Preparing To Climb Snowdon – Part 3

Team Y2 Learn training for climb up Snowdon for prostrate Cancer

It’s all starting to become real…

It seemed like October was a million miles away when we booked the climb, it’s July now and it doesn’t feel that way!

After brainstorming ideas for months, we decided to climb Snowdon for charity as our annual team building exercise. This wasn’t an easy decision but some of the ideas brought to the table (admit ably by me) were ambitious at best.

There was a 100 mile bike ride from Leicester to Skegness. I was nearly laughed out the restaurant for suggesting that one. Then I posed the idea of a water based assault course ( think Total Wipeout from BBC1 a decade or so ago) but the silence from the team was deafening. I think the walk was a well balanced and realistic decision in the end by the team. I’ll keep the others on the back burner for next year!!

Climb A Mountain?

Having never climbed a mountain before, organised a charity event or even been to Wales, somehow I was organising this trip and I’m determined to make it a hit.
We’ve booked to do a guided walk, with a company called Raw Adventures, to ensure we all make it up and down safely. The hotel is booked nearby and finally I just need to convince Neil to drive us all there and back!

As the excitement and trepidation builds, we are all aware this will be no walk in the park. We have all being trying to do a little more exercise and eat a little better in preparation for the event. Personally, I am trying to rekindle my past love for exercise. From the age of 17 I worked in the health and fitness industry, exercise was part of my job, my lifestyle and something I took reasonably seriously. Like most though, getting older, a new career and being a father and husband got in the way and I’m the shadow of my former self physically nowadays.

Preparing To Climb Snowdon – Part 3

As a team of 4 (Neil, Joanne, Helen and myself) we’ve been meeting up at weekends to start walking together, building up the distance, speed and gradient as we go. In between these sessions I’ve dragged myself out running a few times, able to manage 10km regularly before turning bright red, losing 3 litres of sweat and arriving back home! I’ll never be a great runner but it’s the sense of achievement afterwards that keeps me going. I’m hoping this will work the same on Snowdon when its 3 degrees centigrade, I’m soaking wet and Joanne and Helen want to stop to find the toilet for the 11th time!

As much as we are doing this for ourselves, this is a charity event. We are walking for Prostate Cancer UK, an amazing charity supporting so many men going through cancer. I like most have lost relatives to various forms of cancer, my father sadly passing last year from a tumour that was un-operable.

https://www.justgiving.com/team/teamy2learn

We would love to raise as much as possible, any donation would be appreciated at the link above.
As I look out my kitchen window, the rain has stopped and the sun is coming out. Just enough time to get changed, find my running trainers and get a few Kilometres in before I pick up my daughter from school.

Ross