• My 2010 Challenge – What have I agreed to :-/
• First serious training session for 3 peaks challenge
• First injury during training
• Weekend training, Scafell Pike

Well I was all set ready for the 350 mile drive to Fort William this morning, bags packed, walking gear, food, water and everything else I needed for the afternoon climb up Ben Nevis at 3pm.

Unfortunately this never happened, reason? The M1 motorway network was closed. I set off out of the house this morning at 6:30am and filled up with fuel, all was going well, weather was looking good (well in Yorkshire) and couldn’t wait to get to Scotland.

I hit the motorway and it all fell apart from there, I got diverted left, right and bloody centre and the ETA on my sat nav soon reached 4:30pm I would arrive in Scotland. Damn you motorway. I decided to turn back around and even when I decided to do that it still took me 1 hour to get home 36 miles in total I moved in 3 hours.

Gutted.

• My 2010 Challenge – What have I agreed to :-/
• First serious training session for 3 peaks challenge
• First injury during training
• Weekend training, Scafell Pike

But now the time is getting closer and closer, the challenge is only 18 days away and I am starting to get really nervous! It doesn’t seem two minutes ago since I checked the site and it was 90 days to go! Where does the time go, I have been training hard and working my self up for the challenge, my feelings at the minute? Scared, Nervous, Excited and most of all really looking forward to it.

Friday 14^th will see our team travel up to Fort William in Scotland to complete our final training camp before the event on the 24^th. We are climbing Ben Nevis Friday afternoon and once again on Saturday morning before heading home. Ben Nevis is the only one we haven’t yet climbed and as usual I will be taking my camera to get some amazing shots.

Together as a team we have worked extremely well together and made some great friends, even though we work in the same company, I would have probably never met and go to know the guys who are doing the challenge, it also seems as the days grow closer that it will be the end of something, although knowing the guys completing the challenge they will already be on with the preparation for next years challenge!

Donations, we have had some excellent donations to date and we have already reached £5898.13 inc gift aid which will be matched by our company making us to our £10,000 target, although there is still lots more time to donate and also we have competitions running which will bring in extra funds and also the offline sponsorship money to tally up and add to the final total J

I will probably post another blog post about the Ben Nevis walk after we complete it and then I probably wont blog about it again until after the event.

If you would like to donate then please check out http://lv3peaks.co.uk

Thank you for reading.

I was walking around the usual route with my 2 Miniature Schnauzers (Archie & Dylan) and all was going well, I managed to complete the walk in less than 50 minutes and the route also includes some up and down hills to make it a little more difficult.

I got home and had a hot bath and then the morning after….OUCH! Boy did my ankle hurt, turns out I have injured my Achilles tendon or as I like to call it “Hercules tendon”

Today it seems to be a little better and hopefully I will be out walking again tomorrow evening when I get back in from the office.

We looked and looked and even looked at staying over in the Lake District in a dog friendly pub that would have allowed them to stay in the hotel with us. We decided against this and decided to travel 76 miles to Ingleton, here you can find the Ingleton Waterfall Trail which is an amazing pretty easy walk where you can see 5 waterfalls in total. You can get some amazing camera shots here and when out of season very relaxing and enjoyable walk.

We got there and the first problem had already started, I got my camera out which I had charged all night long to make sure the battery was fully charged and then when I came to turn it on DISASTER! The battery was dead and when I looked the power switch was set to on, when putting the camera in it’s bag I must have turned the camera on by accident. #fail I couldn’t believe it. I ended up taking photos on my iPhone again and the gallery can be found here:

Also Link to full gallery http://rzy.me/10v

Next time I will be better prepared with the camera and will be taking multiple batteries!

The next training session will be taking place next Saturday, more updates to follow!

We are going to go and walk up Pen y Ghent in the Yorkshire Dales, its part of the Yorkshire 3 peaks challenge but I shall only be doing the one this weekend!

The length of the route is around 5km and should be a piece of cake compared to the Pen y Fan one which I recently did.

Photos to come, bought myself a new camera just for the challenge so I can take some decent photos rather than using my crappy iPhone camera!

More to follow!

You can read about the challenge on my previous post “My 2010 Challenge – What have I agreed to?! :-/ ”

We headed off down to South Wales to a bunkhouse that we had hired for the weekend and with me being the first person to arrive I had to go and collect the key from the warden. After multiple times of trying to find the place I found myself going up a narrow country dirt track (the kind of road I would have loved to have found when I had my 4×4’s) eventually I could see in the distance a huge cottage type building so carried on heading to that, I was shocked at the size of it and wasn’t sure if I was in the right place. I was! I got in and turned the alarm off, had a quick nosey around and opened the curtains upstairs and downstairs when another one of the team arrived.

We eventually got hold of the others that were turning up who had ETAs of around 4 hours after we got there so we decided to go and find a pub and a cash machine and get some booze for the house. To cut a long story short we found it very difficult to find a pub in Wales, I ended up downloading an app on my iPhone for 59p to find a pub! (There really is an app for everything) still it worked we found a pub, it was 0.5mi away, the only problem was we was on a huge dual carriage way with no way to turn around for miles, so I believe we ended up going around 30mi out of our way before we eventually got to the pub.

We headed back as one of the other walkers was due to arrive and so were the others. We had an evening of taking the piss of one walker who set off from London at 5:30pm and didn’t get to Wales until 11:30pm even when using Sat Nav and pretty much no traffic!! We drank, drank some more and had a laugh and just basically getting to know each other.

We got up and 6:30am this morning headed downstairs and had a dirty great big fry up and also a few drinks (non alcoholic) before getting ready and setting off out of the bunkhouse at around 8:30 and headed to the Pen y Fan car park.

We headed up the first bit and after the first 10 minutes (just remember I am a guy who does no exercise and probably hasn’t for at least three years) I really thought I was going to have to turn back and give in, I had the most horrendous headache, dizziness, sickness feeling and basically I thought I was going to collapse. Eventually I just put my head down and battled my way through the snow and ice on the hillside and left foot right foot, left foot right foot until I came to a rest point, that was it I had managed to get to the top of the first steep incline and now it was time to tackle Pen y Fan!

This was the second incline of the day and we only had another 2 after we had completed this one. We struggled but eventually we got to the top and had a sit down, it was an amazing achievement but by this point we weren’t even a quarter of the way around the walk we were going to do!

After a few pictures had been taken, some light snacks and a few cups of coffee we were ready to start climbing back down and onto the next challenge.

It was a real struggle and after battling with some near vertical climbs, sore feet and an amazing time with some good laughs we made it to the end, I wont bore you going on about how we struggled with all the other climbs but we all made it and what was more amazing we were all alive and felt really chuffed with ourselves for this achievement. We completed a 15mi walk in 6 hours not including the inclines that we did.

Here are a few photos for you to look at taken from my iPhone so not the best quality! More to come though!

Sorry I have cut this short, I’ve just completed the longest walk of my life and the hardest walk of my life, drove 4 hours back from Wales and when I try to sleep I believe I have gone past the tiredness stage!

Next stop, Scafell Pike! We will be doing this twice in one day, one will be during daylight and one will be when its pitch black as one of our walks for the National 3 Peaks will be at 4am in the morning.

Enjoy the photos!

Or you can view the main gallery here http://rzy.me/fp

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The challenge they decided upon was the National Three Peaks Challenge, which involves climbing the three highest peaks in the UK and completing the walks within 24 hours including travelling.

The peaks are:
Ben Nevis (Scotland)
Snowdon (Wales)
Scafell Pike (Cumbria)

This kind of reminds me back in August where I made a post “Getting the urge to do something crazy…” This certainly is crazy, I am the most unfit person known the man, I get a sweat on just thinking about walking anywhere, if I could take the car anywhere no matter how far away it was, even if it was just popping to the shop for some bread I would take the car. This is going to be a real shock for me but I really am looking forward to the challenge.

This week I will be heading to the Brecon Beacons National Park in South Wales to tackle Pen y Fan which is the highest peak in South Wales, this is going to be the largest walk that I have taken part in it sits at 886 metres above sea level! I did a little walk the other day, well it seemed like miles and miles, in theory when we had finished I stopped the iPhone app and found out it was only 3 miles….not even half the distance of the smallest of the 3 peaks…

How I will be using my iPhone for this adventure
I will be keeping track of my walk using my iPhone. The app is called RunKeeper and uses your iPhones GPS system to track your location and plot your route on a map. It’s not always very accurate but you can edit the the route to the exact route you took. I won’t go on about the app too much but if you take a look at RunKeeper website you will find all the info you need, their is a free version and a pro version.

If you want to keep track off all my walks and training then just view my profile here http://rzy.me/LV

The Gear
Preparing for this challenge certainly hasn’t been cheap, I had nothing, no walking boots, no water proof clothing, no walking socks, no back pack so as you can imagine when I went to the Go Outdoors store in Wakefield I had a pretty huge bill! I also couldn’t believe it that you can actually buy coats that cost £300+ what the hell is all that about? Saying that my dad bought a beauty for £218.

So far I think I have everything that I am going to need:

❑        walking boots
❑        walking poles
❑        waterproof and windproof trousers
❑        waterproof and windproof coat
❑        windproof balaclava
❑        walking socks
❑        first aid kit
❑        head torch
❑        torch
❑        hip flask
❑        rucksack with hydration pack
❑        base layer T-shirt
❑        plenty of food
❑        an extra shirt
❑        hat
❑        gaiters

I think I have listed everything I have bought, their has been so much stuff that I don’t even know what else there is anymore! If I have missed something out that you think I will need then please give me a shout or leave a comment on here, I need to make sure I have everything for this!!

The company I work for will be providing compasses, maps and one other member has a navigation system so don’t worry if they are the obvious ones that you notice that aren’t on my list!

Oh and also my iPhone with the RunKeeper app installed!

Quick overview of the challenge then
The Three Peaks Challenge involves climbing the three highest peaks, respectively, in England, Wales and Scotland, within 24 hours. The Peaks are:

* Snowdon, in Wales (1085m)
* Scafell Pike, in England (978m)
* Ben Nevis, in Scotland (1344m)

It is a popular misconception that the three peaks in question are the three highest in Britain. Over one hundred peaks in Scotland are higher than Scafell Pike, and 56 higher than Snowdon.

Climbing times

Maximum climbing times are generally suggested as being around 4 hours for Snowdon, and 5 hours for Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike, but you should aim for a half hour or so under. In itself this time isn’t unrealistic for most relatively fit people, but it’s certainly not a gentle walk, and when three climbs are required within 24 hours the Challenge becomes more difficult, draining your energy and depriving you of sleep.

In order to attempt the National Three Peaks Challenge safely, you must have an adequate level of fitness.

More information about the 3 peaks challenge
For more information please visit this link:
Three Peaks Challenge website http://rzy.me/fa

My final words
I have told myself I will start taking sponsorship as soon as I prove to myself that I can complete Pen y Fan then its all systems go, training every weekend and days through the week, this is not just a challenge for a good cause but also a personal challenge for me of losing weight and starting to be more active rather than as my mrs @eckafatcat would say “living in my own little bubble”

This could very well be the last blog post I ever write, maybe I will not make the Pen y Fan and survive? We will soon find out, during my trip around Pen y Fan I will be taking lots and lots of photos posting them on the RunKeeper app which will publish them onto the map that it plots, I will also be creating a gallery on my blog and also twittering photos en route.

Links you may want to see
My Galleries                         http://rzy.me/8d
My RunKeeper Profile         http://rzy.me/LV
My Sponsorship Online        Coming soon
My Twitter Photos                http://rzy.me/3
My Twitter Account                @rhodzy
My Facebook Account        http://rzy.me/fb

It would be great to hear from people who have completed the challenge or people who are also taking up the challenge, if so please get in touch via one of the following links above.

I’ll leave it there for now but will update as soon as I complete my walks! Then I will post something just before I take on the challenge.

Oh by the way, we are taking the challenge on at the end of May so not much time!