Start: 04:23am Fri 11th August

Finish: 17:56 Sat 12th August

Time: 37.33

My Grandad said to me when I was a young lad, “you’re blessed with a body that will do anything that you tell it to”.

And Those words have stuck with me. Ever since hearing them, I’ve done my best to see how far I can push myself.

I’ll try and be brief with the backstory. If you’re interested in my past cycling experience, then check out the training archives. The National Hill Climb (failure) is a good place to start — it’s the reason I started this blog, and partly why I’ve moved away from racing and towards endurance challenges instead. But I also wrote a few pieces about my build up to this challenge that could be interesting.

I’ve had some success racing bikes. Competing in hill climbs, time trials, and road races — but it never satisfied me. I always felt as though I had underachieved, even when I won. It often felt like a lost weekend. Sit around all day, rest, travel hundreds of miles. Then ride your bike from between 2 minutes and 2 hours — often just round and round and round the same industrial estate.

It’s not always much fun, bike racing. I’m much happier spending the weekend in the hills, getting a few hundred tough miles in my legs and seeing how hard I can push on an entire day.

That’s my strength. Endurance.

My old coach, Jody, who brought me up to near world class standard according to Training Peaks back when I was training for the National Hill Climb always said,

“Ross, you have a world class aerobic engine. You produce power quite easily. You have little internal stress for this output. Also, you are efficient on the bike and enjoy that style of riding. You are made for long distance events.”

He’s right I suppose. I do seem to be able to ride for long distances at what is considered quite a high speed. I recover well from hard efforts, and during races am normally best at holding a high tempo on tough terrain to sap the energy out of the peloton. My small size makes life difficult for any rival teams having to draft me. I also comfortably hold an average speed of around 22–23mph on a local flat loop consistently. It’s not a hard route, but it just shows that I’m happy tapping out a decent tempo, for a good few hours without having to ease off.

At this point, I was still occasionally racing, although less and less due to a lack of interest in most courses, and having a newborn son at home.

Then at the back end of last season, I had a big crash that helped me to decide once and for all to put racing on the shelf. At least for a while. It happened on a wet day in September 2016. I wasn’t racing, just riding the local Saturday morning chain-gang, as I had done most weekends that year. It was the final lap, where myself and local fast-finishing racer Richard Haughton of Fastest Highest Strongest was pulling away a bit to test the legs of the group. Or rather, Richard was the one pulling; I was on his wheel. The rain was so heavy that it left the road completely covered in standing water. I didn’t see a pothole, was flung from my bike and slid for a long time down the wet road, slicing my arm and knee open, and tearing ligaments in my calf and ankle in the process.

In hospital after a season-ending crash.

The crash put me in the hospital for a few days, and off racing. I knew I would be off the bike for some time, would lose a lot of fitness, and also some confidence in group riding. Especially in bad weather. At least I had some comedians in there to keep me company.

Once I was out of the hospital and back on my bike again, I got chatting to Richard about my goals and ambitions for next year. Not only does he coach riders, but we also raced on the same team at that point. He knew my riding well, only lived a few miles away, and understood what I was going through. He really helped guide me back to fitness during my recovery.

It was clear that racing wasn’t a priority for me now. Recovery was going to be a long process. And even now a year on I suffer from a stiff ankle because of the crash.

The accident left me feeling depressed. I enjoyed cycling, but the passion from before wasn’t there. As someone who had been racing fit for years, it was tough to swallow the fact that I was no longer in showroom condition. Rides or hills that had been easy were a chore, and without the fitness, it just wasn’t as fun. I found myself doing other things instead: Running, long walks, etc… which for a while I found far more rewarding than cycling. Especially the running. Where progression was quick and with my aerobic background, also came easily.

But I needed a reason to train on my bike. A challenge.

I kept riding, just not as much. Maybe only three times a week instead of 5.

I still wanted to be a good bike rider; I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with that fitness. Each year I do something fun and fast with a few of my best mates. So there was always that to stay in shape for. In the past, we’ve done Coast to Coasts as quickly as we could. Plotted routes to see how many different Counties we could fit into one ride. We’ve even just ridden a local loop as fast as possible for 100 miles. But I wanted more.

A real challenge.

One that makes you think, shit! Is that really possible?

Because of the running and long walks in the Lake District with my wife and son, Richard mentioned an Ultimate National Three Peaks Challenge. The National Three Peaks Challenge involves climbing the highest peaks in England, Scotland, and Wales. Most commonly done within 24 hours of hiking and driving. The ultimate part was because he suggested I do it by bike instead of driving.

An ideal challenge, because family walks would now become part of my training. I’d need to stay solid on the bike to ride hundreds of miles quickly, the riding plays to my endurance strengths, and some running won’t hurt to keep the legs and lungs strong. There was no talk of a record yet though, and I think we even said ~72 hours would be a good time to complete it!

It was actually when looking up the fastest time for the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge (unrelated) I stumbled upon the record for the first time. Set in 1980 by Stephen Poulton. The Three Peaks Challenge website documents it taking place on the 1st and 2nd of July and in a time of 41 hours and 51 minutes. A super high bench mark. But could it be beaten?

Planning and training

I initially pencilled in the Three Peaks Challenge for summer 2018. Giving myself plenty of time to build up the miles, and do some specific training leading up to the attempt.

I then found out my wife was expecting our second child. Due February 2018. Probably not the time for me to train and go off on a wild adventure — unless I wanted to do it divorced. Not that I would do that anyway. I like to be a hands on dad. So I scrapped that plan and moved it forwards to this year.

I had a good think. I even considered just forgetting the idea altogether but decided that y’know what? I’ve got a good five years of hard training in my legs already. If I build up the miles slightly and do some longer training rides to try and prepare for long hours in the saddle, I’ll probably be fine.

Suddenly over a year of planning and training time was compressed into six weeks. I’d need to get a wriggle on if I wanted to be ready.

First, I’d need a support crew. The difficulty might be finding people willing to stay awake for around two days, in a stinky van full of wet kit. But I had an idea of who might be up for it anyway!

I was able to quickly convince my father in law (who is responsible for my love of cycling in the first place) to help. And I also got in touch with good friend Will Horton who’s supported me before during a Coast to Coast ride to see if he was available and willing to help. Luckily he was up for it! Will’s dad has a lovely camper van, and with a little persuasion, we managed to get him on board too. So I had my crew sorted. We found a week that suited us all and the attempt was all but locked in. Now I just had to pray for a good wind between the 7th and 13th August.

Then it was time to put a route together. The last time a record for doing a Three Peaks Challenge by bike was a team effort in 2015. They uploaded their route to Strava, which was a great starting point for the one I ended up riding myself. Because it was a team record, I knew I was not aiming to beat their time, and so contacted one of the lads — Spike — to chat about his experience. He was a super nice dude, and more than happy to discuss anything I thought could help me break the record.

I grabbed the route Spike, Dug, and Andy used and began to tweak it slightly. Very slightly! I knew there was a better way through Preston, and I managed to shave off 0.6 of a mile by taking a back road in Keswick.

The full bike route came out at 430 miles. 192 from Snowdon to Scafell Pike. Then a further 238 miles up to Fort William. My longest ride ever stood at 164 miles. That was the Bowland Baddass. Not a ride I’ve done again in a hurry. So 430 miles was a little daunting. I found it best not to think about it.