THE DONKEY CHASING THE CARROT
At 2:50am, while most of the world is asleep, Andrea Foppoli is halfway up a mountain in Northern Italy, about to climb Everest. Not the actual Everest, the height of it, 8848m / 29,032 feet. On a closed road in Valtellina, on a 45kg adapted mountain bike, pedalling with his arms after a cycling accident three years ago broke his back.
Eleven laps. Nearly twelve hours of moving. A rotating crew of friends who showed up through the night to ride alongside him, refuel him, and keep him company when the fatigue set in. The finish line, when it came, felt less like an ending and more like proof of something Andrea had already decided was true.
Afterwards, Andrea wrote this:
It's not to prove anything.
It's to remember.
That we're not lacking strength.
We're lacking choice.
It's more comfortable to quit.
More comfortable to complain.
More comfortable to make excuses.
Working is uncomfortable.
Enduring is uncomfortable.
That's why almost nobody does it.
I'm not special.
I just stopped using my limitation as an excuse.
And when you stop, you realize: the limit wasn't real.
It was a choice.
I just kept turning the cranks.
The donkey chasing the carrot.
Everything else, you did.
So this isn't my story.
It's mostly yours.
Thank you.
It's not really a story about Everesting. It's a story about what happens when you stop treating your limits as fixed.
