Climb every mountain...

I fear I won't be able to complete it. Not as much because I've never enjoyed climbing, nor have gone out of my way to go forward in any other incline than 0%, but because I feel I have lost my fitness levels. The days of half-marathons feel like a distant memory to me now, and it will take some serious commitment for me to regain the physical fitness I once possessed.

To you, you may as well have read hieroglyphics than that babbling mess. However, hopefully by the end of this blog it will make sense.

Rewind your minds back around 6 months if you can. For me, this meant the end of summer, and the end of living in London as far as I was concerned as University was just around the corner. The only unfinished business I had was stickign out like a sore thumb. Stuck bang-right in the middle of my Fresher's Fortnight at University was my half-marathon I signed up to earlier last Summer (Fresher's Fortnight, in a nutshell, is a chance to acceptably get completely rat-arsed along with a ton of fellow first-years, with most friends made whilst hammered. A huge reliance on your mobile phone is required to then remember who your new friends are).

I won't bore with the details, but I successfully ran the half-marathon with a friend in just over two hours. I fear though that my fitness levels since then have dropped severely. As mentioned previously in an older post, I ran along the beach today, clocking up around 5 miles in the process. Down in Bournemouth, I go for beach runs realistically around once a month, clocking up 5 miles to my ever-increasing tally each time. I come back physically drained and starving, beads of sweat lining my top meaning another £2.20 lost to my awful washing machines where I live to clean my kit.

In my seemingly-parellel 'former life', I consistently ran 6 miles every few days, meaning I could easily manage to eat up a total of 20-30 miles of road every week. Back then, I still came home tired, though the hunger pains and unattractive sweat patches never struck me.

I need to get in shape, fast. Plagued with illness over the winter, alongside the typical Christmas-time binge, my body has suffered pretty badly. I've put on weight in the wrong places, whilst losing muscle in others that didn't want to be changed. It's safe to say, this need for change has become increasingly important progressively.

A friend of mine mentioned the 'Three Peaks Challenge' recently, and I looked into it for a bit today. For those that don't know, the Three Peaks Challenge is an event whereupon participants climb up three mountains (Ben Nevis, Skagness and Snowdon if my memory serves me correctly) in the space of a measly 24 hours. This includes driving time, and time to sleep in between. I know of a few students from a different University doing it for charity, with one slight change - they're giving themselves three days to complete this challenge.

Not one to shy away from a challenge, this blog will act as written (well, typed) proof that I WILL complete the Three Peaks Challenge in 24 hours. As of yet, there is no date set for the challenge, since participants can choose when they do it - it's not a formal race as such. What I do know however, is that I will undertake the challenge in September - after my exam resits and before University recommences.

To accomplish this feat, I realise the amount of work I need to put in will be by no means small. In fact, getting an elephant to run faster than Mr. Usain Bolt* is probably an easier mission than getting me up and down these molehills in a day.

Regular gym visits, with resistance and cardio-vascular exercise in mind, is just the start. My diet will need to drastically change too. Hopefully I will use this blog as a diary of some sort to keep my training up, a bit like my running logs around this time last year (which, I know, failed after a while).

All that remains now is to polish off the Jaffa Cakes I'm devouring at an alarming pace, so I can replace these with apples, bananas and the such during my next Asda visit. I'm hitting the gym tomorrow for the fourth time this week, and with a little perseverance I can make it up these mountains and back with ease. Provided I can get over my fear, I'll have no problems.

*Usain Bolt, Olympic gold medallist and 100m World-Record holder for (quite possibly) the next century at least, can run just over 24mph. So good luck training your elephants.