How many steps have you, reader, climbed today? And in the last week? In the month, perhaps? Well, if you can’t change the elevator for the nearest stairs, try to imagine what it’s like to climb 22,000 steps with a 22-kilogram backpack on your back — and wearing a pair of snow boots, which impede the usual movement of your feet. Did you imagine? Because this is part of the basic training routine of Tiago Toricelli, 46, a journalist and publicist who tries to combine preparation to meet the goal of climbing Everest (always him!) with the day to day from 8am to 6pm in the marketing department of a large food products company.
As if that weren’t enough, Toricelli needs to juggle a few more details in his routine, namely: paying attention to his three children, the youngest of whom is 3 years old and who loves to go with his father to the bush on weekends, when training is more pulled. Result: that training routine on the stairs of the building where he lives, which we mentioned above, is performed at night, over five and a half hours, always ending around midnight.
But what makes a normal human being, who never imagined himself as a demigod like the great climbers like to look like, to face a challenge of this size, more precisely 8,849 meters of cruel climbing and which not infrequently leaves many along the way?
To begin with, it is worth mentioning that Toricelli has always liked sports and participated in various sports in his professional and private life. Back from his first major mountaineering venture, climbing Huayna Potosi, in Bolivia, at 6,088 meters, he was already writing a book which he named “Handbook for the high mountain climber”. Well, neither is the book a manual, nor is anyone who climbs in Bolivia a mountaineer, a name only valid for those who travel through, of course, the European Alps.
Linguistic details aside, the blog spoke with Toricelli (attention, boss, the conversation was at lunchtime) to find out how a normal person manages to balance the routine of an executive in a large company, with the planning of such an ambitious project how much to climb Everest.
“It’s a dedication, a huge donation, continuous preparation”, he explains. “Because it’s a passion, the mountain is part of his daily life, in his blood”, he adds, recounting that, although he’s been climbing for 13 years, he only discovered that Everest was a possibility three years ago.
“The idea of the high mountain only came into my life when I interviewed Waldemar Niclevicz, because until then I thought that that was something very distant, I only consumed everything about mountaineering from afar”, recalls Toricelli, citing the first Brazilian to conquer the highest peak highest in the world, among many other feats. “When I saw that figure talking about the high mountain, I saw that it was real, it exists, he prepares himself, plans and makes it happen. That’s when I started planning for high mountains in my life”, he says.
That’s how he started to develop his own training plan with an eye on Everest. “I do two half marathons a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, on the other three days I do strength training or resistance at the gym, and on the weekends I do a range of exercises that I developed myself, like climbing the 22,000 steps on my building or go to a nearby mountain”, he describes.
And the family, Toricelli, how do you deal with this agenda? “I get home and it’s just a caress, a hello, okay, I give the kids some time and I’m going to train, try to finish around midnight, half past midnight, so I can have a rest and the day next start over”, he replies.
And the wife, does not complain? “My wife, Marina, is my biggest supporter, that’s the most magical part of the whole thing, here at home I don’t climb alone, I do mountain climbing with my family even if they don’t go with me, they are always present on a daily basis and she understands my donation, my delivery”, he says proudly, stating that she has already pasted a large picture of Everest in the living room to accompany her ascent at every step, point by point using the georeference locator that shows where she is at every moment.
Ah, yes, in the cargo bag you can’t miss the letters of encouragement that Marina writes for each undertaking, to sweeten her effort —be careful, there’s a moment of acute infatuation ahead!
“I always open the first letter she wrote me each night before hitting a summit”, he says, which he defines the reading as “the necessary match strike to face the normal self-sabotage of a high mountain, you always think that everything is bad, oh, I’m not prepared, these things that every mountaineer experiences”.
Ah, but there’s a vacation, right? Hello, illusion. “When am I going to climb”, asks Toricelli, adding that “only on vacation, that’s when I go to the mountains, what’s left is a space between Christmas and New Year for a family vacation”.
And if reconciling the life of an individual with business hours is complicated and requires resignation from the whole family, funding the adventures is a separate chapter. Because, because (also) of the overcrowding of the access routes to Everest, it is more expensive to reach the summit every year. Toricelli estimates that his endeavor will require something around R$300,000 to be raised by next April, spring in the Himalayas, when he will begin his journey to the top of the world.
As it is not easy for an employee-father-of-the-family to pay for such an experience, Toricelli sought sponsorship. “I knocked on the door of about 100 brands, and now I’m starting to get some feedback”, he says, explaining that “you have to find the right brand, the right person, the right moment for the brand, everything has to be reconciled to work”. A virtual crowdfunding among friends who follow you on Instagram also helps. “It’s really cool to see the level of engagement of people who are impacted in some way by the project, which is really expensive”, he points out.
“I thought that the physical preparation and planning part would be the most difficult part, but getting funding is another Everest”, he defines.
And you, reader, who has already done the math on the stairs closest to your armchair, still believe you don’t have time to make your dream come true?
As a seasoned news journalist, I bring a wealth of experience to the field. I’ve worked with world-renowned news organizations, honing my skills as a writer and reporter. Currently, I write for the sports section at News Bulletin 247, where I bring a unique perspective to every story.
