No sleep 'til Courmayeur

No sleep 'til Courmayeur from Jill Homer on Vimeo.

Beat sent me his video clips from the Tor des Geants, and I asked him if he minded if I edited some of them into a short video. The Tor des Geants, held this year from Sept. 12 to 19, is a 200-mile race through the Italian Alps, with a couple dozen passes, rough and rocky trails, and nearly 80,000 feet of climbing. Beat finished the race in 132 hours - more than five days - on less than five hours of sleep. He said he didn't necessarily think racing on no sleep made him faster - if anything, he admitted, not sleeping probably added to his overall time because it slowed him down. No, he just wanted to see what it felt like to race something like the Tor des Geants on no sleep. One thing I love about Beat is that he, much like me, values experiences much more than results. He also, like me, manages to finish most of the crazy things he sets out to do.

When I threw together this video, I didn't intend to try to convey the entire experience of the Tor des Geants, just touch the surface of what it might be like to barely sleep for five days and cross 25 crazy steep passes in the Italian Alps. I'm sure if Beat made a video it would be very different from this. He does have a bit more footage, mostly video diaries of how he's feeling and what he's doing, that would be fun to edit as a narrative video. But for now, I have "No Sleep 'til Courmayeur." The music is "Happiness" by Built to Spill.