A HUNTER man has scaled the height of Mount Everest over the long weekend in a mammoth effort which took him 20 hours and 14 minutes and raised more than $10,000 for the Cancer Council.
Mark Hoult, a 46-year-old project manager from Raworth, started at Hickson Street Lookout at 3pm Saturday, June 11, and hiked 114 non-stop laps of the hill into Glenrock until he reached the equivalent elevation of Mount Everest.
The challenge known as "Everesting", required him to hike the equivalent of Everest's 8848 metres, up and down a hill of 79.
After finishing about 11am on Sunday, four hours ahead of schedule, Mr Hoult said he pleased with his results.
"I'm feeling very good, I've just got a sore ankle," he said. "It's going to swell up I know but it's just an overuse injury, I ended up doing just under 74kms in total."
He cramped up at lap 32 of 40, after "stupidly" taking two steps instead of one at a time, he said. "The guys who were crewing for me rang my coach and asked for strategies," he said. The answer was to take between two and five-minute breaks every five laps, which saw him through.
The amount of support he had was "incredible", Mr Hoult said, with between four and ten runners with him at all times, during all hours of the night. His usual training regime involves running 30km to 40km every week.
"I initially planned on doing an Ultra-Trail run in the Blue Mountains in May but unfortunately that was postponed due to the floods," he said.
He has found the key to endurance events was "80 per cent mental".
"You really have to work on strategies to get yourself out of that pain cave and push on," he said.
Having lost his mother to cancer 30 years ago, Mr Hoult was aiming to raise $8848 and was thrilled to surpass that amount of money, and top out just over the total elevation of Everest climbing a total of 8,888 metres.
"I've had some great sponsor like Business Risk Solutions, Gamble and Brown and Talwind Australia. I've also had a lot of help from Hunter Physio."
