Home

10%

Will & Liz Perkins

Better Together

By 29029 Everesting

September 9^th, 2022

Liz Perkins: In 2015, I was diagnosed with brain cancer.

It changed everything.

I had brain surgery, and after that, a complication from the surgery: an adrenal crisis.

I haven’t felt completely like myself since then. Brain surgery is like a traumatic brain injury, and the adrenal crisis left me very weak. It’s been a long recovery.

The brain cancer diagnosis caused a bit of an identity crisis. Before I was diagnosed, I thought I was invincible. I thought I could do anything I put my mind to juggling my career, and being a wife and mother. Nothing could stop me.

But brain cancer stopped me. It rocked me and flipped our lives upside down.

Thankfully, we have had tremendous support, and Will has been by my side the entire time. Everything took a backseat as he picked up the slack for our family, and I am forever grateful for his unwavering dedication and partnership.

The road to recovery was long and challenging. I was tired, weak, and more limited than I'd ever been in my life. I had to relearn everything, both physically and mentally, as well as where I fit in my life.

Ever since my diagnosis, I’ve wanted to take control of my body again. I have wanted to be able to say I’m back, I’m fine, even better than before and be able to prove it.

29029 was that proving ground.

Will Perkins: I felt like I’d lost myself a bit through life. I wouldn’t change anything, but after all that time sacrificing for Liz and our two kids, I hadn’t done much for me.

Liz: He’s really been the ultimate partner. Everything was about me once I was diagnosed.

I was committed to 29029 first. I knew it was something I wanted - something I needed - but I also wanted Will to do it with me. Selfishly, because I know I’m better with him by my side, but also because I knew 29029 would be good for his soul too.

Will: We both have really full lives already, and neither of us were sure how we’d fit in the training. I could tell it was really important to Liz, so I told her she should do it. I’d be able to hold things down at home while she trained and prepared.

Liz: He’s always the most supportive partner, but I wanted him to do it with me so badly! I wanted it to be about him, and about us. I told him that if he wanted to join me, we’d find a way to figure it out.

So when registration opened, I said “I’m really doing this. But I need to know whether I’m booking a two-person tent, or registering as a single…”

Will: I often think of the negatives before the positives, and I give space to my doubts, so my first thoughts when Liz asked me to join her weren’t ones of excitement.

I knew if I signed up, nothing less than pulling on that Red Hat would count as success for me. But what if I couldn’t complete the challenge? And what about our dynamic if we tackled it together? What if Liz couldn’t keep up with me? What if I couldn’t keep up with Liz? What if one of us got sick?

But I didn’t let those negative thoughts win. I joined Liz in registering.

Will: Neither of us had ever done an endurance event. We had a healthy respect for what we were getting into, but when you show up to Snowbasin and see the first steep rise… it’s intimidating!

We’d done all the training, and we were as ready as we’d ever be, so intimidated or not, we hit the start line ready to climb.

The first three ascents went great. Our pacing was good, and comparison to others, something I’ve tended to do in the past, was non-existent. I was committed to our goal and our pace, no matter how fast or slow others were going.

The fourth ascent was a tough one for me. Liz was rolling, but I needed to stop more frequently to take breaks and collect myself. Old habits were creeping in, and I found negative thoughts hard to beat back.

Liz was trying to encourage me, but at some point, we both realized that I was going to have to work through whatever it was that was holding me back on my own.

Liz: I made sure not to push the pace, and I was trying to pump him up, but it wasn’t resonating. I knew I needed to give him the space to work through it.

Will: Liz was always a few steps ahead of me on that ascent as I worked through my doubts. When we got to the top, I realized that, even with the negativity creeping in, our time really wasn’t that far off how long any of our first three ascents had taken.

It was some proof that, even when things weren’t going well, the goal was still attainable. It was what I needed to reset my mental space and continue climbing.

Liz: On our fifth ascent, we got caught in the lightning storm. Stranded at the top, we had to wait for the gondola to be allowed to safely restart, and that’s when my journey started to turn.

Up until then, my ascents had been going smoothly, but while we were stuck up top, I got altitude sickness.

And it kept getting worse. I just wanted to get back down to lower elevation and see if that would be enough to reset me.

Will: After a lengthy delay, we finally made it to the bottom and took a break for dinner before getting back at it for some night hikes. On our 8th ascent, the sky opened up on us again, forcing us to shelter near the 1st aid station.

It was another delay before the rain finally let up enough that we felt okay to continue climbing.

At this point, Liz and I had done a total flip from earlier. I was feeling great, and Liz was feeling terrible.

Liz: I was still feeling very sick, but I pushed through to the top on the 8th ascent.

It was the gondola ride down where I broke. It took everything in me to not throw up. Hiking back up the mountain from the bottom was the last thing I’d be able to do. I was so disappointed. I wanted to climb, but my body was telling me no.

I told Will to go on without me. “You have to go. Our goal was to get 9 or 10 ascents before resting overnight. You have to keep going.”

Going into the event we had planned that if one of us was keeping the other from achieving the Red Hat, that’s when we would split up. There was no point in both of us not finishing if one of us was able.

But of course, Will didn’t leave my side. He stayed with me.

Will: At about 2:30 am, Liz layed down near the fire in the lodge for a quick rest. Neither of us were able to get much sleep, and at 4:30 am, we started moving around.

Liz: I felt absolutely wrecked. Wrecked to the point I thought the event was over for me.

I ran into Coach Dawn in the lobby of the lodge, and she told me to try to reset my body.

“If you head out on the mountain now, you might not make the finish. See if you can reset yourself first. Rest a bit now so you can keep climbing later.”

I grabbed a smoothie with some ginger in it - the first calories I had been able to get down in hours.

Getting some calories in me was an improvement, so I told Will I wanted to try to do one more. If I could do it without getting worse, we could see what happened after that. But right then and there, I was focused on just one more.

Even with how weak I was feeling, I managed to summit the mountain without getting any worse.

The Red Hat was still possible.

Liz: But it wouldn’t be easy. I finished ascents 9 through 13 through sheer grit and willpower. I was not well, and couldn’t down much more than water and another smoothie.

But I wanted that Red Hat for us, and I was going to find a way to get it.

When we got the red bib, I was so excited, but it wasn’t enough excitement to override the struggle my body was feeling. There was some elation as Colleen fastened the new bib around me, but it took only a few steps up the slope for my body to return to feeling broken.

It wouldn’t be a fast ascent.

But that wasn’t what mattered.

What mattered was walking down the Red Carpet at the top of Snowbasin, with Will at my side, to grab our Red Hats.

Liz: They tell you 29029 will change you - that you'll learn many lessons on the mountain - and they're right.

What doesn't challenge you won't change you, and those lessons became perfectly clear in our 36 hours on the mountain.

29029 proved that we can do hard things. It proved that we can set a goal that stretches us - even scares us - and still achieve it. It proved that we can do more with our lives than we’re doing right now.

Will: Finishing 29029 woke something up in me. We weren’t even home for a week when I turned to Liz and said, “I need to change something. I need to do something new in life. I’m bored.”

I’d been operating under what I thought was a ceiling to my life - a preconceived limit of what my life could look like. But 29029 proved to me that there is no ceiling. It proved to me that I can want more from life, and that I can go out and make that more happen.

It gave me the push to start making those changes. It showed me that I don’t need to accept a life of anything mundane. It proved to me that I can go out and do incredible things, make remarkable choices, and change who I am.

Liz: 29029 really did something remarkable for both of us! It hasn’t even been a month, and we already want to go back. We want to see what else the mountain can help us achieve!