"id":3053,"date":"2014-08-15T08:12:57","date_gmt":"2014-08-15T15:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nordicmoose.net\/sssfl\/?p=3053"},"modified":"2014-08-15T08:15:12","modified_gmt":"2014-08-15T15:15:12","slug":"adopting-will-whillans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/adopting-will-whillans\/","title":{"rendered":"Adopting the Will of Whillans"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Whillans450x370\"<\/a>Brad Rassler\u2019s regular post, continued\u2026<\/p>\n

After re-reading my last post I became so depressed I had to go out and have a breakthrough week. So I did.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been on the mountain bike more than the road bike these days, reasoning the extra oomph required to pedal through dirt would translate well into the fall whoop-de-doo, which rather than a circum-Tahoe adventure, will be some sort of endurance High Sierra backcountry climb. I mean, after a summer of working at Alpinist Magazine, why shouldn\u2019t it be so? I miss my beloved Sierra.<\/p>\n

To climb a peak I\u2019ll have to approach it, so I substituted road bike riding with roller skiing, double poling the flats and skating the uphills. That\u2019s me in the photo appearing somewhat surprised to have returned to weight-bearing exercise. What looks like a beard is actually a grimace.<\/p>\n

Feeling no pain from my gammy heel after skating, I ventured out with trekking poles to stroll a few thousand feet up a local ski hill (I promised to turn tail at the slightest pull of the Achilles). Three hours later I was back home, pain free. I think I\u2019ve turned a corner on that damnable injury. I\u2019ll not run until 2015, though \u2013 and that\u2019s a promise.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I psyched myself up by thinking about Don Whillans, the late plumber from Lancashire, and one of Great Britain\u2019s best gritstone climbers. Whillans was a brute of a man, all 5\u20194\u201d, of him, stout as a fire hydrant. He climbed hard and partied harder; he lived much of his life well into his cups, and had the beer belly and scarred knuckles to prove it.<\/p>\n

Whillans was a staple of Sir Chris Bonington\u2019s high altitude expedition teams; few were as strong and tenacious. But he\u2019d arrive in Kathmandu prior to an expedition several stone too thick and wheezy from too much tobacco, droll humor flying and flaying the unfortunates in its path.<\/p>\n

By the time Whillans had trekked to the mountain\u2019s base camp, however \u2013 say, Annapurna or Everest \u2013 he had whittled himself down to near fighting trim. On the actual climb, few could match his pace and tenacity.<\/p>\n

He was filmed by a BBC crew as he returned to Camp I after making the first ascent of Annapurna\u2019s treacherous South Face. A reporter asked about the thin provender on which he and his partner Dougal Haston had subsisted during the final push to the summit. With beer in hand, cigarette jutting from his lower lip, and nose grown too big for his broad face due to the weight he had dropped on the climb, he intoned in his nasal Lanky tenor, \u201cI had two days on cigars and snow water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whillans had freakish strength and a redoubtable vim, and I\u2019m no Whillans. But I figured I have enough left in me to pull a Whillans-like maneuver, showing up on the assigned day in less than optimal form, but gaining strength as I move up the mountain.<\/p>\n

This Saturday I light out from Vermont and begin the long drive home. The next post will likely be from Nevada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brad Rassler\u2019s regular post, continued\u2026 After re-reading my last post I became so depressed I had to go out and have a breakthrough week. So I did. I\u2019ve been on the mountain bike more than the road bike these days, reasoning the extra oomph required to pedal through dirt would translate well into the fall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-3053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletes-blog","tag-brad-rassler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}