By Justin Flynn
OCEAN Grove fire-fighter Adam Thompson is passionate about helping others.
So passionate is the 34-year-old that he will climb 1504 stairs at the iconic Sydney Tower Eye later this month to help raise awareness for Motor Neurone Disease (MND).
“Firies have the ability to get together and raise awareness for lots of things,” Adam said.
“I’m pretty passionate about helping out people in need and I’m fit and able to do so and a lot of people aren’t.”
The Fire Fighters Climb for MND is on 23 October and involves firies climbing the tower in full fire-fighting gear that weighs around 25kg.
The event is in its second year and raised $180,000 in 2015, but organisers are hoping for $500,000 this year and already have almost $250,000.
Adam’s training regime is simple. Climbing stairs and keeping fit as a requirement of any fire-fighter.
“The gym has Stairmasters and there are stairs down at the beach,” he said.
“Essentially you’re sprinting up (the stairs) and then jogging back down. It’s the firies – you’ve got to be pretty fit anyway, but you do have to do a bit extra to do something like this.”
Adam competed in the Melbourne equivalent recently at the Crown Metropol and came 79th out of 386 competitors in a time of five minutes and 17 seconds, but the Sydney event has more stairs.
Motor Neurone Disease has no known cause and no cure.
“Anything we can do to help people find a cure is so important,” Adam said.
To donate, head to firefightersclimbformnd.everydayhero.com/au/adam-thompson.
