After deciding to run our first ultra marathon together me and Helga decided that a trip out to the three peaks would be a perfect Fitness test. Neither of us are from a running background, myself (bodybuilding and football) Helga (gymnastics) however we've done several hundreds of km in trekking so felt confident.
After a blazing start (in my mind) we then slogged up the first fields to the pen-y-ghent climb. Calfs aching and hungry already - less than an hour in(foreboding) we decided to grab our first rice crispie bars of the day and power climb up. Once at the summit we downed a handful of strawbs and took the handbrake off for the long descent toward hull pot before another steady uneventful climb. After being called "proper athletes" by some passing walkers - the first and last time someone's called me this, it was a steady jog down to the ice cream van checkpoint at the base of Whernside. Whernside was an interesting climb, after discarding my thermal tights, which in hindsight probably weren't required in midsummer we started to make our way up the not particularly steep but long climb. Another couple of rice crispie bars for the climb and a chat with some charity walkers and we'd hit the summit. No time to hang about we again went full send and sprinted down from the summit, that was until the notorious slippy steep rocks brought us to a 2km crawl. Down just in time to hit our favourite barn and grab another bag of sweets.
Mentally we knew that the hardest part of the day was coming up and we'd both broke a bit by this point. We came to walking pace through the fields to the horrifically steep Ingleborough climb which felt every bit like a vertical alpine climb. Just about moving by the time we hit Ingleborough's first of two false summits we decided to smash down all our remaining snacks. We we're greeted by the usual great visibility offered by Ingleborough and were only two happy to limp off the summit.
The final few km were agony, every small stone on the way back to horton-in-ribbledale left a physical and emotional scar. Finally we could see the car and dropped the most mid-tier sprint ever seen to finally collapse at the car