Charlie Wittmack embarks on a 12,000-mile triathlon. We’re getting parched just thinking about it.
If he can pull this off, Charlie Wittmack will be a man among boys. The 36-year-old adjunct professor at Des Moines University in Iowa just began a trip from the waters of the River Thames to the summit of Mount Everest. David Moye for AOL News reports that the journey will take eleven months.
Wittmack kicked it off July 1 by embarking on an appetizer of a 275-mile swim down the river and the English Channel. Next, he’ll bike 9,000 miles from France to Calcutta. For dessert, he’ll scale Everest starting at the Bay of Bengal.
He’s on a timetable. The eleven-month deadline is firm:
“It’s very difficult to get the rights to swim the channel,” he said. “My launch date is Aug. 2, and I need to get there in order to keep to my schedule.”
“I have to get to the border of China and Kyrgystan by the end of October in order to get over the Tibetan plateau to India. I’ll be riding over harsh deserts through areas with political instability.”
Completing all of that on time will ensure he can start his trek up Everest by May 25, 2011, the best day of the year to climb the mountain. Of course, even if it were a bad day, that wouldn’t stop him. Wittmack ascended the slopes during some of the worst weather in history after trying twice in a row and going three days without food or water.
Why is he doing this? Beyond the record-breaking physical challenge, it’s also an effort to raise awareness about safe sex and the difficulties of childbirth and pregnancy health in the developing world. That, and he was inspired by some of the great adventurers of the 20th Century.
“I first got the idea about doing this when I was 14,” Wittmack told AOL News. “At the time, I was a swimmer, and also ran cross-country and worked at a bike shop and was reading about Sir Edmund Hillary’s conquest of Everest.”
Don’t let his joking nature or bird-like laugh fool you; he’ll have to be tougher than a duffel bag of hammers to succeed. Reminds us a little bit of Martin Strel, a local hero in Slovenia who swam the lengths of the Danube, Mississippi, Yangzte, and Amazon rivers. Except, Wittmack is cooler. Because he’s American. And this is way harder.
—Seth Putnam
[The World Tri] Brian’s Shorts: Wading Patiently from Wild Hare Films on Vimeo.
This will be an amazing feat, if he can pull it off. I thought the three guys that did Running the Sahara were badass. Is there something different about guys named Charlie?