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David Eastman

Consistency is King

By 29029 Everesting

March 28^th, 2025

I’ve always been a pretty good athlete.

I played tennis in college, ran marathons in my thirties, and did what I call old-man CrossFit as I aged. But in 2021, I had heart surgery to repair my mitral valve.

That took me out of my workout routines.

Later that year, I found myself standing at the base of Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park on a family trip. My kids ran ahead, and I didn’t have it in me to keep going.

It was the first time I could remember that my body truly told me you can’t do this.

It didn’t sit well with me…

At a Christmas party with my wife, a friend of ours mentioned 29029.

My wife - always super athletic - immediately said “I’m in!”

She said it in a way that seemed like she assumed I wouldn’t be.

But I was.

I needed to get back into doing athletic things.

We signed up.

How hard could it be to walk uphill?

Fast-forward to Whistler in 2022, and it turns out walking uphill is actually pretty damn hard when it’s a mountain!

I’d barely started my first ascent - reaching the very first aid station - before my wife left me in the dust. She was fit and she was fast!

When I finally reached the summit, I was wrecked.

Done.

Matt Burrell was there.

“How’s it going?”

“Terrible. I’m done!”

I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was enough to keep me from giving up.

During the second ascent, I had lowered my expectations. I figured I’d do three or four before calling it.

That’s enough. That’s a lot. I’d be fine with that.

I ran into Coach Brent Pease on that climb.

He was leading a group hiking at a slower pace than me - climbing a few hundred steps at a time, then taking a break, keeping the pace manageable.

Oh… so that’s how you’re supposed to do this.

I joined them, and by the time we hit the summit, I felt completely different.

I can keep climbing.

Around 11 pm, I was sitting on a bench off to the side of the ascent trail. Exhausted, I was partway up my 5th ascent.

“Get up, David. I’m taking you to the top.”

Startled, I looked up. It was Coach Brent.

We made it to the summit a bit before 2 am.

“Okay David, if you want to get a Red Hat, you can’t go back to the hotel. You have to keep climbing.”

I tried to negotiate my way into some sleep.

“Can I just do half an ascent, take the gondola down from the mid-station, sleep a little, and then start halfway up?”

“Nope. That’s now how this works.”

That 6th ascent - through the pitch-black forest - took me four grueling hours.

As I broke through the last stretch of trees into the alpine summit, I was greeted with the most stunning sunrise inversion I’d ever seen.

I’d say it made that four-hour ascent worth it, but I was too delirious to think that.

I kept climbing.

By my 8th ascent, my wife - who had gotten a bit of proper sleep overnight I might add - took pity and climbed her final ascent alongside me.

When we pulled on our Red hats at the summit, I was completely wrecked - I couldn’t even enjoy a celebratory beer!

I’m never doing that again.

And then I did it again…

In 2023, a few friends convinced me to join them at Snowbasin.

I trained a little more this time - still not enough though.

It was Whistler all over again - hiking through the night, barely finishing in time, not being able to enjoy a celebratory beer…

I’m never doing that again.

Then Mont-Tremblant was announced.

My wife was ecstatic.

She was signing up.

And so was I.

But this time, I decided I wasn’t going to wing it.

I reached out to Coach Brent.

“I want you to train me. I want to keep up with my wife. That’s my only goal.”

That wasn’t actually my only goal, but I thought it made for fun conversation with Brent.

I really wanted to train the right way this time.

I wanted to have fun on the mountain this time.

I didn’t want to be up against the clock so tight this time.

At 60, staying fit just by doing things isn’t automatic anymore.

I needed structure, accountability, and someone to keep me from slacking off.

My experience on the mountains before made Brent the obvious choice for me.

I already trusted him - not just because he had helped me earn two Red Hats already with his on-mountain guidance, but because he also knew exactly how to get inside my head.

There’s a 20-week training plan that we all received for the first two mountains. I’d do about 80% of the workouts, and every few days, I’d skip one entirely. I thought that was fine - good enough, right?

But with Coach Brent, I had someone watching. He would know exactly what I was - or wasn’t - doing.

And he wouldn’t let me off the hook.

“Consistency is king,” he’d say.

“We can negotiate intensity, but we can’t negotiate duration.”

Brent understood how to push me, and it was clear that he was not a one-size-fits-all type of coach.

I’m not a rah-rah guy, and he figured that out quickly. With me, he didn’t cheerlead. If I fell off, he just called me on it. Bluntly.

He figured out I needed tough-love coaching.

Progress felt slow at first, but eventually, I realized the gains I’d made. What felt impossible on Day 1 was easy by Day 60!

If you’re consistent, progress is consistent.

Some workouts felt way harder than I thought I could handle. Others felt too easy. But that’s not the important part - what mattered most was that I would not have done them all on my own. I might have pushed too hard at times, not hard enough other times, or skipped some entirely.

But Brent knew better. He kept me accountable.

He knew I loved to golf, so I tried to negotiate workouts around that.

“Can I count walking 18 holes as training?”

Sometimes, to my surprise, he let me get away with it. Other times, he’d hit me with a simple message: “Nope, you’ll have to put in some miles tomorrow,” or sometimes, an even simpler ignoring of my questions, and just a “Don’t forget the hips when you do the prescribed workout.”

Subtle shame works better on me than encouragement, and Brent had tweaked how he coached me to use that to motivate me.

At Whistler and Snowbasin, I had just survived.

At Mont-Tremblant, I was ready for it!

I had trained.

I had a plan.

But by the first ascent, my main goal had already failed.

My wife left me in the dust. Again!

I was disappointed, but I kept going and kept on schedule with my plan - a plan, I might add, that I could not stick remotely close to on the other 29029 mountains.