My 3 Peaks Challenge

I just thought I would write about one of the problems I had at the weekend while climbing Scafell Pike, I have all ready blogged about my injury on my other blog which can be read “First Injury During Training” and this post follows on from that, but thought it would be more suitable to blog about it here.

I managed the climb up the mountain and only lagged behind the other team members by around 5 / 10 minutes which wasn’t too bad considering the conditions and my lack of experience climbing up mountains.

My Achilles Tendon started playing up on the way down from the mountain, not climbing up. We were climbing down or should I say sliding down, the snow was really thick and deep and also it was quite a steep decent. The snow came well above my boots and thats when I felt it, I pulled my left foot up out of the snow and when I placed it back down I felt the pain again, I was only about a quarter a way down the mountain and pretty much hobbled back down to the bottom car park.

We then had a pub lunch and a rest before we were meant to complete another 3 hour walk, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to participate which meant I had to stay in the mini bus on my own for 3 hours. I didn’t mind though Scafell Pike was the main one I wanted to complete that day and I had successfully completed it.

I got some amazing photos from the day, including photos from the top of Scafell and also the surrounding scenery s. If you would like to take a look please visit my Flickr gallery http://rzy.me/scafell

DSC_0158, originally uploaded by rhodzyuk.

Well the time came for another monthly training session with the team in preparation for our 3 peaks challenge which we are currently undertaking in May 2010. It started off very well and the weather was excellent, no rain, no snow, no wind (except from a few of the team members) it was a perfect day to climb a mountain and boy was it a mountain. Scafell Pike in the Lake District, is supposedly the most challenging mountain throughout the National 3 Peaks challenge.

The climb it’s self was very difficult and a quarter of the way up we started to get ice and snow which made it even more difficult. We battled our way up until we looked up, there is was, the steepest part of the time, full of thick snow and all we had was our boots…. People were attaching their crampons and walking poles out, we were going to attempt it without…everyone thought we were mad. After a good 40 minutes or so we were finally at the top (not of Scafell, but the gully) we then had a 10 minute break and had a coffee and just took in the amazing views that were around us, it was something so beautiful that now I am home it doesn’t seem real. We all said to each other that we couldn’t believe this was in the UK, it was simply stunning and made the whole journey worth while, we continued on for another 20 minutes before we got to the top :] we had made it and what a feeling it was!

The photo above is a shot I took while at the top of the mountain, if you would like to see more photos from our Trip please visit my Gallery and take a look in the Set “Scafell Pike February 2010” or take a look at all my photos http://rzy.me/FR

My training for the 3 peaks challenge is coming along great, I have only had one injury so far and that has sorted it’s self out over the weekend and healed nicely.

I will continue with the training 4.5 mile walk every night with my two dogs and then every weekend I will continue to do a 6 – 8 mile walk which will shortly be changing to  12 – 15 mile mountain route.

I have already started noticing a huge difference in the way my legs and knees look and can already see the muscles starting to appear, I am getting a real good feeling about this and is helping me with pushing me to work harder now that I can actually see a physical difference in myself (which is one of the reasons I took up this challenge)

Friday 19th / Saturday 20th February we will be heading to Scafell Pike for a training session and also an idea of what it will be like to complete when the big event finally comes around. We will be completing the Peak once in the morning and also once in the evening during the dark conditions in order to prepare us for the night time walking with head lamps and also torches.

The donations page is now online and live at Virgin Money Giving.

I have created a short URL for ease of use and something that will be easy to remember.

If you would like to donate then please follow this link: http://rzy.me/donate

It’s all for a good cause and the two charities we are completing this task for are:

Cancer Research UK and Alzheimer Society

During the first ten minutes of climbing Pen y Fan I was seriously considering dropping out, my fitness levels were shockingly poor and I started to get really bad headaches, dizziness, feeling sick and basically felt like I could collapse at any second.

I overcame that feeling and powered on up to the top of Pen y Fan, the feeling of reaching the top and being above the clouds was….I cant even describe how I felt all I know is I want to feel it over and over again and cannot wait for the main event.

I think I took well over 100 photos on the day, such beautiful scenery and landscapes.

Today 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 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.

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

This is a place where I will keep everything that I am doing regarding the three peaks challenge I am undertaking together and in one place.

I will upload photos from my walks, list all the training I do and much much more.

Please check back for updates.