Introduction Of Podcast
In today’s episode, we’re joined by Kieren D’Souza who’s a speed climber. Kieren has to go through quite an intense training schedule to be at his absolute peak. Mohit discusses with him what it’s like preparing for a speed climb. Kieren also shares how using the Ultrahuman M1 CGM device helped him prepare better as he summits Trishul!
Timestamps
(00:00 – 01:17) – Introduction
(01:32 – 04:48) – Kieren’s Journey
(05:35 – 08:20) – Intricacies of Speed Climbing
(08:37 – 11:45) – Kieren’s Inspiration For Adventure
(13:17 – 16:51) – Physical Preparation For A Speed Climb
(17:53 – 22:52) – Nutritional Preperation For A Speed Climb
(22:55 – 26:37) – Kieren’s Experience with CGM
(30:11 – 33:52) – Kieren on Trishul Peak Attempt
Key Takeaways – Transcripts
Intro (Mohit): Remember your trekking experiences? When you go out trekkingg with your friends and when it actually happens, at the end of the trek, you are almost drained out by the end of the trek, right? And you feel that you’ve conquered the world? Sounds cute when you consider who’s today’s guest. We’re joined by Kieren D’Souza, a speed climber and an Ultrahuman athlete. Never heard of speed climbing? Well, it’s quite self-explanatory. It’s when you literally have to run vertically on a mountain, and Kieren has been there, has done that several, several times. Our tracking expedition pales in comparison to what Kieren does. We speak to him about both the physical and mental preparation a speed climber has to go through and weeks and months of training and what they have to do to achieve peak performance, especially on the day of the climb. Fuelling and nutrition is no joke when it comes to speed climbing. And as Kieren simplifies what his intake is on the day of the climb and the day is leading up to it, Kieren also outlined how the Ultrahuman Cyborg has helped them along the journey and how it has helped him prepare better as he summits Trishul. We’ll talk more about Trishul very soon. This one’s not for the faint-hearted. Let’s get straight into it.
(Mohit): Hey, Kieren, good to have you here. Really appreciate you making time for the podcast.
(Kieren): Thanks so much Mohit. I mean, I’ve already been listening to the Ultrahuman Podcast on my runs over the last few weeks, so I’m excited to be actually on it now.
Question (Mohit): Amazing. So tell me a little bit about your journey till now, Kieren. I think what I know is that you’re into ultra running and into speed climbing, so that’s like, a super interesting combo. The reason for that is I haven’t actually come across anybody who actually does both, and I would love to understand what led you to this first, like, where did you start and what journey led you to what you’re doing right now and the beginning, as well as what I up to right now and maybe like, a little bit of your plan in the next few months.
Answer (Kieren): So essentially I’m here because I started running in 2010 in Bangalore, in college, and very soon, once I got into this mode of running, I realized I was more fascinated by something like ultra running, where essentially you’re covering a lot of distance on your own two legs, and the thought of being able to run long long distances on your own two legs was very fascinating to me.
Question (Mohit): What was the first run?
Answer (Kieren): The first ever run was a 10k in college, but the first ultra was the race called the Bangalore Ultra in 2012.
(Mohit): Oh, I ran that too, by the way.
Question (Kieren): You did?
Answer (Mohit): Yeah. Don’t ask me the timing, but yeah.
Question (Kieren): Which year did you run it in, though?
Answer (Mohit): 2012, I think.
(Kieren): Oh, what are you saying? I had 100k that year.
(Mohit): Yeah, that’s why I said don’t ask me the timing. A friend of mine also competed. I think his name was Rajaram Gaonkar.
(Kieren): Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So my 100K journey started right in that race at the same time when you were there as well. Small world. So, yeah, I started in that, and then I did a bunch of 100K races over the years. My first love before running and everything was mountaineering. That’s what I grew up reading a lot about all the mountaineering stories in the books and all that. So with running, eventually I realized that I can merge the sport of running and ultra running and mountaineering into essentially where we are today. With speed climbing and running, it sort of gives me that base for the fitness that I can take that and take it to the mountains and go up and down mountains, essentially.
Question (Mohit): Got it. What’s speed climbing about, just for our listeners would love to understand how is it different from regular climbing and what are some of the technicalities around that?
Answer (Kieren): I mean, it’s in the word, right? It’s in the name itself, speed climbing. So you’re going up and coming down a mountain as fast as you possibly can, but when it comes to speed, you got to start controlling a lot of aspects to the climbing, right? The amount of gear you’re carrying, the amount of nutrition, the amount of clothing, the kind of gear you’re carrying, all of that sort of becomes a minimal. So it’s what a regular mountaineer would do, would go up a mountain, they would go with a lot of rope, with a lot of tents, they would go with a lot of food, they would be carrying a lot of stuff, right? Whereas what I would end up doing as an individual doing a speed attempt would be that I would just go up these mountains with none of that. So I’ll just go as an individual climb without any rope or have a small, tiny 30 meters rope that I can use for myself and climb the same mountains that people do over multiple days in one push, essentially.
Question (Mohit): Wow. That sounds super fascinating. I think there are some parallels to a sport like cycling as well, where the weight on the bike matters a lot in terms of your acceleration capability as well as your ability to push harder. Maybe some of those aspects about the sport as well. Tell us a little bit about that. How do you plan your run, essentially?
Answer (Kieren): I mean, if you’re drawing parallels with cycling, right, you’re cutting kilos, a lot of kilos when it comes to the mountaineering. If you compare mountaineering and the kind of stuff I’m doing, right, and you’re cutting not just weight in terms of equipment, but also teams, right? I usually do it as an individual, whereas people are doing mountaineering stuff with 4-5-10 people in a team, right? So that matters as well.
Question (Mohit): Tell us a little about the technicality of the sports like what sort of risk profile, what’s the planning like compared to a regular mountaineering exercise versus, let’s say, speed climbing push? What would that look like?
Answer (Kieren): So, again, being in India, things are very different just because of excess information. Excess, it’s a different ballgame altogether. And the fact that people have not been doing speed attempts on mountains like this. So to start off with, when I think of a speed attempt on any mountain, there is no information that’s available about past attempts, about speed climbing on these mountains. So I’m sort of functioning in a blind spot kind of area, right? I have no idea if it’s even realistically possible. The first step and the first hurdle is just that. So all my references and all my information that I get is all from mountaineers, what they have been doing and the kind of campsites are set and the way they approach the mountain. So I got to sort of extrapolate that information to sort of fit it for myself. So as it is now, when you’re extrapolating and you’re playing around with information, there’s a lot of ifs and buts that could be there, right? So until I don’t make an attempt, things are always going to be a little sketchy and a little hazy in terms of what to expect on the mountain. But then you have the regular mountaineering challenges that increase. Because I’m doing it as an individual. The fact that I have to navigate things on the mountain myself, I need to be prepared for any situation on the mountain alone. If anything happens, communication is a big problem. I don’t have rescue easily available. So if I’m stuck at 7000 meters or 6000 meters, and even if I have a team, but they are all at 4000 meters, how do I communicate with them? How do they get to me at the right time? So these things sort of all become like these are the sort of extra challenges that you’re dealing with, right? And then, of course, because I’m doing it on my own and weight is a big thing that I try to cut. So if the weather turns ugly, I have limited gear that I’m using and I got to deal with the weather conditions with just that gear. If I run out of water, that becomes a problem. If I run out of food, that becomes a problem. Because I’m not carrying a stove to melt snow and ice to drink water, I’m not carrying extra calories. So all of it is calculated and all of that becomes a hassle as well. Not a hassle, but adds to the sketchiness of the whole thing. So all of that becomes like as you’re trying to cut down weight to go faster, you’re also sort of like it’s getting a little more risky in terms of safety to some extent, I would say, but not to say that it’s not safe. I mean, for me, eventually I know it’s safe because it’s my skills that I’m relying on.
Question (Mohit): That’s a great statement to make, though. I think one thing to probably understand is there is a logical explanation to why you would want to get into something like this. Of course there is thrill in the masochism, but is there an inspiration angle as well? Like, is there somebody you’re inspired by? Tell us a little bit about that as well.
Answer (Kieren): For sure. I have grown up reading about the grandest adventures in the world, right? Whether it’s your Shipton, Amundsen and the Everest attempts, or people swimming across the Nile and Amazon, all kinds of things. And I’ve always been fascinated by adventure, right? So that sort of thing, that’s where my enthusiasm for anything sort of is coming out of initially. Like if you have to go back to when I was a kid, but specifically this style of monitoring, that is something that at some point, like I said, mountaineering became my interest, right? When I wanted to do mountaineering, I wanted to figure out my own style. And the way I climb mountains matter to me. The space of mountaineering is in 20200 and 2022. It’s all about how you’re climbing. It’s either always about harder routes or faster. And if you go into the history of mountaineering as well, from the way everything has progressed, it’s all progressed into moving lighter and faster to some extent, right? You look at your Mark Butter and you look at even if you look at reinforced messenger’s attempts, right? Those are all progression of what happened before they came along. So where we are is what I feel where the world is with mountaineering today. So what I’m doing with mountaineering is what I think is a very current thing. It’s my style that I want to explore more and more. And sadly, I’ve not seen enough of it happen in the Indian mountaineering space. Whereas if you look at it globally in the Alps, if you look at it in Nepal, if you look at it in any mountain range pretty much anywhere, you will see a lot of people who have been doing things like this throughout the years. Not just recently, like for many years. You look at Mont Blanx and the speed attempts that have happened on Matte Horn and Bomb loss since the all that.
(Mohit): Yeah I recently stumbled upon Nirmal Purja.
(Kieren): Yeah, that’s another extension of the way the space is growing, right? Like, he’s done what they did was seven years in seven months, essentially. So he’s done various versions of small, small Peter Fence as well.
(Mohit): What stops one from thinking that this guy is a crazy guy, right? And doesn’t make sense.
(Kieren): But aren’t we all a little crazy?
(Mohit): Yeah, of course.
(Kieren): And it’s a good thing to be that, I guess.
(Mohit): Although I would say that NIMS is a little bit on the crazier side. AI think seven years and six months, the next six documentary film seems like the film seems challenging. Forget the feat.
(Kieren): Yeah, I mean, I’m pretty fascinated by the way Nirmal Purja has sort of approached his whole project as well. And it’s pretty interesting because I actually read about a person voted Kutika who had mentioned that doing all 14,000 meters in a season was a realistic thing. And this was something he had mentioned in the 80s and one season is essentially seven months or something and sort of like made it happen last two years back.
(Mohit): Man, it’s almost like daredevil. It’s beyond sports, right? I think there’s an element of daredevil for sure in this. The amount of risk and the thrill and the adrenaline and the type of feat this is.
(Kieren): I don’t know, because it’d be hard for me to comment on 8000 meters projects since I’ve not been on 8000 meters. But I think what’s more fascinating is not the fact that he pulled off the project, but that he had the guts to actually go ahead and make it happen. Like, saying it and dreaming it is one thing, but he actually made it happen. And that’s, I think, bigger deal.
(Mohit): Yeah, I think I listened to one of the podcasts where he’s speaking to Joe Rogan and I think he says that there was no funding, there was nothing at all. He left his pension payment to actually pursue this.
(Kieren): Exactly. So that’s why I’m actually more fascinated with things, because sometimes the monitoring side of things or the climbing side of things is probably the easiest side of things compared to what happens in the background where you spend a lot of hours and months making things happen. And he’s got to be driven for doing something like that for a long duration, not just for the duration of the attempt. It’s pretty fascinating.
Question (Mohit): Man, this is so motivating. It’s so inspiring. Definitely going to work out after this. No, but I think this is very, very I can’t call this human. This is definitely other superhuman, maybe Ultrahuman, but this is definitely beyond what normal human being can achieve. And on that note, what does the preparation for something like this look like? Both from a physical conditioning perspective and also from mental conditioning perspective, given that you mentioned that mental conditioning here is sort of like the main thing.
Answer (Kieren): For starters, it’s a little hard to break down exactly how to work physically for something like this, especially the speed attempts, because again, we begin at a point where it’s in the unknown. So I try to first gather information and try to break down that information, gather information about the route, gather information about the weather conditions, the snow conditions that I’m going to expect, and then try to apply it into training and try to understand how to train my body for the various things that I might need, I might face on the mountain. So, for example, if I come across an ice wall on the mountain ice walls are usually the pre solid ice. And it’s also pretty vertical, right? So I can’t just keep running and rely on my endurance for that. I need to be comfortable in a very vertical terrain, right? So I need to be comfortable with using an ice axe. I need to be comfortable with front points of my crampons. So I do a lot of ice climbing in the winters. The idea with ice climbing so ice climbing essentially is climbing frozen waterfalls, completely vertical stuff. So the idea of that is to get comfortable in the vertical terrain on hard ice. And I sort of take that experience and that training because I’m not just working on the physical side of things, but I’m also working on the mental side of things to be able to control my fear on vertical exposure section. Take that into the mountaineering side of things. Then, for example, something like breaking trail. You know, when you’re going up on a mountain and if you’re the first team, if you’re leading the trail, even if you’re alone, and you got to break trail when there’s a lot of snow, what happens is you’re using a lot of energy to do that. So I then start working on things like trying to build the Endurance not from a running perspective, from, but a strength and power perspective so that I can deal with breaking trail better. Breathing. I mean, with the performance program that I’m on with Ultra Human, we’re working on the breathing side of things, right? And as you’re going up in altitude, everyone knows there’s less oxygen. But how do you sort of deal with less oxygen better? How do you function as well as you possibly can when you have less oxygen? And I’m working at a higher effort than most people would. So how do I still work at a higher effort and keep pushing myself? And with every step, there is less oxygen sort of getting absorbed by my body? Right.
Question (Mohit): Is it called the hypoxia risk?
Answer (Kieren): It’s not hypoxia, high attitude sickness. Hypoxia could be hypoxia, yeah. When your brains fill the water in your brains, water in your lungs and could be forgetting the term. There are two different terms to it. It actually reflects badly on me right now.
(Mohit): No, acute mountain sickness.
(Kieren): That’s acute mountain sickness. But then you have one where your water fills up into your lungs and then there’s one where it fills up into your brain. Cerebral edema and pulmonary edema.
(Mohit): Yeah. Higher.
(Kieren): Yes. HAPE & HACE It came while we’re speaking.
(Mohit): Wow. The probability of HAPE & HACE is actually higher given that you almost get more time to adapt.
(Kieren): Yes and no. But I do try to adapt as much as I possibly can because if I don’t adapt, it will hit me fast. But the thing is, in some ways I think it’s safe as well because I’m at altitude for a very short duration. Got it. I’m going to be above six and a half thousand meters for far shorter duration than what most people would be when they were climbing the same mountains.
(Mohit): So to summarize, you visualize or you understand sort of like do a recci of what the route could look like, what the you can say the expedition would look like and then you understand what sort of skills would be required along the way.
(Kieren): Try to break it down as much as possible and individually learn those and then not just learn those. Practice it. So ice climbing is not like something I do once I’ve been practicing it for the last few years. Getting comfortable in those situations, getting comfortable and just being alone in the mountains is something that you’ve got to work at as well. Just doesn’t come. But yeah, information, practice and practice all aspects of it. That’s why working a lot on the breathing side of things, right? Like it plays a big role.
Question (Mohit): So when you stitch it all together, there is this physical conditioning aspect and you spoke about the mental conditioning, staying alone in the mountain and all of that really cool. What’s the nutritional aspect? How do you actually think of nutrition as a key enabler or a key differentiator in some ways.
Answer (Kieren): So that is actually where things get a little tricky because especially what I’ve done in the past is very different. What I’ll do in the coming project will be very different mainly because I’ve never been to 7000 meters. So it’s going to be a new experience at that altitude for my body. So from how food gets digested and how energy gets consumed would be a very new experience for my body to have. What I’ve done in the past has been very simple, but it’s very low on calories because again, trying to be as light as possible is the first goal. But gels things like bars, gels, cheese I realized that I like cheese a lot. So cheese and chocolate a weird combination, I guess, but it’s also things that are small and I can just fill into my pockets of my jackets and into a small pack. So a lot of things of that sort. But I try to eat a little bit every little while. So while I’m climbing I just have a small bite. Stopping and having a big chunk of something. I just keep having a small nibbling on something throughout. That’s how I’ve done it in the past. How I would do it for Trishul would be at the moment similar because I don’t know any other way since this is how I’ve done it in the past. But I’m trying to have an open mind that the fact that it might not work, I might have to have another backup plan. So that is during the attempt, the other aspect of nutrition is in the build up when I’m camping out on mountains, when I’m staying in the weeks building up to the attempt, when you don’t have access to decent food. In that case, it’s mostly whatever we can cook at campsite, which is not necessarily always the best food. A lot of canned food and lot of dehydrated food.
Question (Mohit): Got it. So basically reduce the unknowns at this stage. I think that’s a wise way to understand this and pursue this. Did you ever try to profile your calories and glucose as well along this journey? I’m really curious, what does that look like? Given that you’re fuelling every few hours.
Question (Kieren): What do you mean by profiling your calories?
Question (Mohit): What sort of calorie profile? Like essentially, how many guys do you consume in a normal training day or even during a speed climb attempt? What would that look like? And also from a blood glucose perspective.
Answer (Kieren): Honestly, I’ve never done that. So the work we’ve been doing the last couple of months is the first time I’ve had access to being able to monitor my blood glucose and my calories. Mostly it’s always been feel, but that’s not necessarily the most accurate. But now what we have is able to track it with more data driven method. So this will be the first time we actually do something that will be a lot more data driven. What we’ve been doing in training and what we do in the racing and Trishul. In the past, it’s been mostly going based on what I feel like, what I consume, all based on feel. I do know during races I try to do about 400 calories an hour, but that’s in my long races where I’m running for anything above 6 to 7 hours. I do about 400 calories an hour. On the mountains, when I’m doing my speed attempts, my carry consumption is extremely low just because I don’t have excess as easily. For example, when I did a speed attempt on. Mount Friendship Peak in Manali, which took me about 11 hours 45 minutes, and during that whole speed attempt, I did about 700 calories in total.
Question (Mohit): Was that accidental or that is something that you planned?
Answer (Kieren): It was a little bit of both. I took only a few gels and about one Snicker bar or something and like four gels or something like that. So I carried just that. And I only had one point where I could sort of get anything more if I wanted food wise. And that point came at the wrong time in my attempt. I didn’t come to a point where I needed it, so didn’t have access to it at that time.
(Mohit): There is metabolic flexibility you can fuel from your ketones as well as your lactic acid. But I think 700 is pretty much on lower side.
(Kieren): It’s extremely low. I mean, I do 400 and then you’re doing 712 hours. But then also when you’re racing, you’re sort of at max effort for a high time during the race, whereas in the speed attempt and I cannot be at max effort because if I’m at max effort means I’m sort of going to get very exhausted. I’m going to be very slow thinking very slow. And as I’m going up a mountain, it gets more sketchy, right? Safety. That’s one way I can control safety, by being in control of how exhausted I am. So I don’t want to be exhausted when I reach the summit. I want to be exhausted when I’m down from the mountain. So how to control that also matters.
(Mohit): Really cool. That’s really amazing. What have been some of these observations? You’ve tried the argument cyborg recently. Tell us a little bit about what sort of observations have you had with the product and about your own health, your own performance with the glucose monitor on.
(Kieren): There are two ways I’ve been trying to sort of learn and gain learning with the Cyborg. One is from a race fueling perspective. So how I’m fueling during an activity and we probably get to apply that the first time in Trishul and in my race of May. So one is that because when I’m running for 3 hours, 4 hours or something longer, how I’m fueling and how it affects me plays a big role, right? So trying to understand that through my training runs and what I’m consuming has been honestly still in the process. We are still breaking it down, still going through the whole learning process. But I’m learning about what I should not be doing or how to improve things. So, for example, in my long runs, when I consume a gel, what do I have before my run? For example, I always thought, okay, if I have a banana and go for a run, I’m sorted. But it doesn’t necessarily work that way, right? It’s about what I eat plays a big role in fueling. Me optimizing my fueling for the initial sections of my running, just going and having a gel whenever the company suggests also doesn’t work that way. So trying to understand how often I need a gel and what do I need with the gel? Do I need water? Can I just do gels how to have my hydration going along with my nutrition? So trying to break these things down earlier, again, like I said, you should be all field based. Now it’s data driven because you can see when I go for a run and I’ve done a certain practice, a certain kind of nutrition, now we can see on the Ultrahuman app how it’s performed and what to tweak, essentially, right? The second aspect of it is the nutrition on a daily basis, which also plays a big role in my training and performance, right? Like we all know, I mean, fuel is you’ve got to fuel your body to perform eventually, right?
So what do you eat matters and when you eat matters as well. So that’s been some big changes I’ve had to start making about when I’m eating my foods, what kind of foods I’m eating in my meal, right? Earlier, I used to think like, okay, if I’m doing a good dal rice, I’m eating it’s something good. But trying to break down and understand adding fat to it, changing the rice that I’m eating because of how it’s actually getting absorbed in my body. These are learnings that I’m sort of having constantly.
(Mohit): But it does actually make you a lot more aware about the type of macros that actually exist. Like the first time I tried out the glucose monitor and I wanted to experiment with different types of macros, I realized how severely deficient I was in terms of the fiber intake. Yeah, it’s not present anywhere Like processed food even home food for a lot of reasons.
(Kieren): Exactly. Even the fiber was something I learned about, like, consciously, you need to think about where you’re eating fiber from. And I see this is something I was thinking. So I was listening to the Ultrahuman Podcast with Shiva, right, about nutrition and where he said that food is not complicated. I mean, I’m butchering the exact words that you guys were using. But about food, we’ve made it very complicated in the kind of life we are living, right? And also the kind of access we are having to food from all over the world, which our bodies are not used to. Like, it’s just becoming complicated that way. So trying to understand and everything we’re eating and how it’s affecting our body is definitely playing a big role.
(Mohit): But I think humanity definitely attempted to make it more scalable and simple. Maybe the intent was in the right place, long W=back maybe during the World War or during the industrial era where you wanted to just scale up food in a safe way. You can also call a germ-free food. But today there is potentially no war. And you don’t have a food problem.
You have a food storage problem. You have a processed food problem. Exactly. True. The same systems don’t apply.
(Kieren): True. Exactly. That’s the thing, right? It was created processed food was created for a certain reason. But we are in a place where it’s being used in a very different fashion altogether. And naturally, how our bodies are dealing with it is so unknown. But now with the Cyborg, we’re getting
(Mohit): Survivability vs profits, right?
(Kieren): Yes. But now with the Cyborg, we’re getting to understand this better, which is also quite a great thing. You’re getting to understand how anything, even for a matter like a packet of chips how it affects us. No.
(Mohit): It’s a start. Really. Because when you actually think about going to any like when you go to a grocery store today and we did this experiment a few weeks back. I went to a large grocery store and I went to one of the because it was a large store. I went to one of the you can say one of the corners. One of the large shelf. Essentially. Of food. But there was some. Like, you can say a section around easy munchables and almost 70% of all the food items on the shelves were labeled or more actually were labeled as healthy.
(Kieren): Yeah. And honestly, I’m guilty of falling for that trap, for sure.
(Mohit): It’s insane. Because there is healthy, then there is natural. Yeah. And then there is organic. Organic. And these are used very interchangeably sometimes. Like, for example, without naming the company, of course there is a company that makes new age candy bars without sugar, but using Jaggery, just like regular processed sugar. They use non processed sugar, but they’re calling it natural and healthy. And that’s weird, right? Because it’s the same sugar, it’s less processed, but that does not make it healthy, right? You can call it less processed. That’s perfectly fine because that’s what it is.
(Kieren): Yes, it’s pretty like, freely used a lot of the terms.
(Mohit): Yeah, I mean, it’s so confusing. We do come across so many people now, like insane that a lot of people, like, I speak to, they say that I’m off sugar for the last 1 year. And I’m like, wow, that’s amazing. What have you been eating? I’m like, no, I switched to jaggery and I switched to natural fruits. And I was like, that’s sugar. Yeah, exactly. That’s not off sugar. This is so cool. I think especially learning from or hearing this from somebody who’s actually pushing their bodies to pushing their body to the extreme end, being aware. But nutrition is sort of like a whole new dimension of performance.
(Kieren): Exactly. Honestly, I find it complicated, and I think it is complicated, if I’m not mistaken. But yeah, we got to start somewhere. And I think it’s becoming more complicated because of sometimes a lot of your diet plans and everything that exists and everyone saying it’s healthy and you have various everyone who stands up for things and everything. So it gets more and more complicated. You get swayed by who you listen to and who you follow and what you’re doing right now. You’re sort of providing a way to be a little more informed and not just get swayed blindly by anything.
Question (Mohit): That’s a great perspective to have. Okay, so you mentioned Trishul. Tell us a little bit about it. I think for our listeners, they’ve been interested to understand what does the attempt looked like and what does it actually mean.
Answer (Kieren): All right, so Trishul is a 7000 meters peak in Uttarakhand and it was first climbed, if I’m not mistaken, in and that was at that in 1907 of the highest sort of mountains that was climbed. So since then, nationally, cold has moved on, but Trishul is still a very beautiful and a very prominent face in Mountain in Uttarakhan. It is along the Nanda Devi Sanctuary that probably a lot of folks also would know about. And I’ve been just honestly tripping on the photos that I’ve been seeing. I cannot wait to be there. The last client that if I’m not mistaken that’s the last successful attempt was in 2019. If I’m not mistaken, I could be wrong. Maybe someone has attempted it after that. Successfully attempted it after that. But from as far as I’m aware, so three-four years back. Well, it’s a 17100 meters peak, so you’re now getting into the high altitudes, like really high altitudes and mountaineering and I’m trying to remember who had climbed it. It was climbed Longstaff. Yes, DG Longstaff. If I’m not mistaken, he had climbed it in 1907. So yeah, a speed attempts in the Indian Mountains on a 7000 meters has not now really happened. And honestly, Indians have not been doing speed attempts in the Indian Mountains. So I’ve done one on a 6 thousand and a 5 thousand. So this is the first time we’d be doing it on a 7000 and it will be the first for 7000 meters peak as well in the Indian Mountains at least.
(Mohit): Wow, man, this is giving me some real chills. I was just googling Trishul Mountain and it does look like a Trishul.
(Kieren): Yeah, you have three thrishul One, two, three and if you see some of the photos, they look pretty.
(Mohit): Yeah, it’s fascinating, man. And speed attempt on that looks unreal.
(Kieren): Yes, I’m actually very excited. I had a team member so just come back from a rekki trip a week back and he got me a bunch of photos from the base camp. So base camp is Rupkund and Rupkund is again a famous, famous trek to Rupkund. So the base camp there, he got me photos from there. So we get very current updates and I’m actually very excited for it. Can’t wait.
(Mohit): Likewise. We’re super excited and I think this is really inspiring and what I wanted to say was that we love to get in touch and figure out if we can help in any way. And at the same time, this is really cool, really inspiring for everyone out here and we want to wish you all the best for this attempt. Thank you. And we’re watching from the sidelines.
(Kieren): Honestly, while I’m excited for the attempt and make it happen, I’m excited to actually be running up and down to the Cyborg on an getting information of how things are going on in my body at 7000 meters and at six and a half thousand meters. Exactly. I mean, I like to geek out information so I’m very excited to have this kind of information and I mean, I’m actually honestly just been pretty excited also to be a part of the whole performance case study and part of the Ultrahuman family, right? Like exciting work, no doubt. And on all fronts, right? Whether we are doing work on the Cyborg or the breathing work or the nutrition aspects of it, all of it. It’s quite fascinating.
(Mohit): Amazing. Kieren, it’s been a pleasure and really appreciate you making time here and we would definitely get in touch and figure out more ways to break new performance barriers together and wish you all the best for the upcoming feat of yours. And we’ll definitely watch on the sidelines and definitely would be cheering from the side, so see you around.
(Kieren): Thank you so much for having me Mohit. It’s been a real pleasure to finally talk to you. Thank you.
(Mohit): Yeah, likewise, likewise. Thank you, Kieren.
Outro (Mohit): It’s intense being a speed climber, isn’t it? Sounds very very high adrenaline. The kind of preparation of speed climber has to undergo is insane. And Kieren truly exemplifies the Ultrahuman spirit. Let us know your thoughts on Kieren and what thrilled you the most about his journey. Tag us @UltrahumanHQ, on Twitter and Instagram, we are really keen to hear from you and as always, show the Ultrahuman Podcast some love by sharing it on social media with your friends and family. We’ll soon be back with the next one. See you.
