Kilian Jornet, a recent guest on the Men’s Health Podcast, doesn’t just redefine our idea of endurance – he completely obliterates it. In the latest episode of the podcast, the Catalan mountain runner and all-around superhuman shares the story of how in May 2017, he did the unthinkable: he summited Mount Everest. Twice. Without supplemental oxygen. Without fixed ropes. And in record time.
Jornet quite literally ran to the peak of Everest, back down again, and then repeated the feat. Why? Because he didn’t want to get bored at Everest base camp. ‘We went there and conditions were perfect. I climbed the summit from the last village, but I didn’t feel super. It was good, but I had gastro on the way up’.
Jornet shared his dissatisfaction with his performance, which for most would be the feat of a lifetime: ‘We still had one week till our flight. I don’t like to play cards in the base camp. I don’t like to just hang around. So I asked if we could have [another] a permit for the mountain’.
Jornet says that as well as potential boredom, curiosity motivated him, ‘Why not to try to climb again and see how that affects the body? It was interesting to go back again and try to see how the body was responding and if I could climb. It was pretty hard the second time.’
His first ascent? A staggering 26-hour push from the Rongbuk Monastery at 5,100 metres, battling brutal altitude and unforgiving terrain. Most climbers take weeks to acclimatise, carefully inching their way up the world’s highest peak. Not Jornet. He blitzed it with his signature blend of raw fitness, surgical precision, and a focussed mind.
Just six days later, with barely enough time to catch his breath, he went again. This time, starting from the Advanced Base Camp at 6,400 metres, he reached the summit in a blistering 17 hours. Let that sink in. No oxygen, no Sherpa support, just Jornet and the mountain. He documents all of this and more and his ‘Summits of my Life’ project.
For the rest of us mere mortals, Jornet’s feats serve as a reminder that the human body is capable of far more than we think. Whether it’s summiting a mountain (Jornet tells us he has no time for the term ‘conquering’) or just pushing past our own limits in the gym, the lesson is clear: if you want to know where your limits are – test them.
If you want to know more about Jornet’s approach to training, how he eats to fuel his incredible efforts and his philosophy on exercising in nature, watch the video above or tune into the Men’s Health Podcast – on all good podcast platforms or via YouTube.
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With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
