Andrew Brandt

"I Guess I'm One of THESE Guys Now..."

Por 29029 Everesting

09 de July de 2022

I love to challenge myself physically whenever I can. I’ve been in athletics my entire life - I was a tennis player, I was an agent, I ran the Green Bay Packers for years, and now I am in media and academia related to sports.

I love finding interesting things within sports. I’m no stranger to trying different challenges, and when I started noticing this event called 29029, my interest was piqued.

Everest without going to Everest… That was intriguing!

In 2019 and 2020, I tried to sign up, but it was already sold out by the time I got around to looking into it. So in 2021, I put the registration date in my calendar and made it happen.

This was the perfect chance to discover something new in sport. I had done running. I had done swimming. I had done triathlons. This was a new challenge for me. I wanted to see what the mountain had in store for me.

The training was a big jump for me. I’d been doing around 8 hours a week of activity before I registered, but immediately I knew I needed to spend more time on my feet. This would be different.

I was used to short, intense workouts - I’m a fast-twitch guy - so it was a real change to go from short, challenging training sessions to longer, more moderate blocks.

I even bought one of those running vests with pouches for water and gels - something I never thought I’d own.

Wow, I’m one of those guys now.

I’d run these massive blocks - 4 hours at a time - which I’d never done before. Some of you reading are probably thinking, “Yeah, so what?” but to me that was a huge deal! I’d never done a 4 hour run before.

When I arrived at Snowbasin for the event, I thought the same thing that I’m sure almost everyone did.

Woah.

The first pitch of the trail is visible as soon as you get there, and it is steep!

Like any race I’d done, I started sizing up people - scanning the crowd of participants to see what kind of people were there. Everybody seemed a different ilk from what I’d seen at triathlons or running races. Even though there were nerves, everybody seemed very chill.

And they were interested in learning about everyone else. Why are you here? What are you doing this for?

I was there alone. I wanted doing it by myself to be part of the challenge. I wanted to experience it anew, and not have a default group of friends to gravitate towards.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that even though I came to Snowbasin alone, I was anything but actually alone on the mountain. I was immediately welcomed into the 29029 tribe by anyone and everyone I met.

They were nice, normal people - not the uptight triathletes or runners I was used to from past events. There was never a time where I felt lonely, which is pretty amazing in a group that size. We were all in it together.

I didn’t have much of a game plan going into the event. I was just there to push myself, hike, and pull on that Red Hat.

At the start line, there is such an energy. It’s dark, it’s 5:30 am, everybody has headlamps on… and then the hype speech starts. Everybody reading who has heard the hype speech knows what I’m talking about!

If there was one thing I could change, it would be to save that speech for 6 o’clock PM. And maybe 6 o’clock AM the following day. It helped, but we really didn’t need it then - everybody’s fresh and ready. But 12 or 24 hours in? That’s when the hype starts to die out.

The first ascent I truly realized how much that first pitch hurts. But it was all new and exciting - nothing I couldn’t keep climbing forward and through.

I had been dealing with my fair share of achilles troubles in the year prior to the event - achilles tendinopathy as I’m told. I had been doing physical therapy and all sorts of rehabilitation work on it. Whether or not it would hold up throughout 13 ascents was a nagging worry in the back of my head.

At ascent 4, I was starting to feel it. I stepped into the recovery room for some treatment on my ankle, and got it wrapped.

As I layed back, I thought to myself, “Oh, this is pretty nice in here. I’m quite comfortable…”

As I was thinking that, one of the coaches came by. “Get out of here, Andrew. Don’t get comfortable. Get out of here.”

Looking back, it is certainly one of my primary memories from that mountain. Everybody talks about having two choices when you get off that gondola: you can go left, into comfort and fire and food and relaxation, or you can go right. And you’ve gotta go right, as much as you can. You have to keep working towards the summit.

I hiked most of Ascent 9 late into the night with another girl I met on the mountain. As we finished, she was full of energy and eager to keep going. She wasn’t stopping for a rest.

But I couldn’t - my achilles was reminding me to manage my effort.

I waddled my way gingerly back to my tent. It wasn’t exactly restful, but I got an hour and a half of sleep.

And let me tell you, when I got up, I felt like a 95 year old man!

I was walking around hunched over, my heel wouldn’t even hit the ground…

How the hell am I going to do 4 more?

Just to get back to the start felt like a monumental effort.

Coach Dawn was there, and she gave me some advice.

“For this lap, don’t walk the same way. Side walk. Duck walk. Walk any way but normally. And stop every 15 steps.”

It sounds goofy, but I did it, almost the entire way up. Side walk. Stop. Duck walk. Stop. Side walk. Stop. Regular walk. Stop.

It helped. I had 10 under my belt now.

I kept going - the final ascent was in sight!

My first ascent had been 1:05. My last ascent - the ascent to get my Red Hat - took me 2 hours and 45 minutes. I spent that entire lap soaking it all in.

I only have one regret from the event. After I finished, I spent 4 hours cleaning up, showering, wearing Normatec boots, and even dozing off for a nap. I missed going up to the top with all the people coming in at the end. I heard about it all at the evening dinner, and I regret missing it.

After crushing my own challenging goal, nothing would have been more fulfilling than watching others do the same.

Years of being involved in sport means I’ve learned so much, and 29029 acted as a reminder for some of those lessons.

It is extremely important to have some self-discipline and consistency in your life. I ran the Green Bay Packers for 10 years, and when I left and started a new life, it meant I have a lot of things going on every single day. If I didn’t have self-motivation and self-discipline, I wouldn’t be able to stay fit and healthy.

A lot of people get to a certain age and they lose steam - they start coasting. They might not have new challenges, and they might not put themselves in positions to get out of their comfort zone. That’s not me. That’s not what I want.