Back in the race!

There had been no change in our financial position since kit issue day on the 5th of October and it was now the 22nd of October. Simon was starting to compromise his job by being in limbo and all the other people who were close to the project were having to put up with the uncertainty. Noel, the other member of the race team then told us that he was going to Papa New Guinea on Saturday the 26th of October for five weeks to climb a mountain and he would not be contactable for most of that time. I therefore felt that I had to make a decision one way or the other and it was to put everyone out of their misery and to pull out of the race decisively rather than limp towards the start line knowing we were never going to cross it.

I called Tony. After a bold, clear statement that my team was out of the race, Tony accepted my decision and then went on to completely ignore it. He told me he would come back to me with a proposal in the next few days. What that proposal was going to be, I had no idea. As I ended the call, I stood, motionless in the street. I had decided to pull out of the race, my team knew that I was making the call, I had done it, but there I was - no better off and back in limbo.

Traffic whizzing by, people all around and I felt completely alone.

Days passed and finally the phone call came… “Okay, I’ve got a solution. If you can go as a team of two, then I can give you one of my experienced guys down there. You pay for two and I cover the third.” Tony said.

So, suddenly the costs dropped from £126,000 to £84,000.  But, my first thought was that this would mean I would have to leave one of my team-mates behind. Tony was offering me the chance to go by raising a further £39,000. Still a massive amount of money but it seemed marginally more achievable than the £81,000 that I needed a few days earlier. But the dilemma - with three people on the team I definitely could not afford it, so none of us would go. With two on the team there might be a chance.

So, if I decided to try and find the remaining £39,000, then I was also going to have to ask one of my team-mates to come with me and have to tell the other that they were not. Simon has trained with me nearly everyday for the last 8 months and was the second man in the team. Noel was the last to join the team and he unfortunately was the one who was going to be left out.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to get through to Noel as he was already in Papua New Guinea and so I both left him a voicemail and sent a text. He texted back and asked me to try to call again as he couldn’t ring out. We eventually got a connection and the conversation that followed was terrible. I am poor when it comes to delivering bad news and I still feel responsible for not getting the extra £42,000 for Noel to go. Maybe I should have canned the thing earlier, maybe I should have done things differently? But that was in the past and the decision to be made now was whether to try to go as a team of two, or for none of us to go at all.

It’s now nearly two weeks on and Simon and I are back to the 6 hour tire drags, ski machine intervals and endurance weights, camp craft and mental preparation…back to basics and I’m back on the sponsorship hunt!