First serious training session for 3 peaks challenge
Author: rhodzy // Category: 3 Peaks ChallengeTodayToday reviews
I recently completed my first serious training session for the National Three Peaks Challenge that I am going to be participating in.
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 LondonLondon reviews
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 FanFan reviews 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. EventuallyEventually reviews 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.
EnjoyEnjoy reviews the photos!
Or you can view the main gallery here http://rzy.me/fp
