Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Raise Your Game: What inspired you to climb the world's highest mountain?

Tori James: I love the outdoors. I love snow, ice and the cold. I was part of an all female team that completed a race to the magnetic north pole in 2005. We were dragging sledges in temperatures of minus forty across frozen sea ice, looking out for polar bears. We were successful and we beat lots of other teams. We became the first all female team to complete the race.

It was a combination of the physical challenge, the achievement as a team and everything that I'd sacrificed in the run up to it. All that hard work paid off, and it gave me a great feeling of achievement. I suppose, deep down, I was looking for something else that would match up to that.

One day my boyfriend came in through the door and said 'I want to climb Everest, do you want to do it too?' That was where it started.

RYG: How much preparation did you need to do for a challenge like that?

TJ: It took 18 months to prepare for Everest. That was divided into fitness training and fundraising. You can't go and climb Everest unless you're fit and healthy. It also costs about Β£54,000 to be able to climb Everest. I also had to pay for training expeditions, kit and insurance. It was stressful, trying to hold down a part time job and pay my bills.

I had to focus a disproportionate amount of time on fundraising, meaning that I was at risk of neglecting my fitness training. I didn't know which I should be doing because the last thing you wanted to do was to raise the money, but then not be fit enough.

My boyfriend, who was a part of the team, did a lot of the fitness training with me, so that was a big motivator. It was either me pulling him out on a run or him pulling me out on a run. One way or another we managed to get the training done.

RYG: You followed a GI diet when you were preparing for Everest - what does that entail?

TJ: The GI diet is based around the glycaemic index of foods. Foods that have a low glycaemic index are things like porridge, potatoes and pasta. They release energy slowly into the blood stream. Things that have a very high glycaemic index are things like chocolate bars and some fruits.

We were trying to keep our energy levels constant throughout the training. We were also trying to stay reasonably lean, but we didn't want to get too lean. We wanted to keep some fat on our bodies for when we went on the expedition, because we would lose so much weight when we were out there.

The GI diet made sure that we ate foods that would help our bodies train and recover. Along with the normal foods that we would eat we'd also be taking on protein drinks and carbohydrate drinks to assist our training as well.

RYG: How important was it for you to keep an exercise diary when you were preparing for the Everest expedition?

TJ: It's really important to keep a diary. You need a week by week plan. We completed the training we wanted to complete by certain points. Some things didn't go to plan. Omar got glandular fever half way through the training, so he had to have six or eight weeks off to recover. We never thought he would recover and get back to the physical level he needed to be at to climb Everest.

I wrote everything down in my diary, down to every run I was going to do - at what time and on what day. I ticked it off once I'd done it, which was the satisfying thing.

If you start a fitness regime or want to lose weight and you're trying to do x number of training sessions a week, don't just say to yourself 'I'm going to do this many,' then get to halfway through the week and realise that you're never going to make it, because you've been completely unrealistic.

Write it down. You wouldn't miss a meeting with somebody if that was in your diary, so why miss a training session.

That's how I worked things. Sometimes I had to go on runs at a ridiculous time of night because I'd run out of hours in the day. I'd be running out of the house at 11pm to do an hour's run.

All the time I was training I just thought 'What if this one training session is the one that fails to bring me up to the mark in order to get to the summit?' Obviously you can't train for 24 hours a day, but what you do know is that your team mates are out training. Why should you miss a training session if they're slogging their heart out?

RYG: What did you eat when you were on Everest?

TJ: On Everest, it's a matter of eating what you can. When you're at altitude you don't feel like eating anything. Some days the only thing I could eat was an energy gel. I couldn't stomach chocolate, nuts or raisins, or anything like that. Really simple things that you thought you'd never find hard to eat.

You felt nauseous so you'd drink lots of water to try and combat that sickness and to help your body acclimatise.

RYG: How important was teamwork on the Everest expedition?

TJ: It's really important to get to know your team members and to value the different things they bring to the team. The key thing is to appreciate their strengths and to understand their weaknesses. You need to distribute duties throughout the team accordingly.

My boyfriend, Ben, was a very good forward planner and decision maker. I was more of a motivator, a 'getting things done type of person.' Greg was incredibly laid back, which was really positive. Omar did well with the sponsorship, which was a help for the team. In our own way we each did little things.

The team was very self selecting. Whilst we had 30 people initially that wanted to climb Everest, it whittled its way down to four in the end.

RYG: How did you keep your spirits up during the hard times on the expedition?

TJ: My MP3 player was a godsend. I couldn't have survived without it. I didn't listen to it when I was climbing. That's fairly dangerous as you can't hear calls from team mates. At night when I was exhausted, when my morale was low, I'd listen to some good tunes. Amy Winehouse was one of my favourites. She played her part in getting me to the summit of Everest.

RYG: What skills have you learnt from expeditions that you can take into other areas of your life?

TJ: I've developed a greater understanding of what I'm capable of. I've discovered that you can push yourself a lot more than you think. The human body is capable of amazing things.

I've learnt how to work well with other people. That's an essential skill - being able to understand other people's strengths and weaknesses, because that dictates whether or not you impact on them in a positive or negative way.

It's given me a thick skin, to ignore people when they put you down and say 'You can't do that.' Actually you can. Often it only takes someone to say the opposite and give you some encouragement, and suddenly you start believing you can do it.

What people say to you has a massive effect. If somebody says you can do something, the chances are you'll go on and you'll believe it. If you tell yourself you can do something, you can. If you tell yourself you can't, then you won't. So much of it is mental and not physical. You have to be fit, but it is almost 90% mental and 10% physical. I've learnt to be realistic in planning. I've learnt how to be flexible.

RYG: What advice would you give to someone looking to challenge themselves?

TJ: If you really want to achieve something, it's a question of creating some building blocks and putting them together in the right order. It's all very well saying 'I'd like to be able to run a marathon in a year's time,' which is quite an achievable objective for a lot of people, but if you do nothing for the first six months then your chances are going to be decreased.

You need to have a plan, and you need to be realistic in that plan. You need to be able to see yourself achieving and getting closer to your goal. If you set your hurdles too high to begin with, you're just going to fail and your confidence will be squashed right at the very beginning.

You need to start small and work your way up. If you do all those things you'll reach your goal in the end.