About

Welcome to Climbing and Running! A site by me (Mitch Lewis) dedicated to fellow serious and the not-so-serious climbers and runners who are looking to achieve Seven Continents or Seven Summits status and have fun in between and those that are also giving something back to the communities that they live or work or other causes that they believe in.

I can be reached at climbingandrunning@gmail.com or +1 408 634 6657 or follow me on Twitter @ mitchalewis.

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On a cold, dark, snowy day in Stockholm in January 2002, I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror and wondered where the gut had come from.  Could it be too much food, beer and lack of exercise combined with extensive travel that provided a great excuse for all of these.  Absolutely. I was almost 45 years old and we had been living in Sweden for four years and though I had jogged off and on in the past, I had never ran more than five or six miles.  All motivation I believe comes from a place of pain and after I submitted my entry to the Stockholm Marathon in June, I had inspiration to help me train and to eat better.

Six months later, on an endless sunlit midsummer day, I finished the Stockholm Marathon at about 8:00 p.m..  The race started at 2:00 p.m. near the old 1912 Olympic Stadium and it had taken me almost six hours to finish.  But I finished.  After I got the medal around my neck and migrated back to our flat on Linnegatan, I had time to reflect on what an experience it was.  People cheered for me on the street!  (Well, they were cheering for everyone, but I heard it as mine).  They clapped their hands as they drank their coffees and glasses of wine at sidewalk cafes and yelled Springa! This never happened at work as I walked in the door.

One year later, after having ran and finishing my second Stockholm Marathon, I was sitting in Ericsson’s offices in Mumbai killing time before our meeting with Reliance Telecom.  The meeting was scheduled to start at 9:00 p.m. but kept getting delayed until it was closer to a midnight start.  On a lark, I searched the internet for “marathons” and one of the hits was for something called the “Seven Continents Club”.  This was an elite group of individuals who had run marathons on all seven continents, including Antarctica.  By the time 2003 had ended, I had signed up to travel to Antarctica in March 2005 and set my sights on running marathons in as many countries as I could before then.

In December of 2005, I was working at a mobile video late-stage start-up company in Petaluma, California.  Now, with one more marathon to complete in Africa in summer of 2006, I had started to think about “what’s next?”  My colleague Karen gave me a present that would change my life.  When I devoured “Into Thin Air” over the holiday break, I knew what was next.  I set forth a bold aspiration to climb the Seven Summits after completing the Seven Continents marathons – even though nothing in the book would make a sane person want to endure the pain and suffering that is prevalent in the book.

I did two things.  First, I signed up for a glacier mountaineering course on Mount Baker for the fall of 2006 as introductory training to the world of mountains.  Second, in a fit of confidence, I ordered front and back license plate frames for my car, along with a custom plate.  The front frame read, “Seven Summits 2006-2012”.  The back read, “Seven Continents 2002-2006”. This was before finishing the seventh continent marathon or setting a single step on a mountain.

I’ve been fortunate to meet and run with the great Paul Tergat and Dean Karnazes.  I’ve been lucky to have the legendary climbers Todd Burleson, Vern Tejas and Dan Mazur lead expeditions that I have been on.  Since that first race in Stockholm, I’ve started and finished more than 20 races of marathon distance or greater, proudly wearing my medal after each and every one.

I think every climb or marathon goes through a certain cadence from deciding you want to do it, to checking dates, aligning flights – and then all of the preparation of training and getting to the mountain or the start line.  And then – and here is when the goose-bumps start – you take that first step on the trail with your pack on – or the gun goes off.  And you’re off!

With about 6 miles or 600 vertical feet to go and your body says, “What the hell are we doing!” and you say, “Come on, just a little more!” nothing else matters in the moment.  When you put your spikes on for the in-darkness headlamp-on summit attempt and all you hear are your own and fellow climber’s footfalls crunch in the snow – my favorite moment – you’re just focused on one step at a time.

The difference comes when you cross the finish line and raise your arms in cheer, someone puts a medal around your neck, removes the timing chip, and all that is left to do is get some warm clothes and soup, and you’re done.

If I would be able to reach the summit of Everest and be one of the lucky several hundred Americans to get the chance to stand on top of the world, I knew that I would only be able to stay there for about 20-30 minutes before the hardest part would come.  Getting down safely to the high camps and base camps would be both dangerous and difficult especially when all of my physical and emotional energy would be drained.  But then later, after everything gets packed up and showers taken, that feeling of immense satisfaction would be there – the ability to accomplish a goal that no one would ever be able to take away.

And then I would get to be back in the literal and proverbial arms of my family, friends and colleagues and nothing else will matter but being back in the world again; all of the training, gear, logistics and technology will just have been the means to an end.

Before leaving for Everest, I was filled with self-confidence fighting self-doubt and I thought about the past and the future to come.  All of the years that have passed, the laughter, joy and pride that have at times been offset with tears, disappointment, injuries and deaths, helped write my story.  I’m a very lucky guy.