Tommy Caldwell

I travel and climb about eight months a year. That's pretty great training in itself. When I am home, I do a lot of bouldering, gym climbing, and specific strength training in a effort to get stronger for climbing.

I pretty much bailed on high school. I mean, I graduated, but I wasn't even there for my own graduation.

My earliest memory is being in a snow hole, aged two-and-a-half, with my dad somewhere up a mountain in a blizzard. I don't know what my dad saw in me - I was a geeky kid - but he had that philosophy: prepare the kid for the road, not the road for the kid.