It's been a while but I promise we've been very very busy of late. In the last twelve months (wow bad blogger) we have seen the plans for Base Camp pushed back due to Covid but now we're on...well we feel we're on...actually we're being super positive and stating WE ARE ON for April 2022.
In the time we've been away I've spent all of last year focussing on my author pseudonym alongside the training and realised, to my absolute horror, that Alexander turned thirteen in December. What happened to my little boy? I look at him now and you'd think he was fifteen or sixteen!
That said, he's still trained throughout lockdown and while his body mutates from child to teenager (believe me we are well into the teenage years...girls, voice breaking, spots, attitude and the occaisonal "that's so unfair") but he's still awesome and still determined to hit the Himalayas with gusto.
In fact it is 90 DAYS UNTIL WE GO. Wow! That now feels close. We're still in training and we've been hammering away at workouts focussed around HIIT and Cardio with the guidance of some amazing trainers via CENTR. They've not sponsored us or antyhing, I just happened across the application and we've found it absolutely perfect for our needs so an un-sponsored shoutout to Chris Hemsworth, Luke Zocchi, Ashley Joi, Michael Olajide Jr and Bobby Holland (amongst others) for the training they've helped me maintain with a boy heading into teenage land. I don't expect they'll ever see that paragraph, but it made me feel better at least!
As for where we are, I'd like to say I'm all calm but I'm not. As a normal dad I'm worried I haven't trained him enough, I could have done more, everything might be bad....but then I remember we're going with a damned good company (Evertrek) and we're ready, I just want to be the super ready person and I doubt I ever will.
Since our last check-in both boys are now confirmed with the deletion and we're engaged with the hospitals to have as many tests as possible to make sure our genetic deletion is having no adverse effects on us. We're showing all positive at the minute and the boys both have a Cardiac Stress Test coming up (I did that and managed to get a super fit reading....yay) and from there I have a drugs based test to check the function of my heart before sign off as Atypical in our Timothy Syndrome element.
We've been engaging with Cardiff University and Stanford to further the research and the Timothy Syndrome Alliance are always there as a port of call. I think in the last twelve months I have spread myself very thin and pushed in every aspect of life without being able to do everything for everyone. I've become a champion for neurodiversity in my work, opened my mouth about adult autism in some settings I probably should have evaluated before speaking, helped support adults move towards ND support, got through the promotion process at work, won awards for my books, written three books and so much more. All while training twice a day as my own regime and supporting Alexander doing five days a week of Circuit Cardio/HIIT training ranging from 15-40 minutes.
We haven't sat still, despite him being built bigger, he's strong and he has the willpower (behind the moans and groans and teenagerdom) to make this journey look easy.
As ever, I've been really worried about asking for sponsorship when I see the pressures of Covid hitting people BUT I'm still hoping to breach £1,000 on the JustGiving Page so if you do have any spare change, it would be amazing to hit that goal so we can split the money between Unique Rare Chromosome Charity and Nottingham Breast Cancer Research as they are who we are doing it for.
I'll try and give more updates as we roll into the final stages of preparation.
Gav + Alexander
