Yorkshire 3 Peaks Trek.

  Having not done any weight training for some time it took me around four or five days to get over the muscle soreness but luckily it didn't stop me from running.  I'm now almost back into a good training routine, I say almost because on Friday I went trekking around the Yorkshire 3 Peaks so missed out on running for a few days.

  Yorkshire 3 Peaks - We set off from the Cafe at Horton-in-Ribblesdale at 5.20am to take on the 25 mile route of the Yorkshire 3 Peaks. It was still dark when we departed and it didn't take long before we started ascending the first climb which is Pen-Y-Ghent, with it being dark and misty as hell we didn't see much so we didn't bother hanging around at the trig point and pressed on down the other side heading for the Ribblehead Viaduct.
We were about half way down by the time daylight came and all we could see was a long stretch of wet bog land ahead of us. This slowed us down slightly as we weaved, jumped and even tried sprinting across some sections before sinking and eventually I ended up in a bog waist deep. My fellow trekker Jon decided he was not having any of that and went the long way round leaving me to struggle and worm  my way to freedom. Eventually we made it to some firmer ground and checking the distance we had travelled and how long we had been trekking  our 8 hour 15 minute target was well out of the window as we had only managed to average around 2.8 mph.  After 8 miles we made our first pit stop and a much needed sock change before heading off down a tarmac road to the Viaduct at Ribbleshead, 

which until that point the journey had seemed very unscenic like. The going was quite good until we made it to the base of Whernside, the trek up the first half of Whernside was quite pleaseant but the second half was a different story as in an instant  it became windy as hell and very misty and once again our view range was down to about 30 metres. We didn't hang around up there neither and we swiftly made our way off the peak, once half way down the wind and mist disappeared and it was almost a nice day again which lead us onto our next pit stop at 16 miles. We had made up some time and decided to target sub 9 hours or even sub 8 1/2 hours. The next section towards the base of Ingleborough was good going and in no time we came  face to face with the steep ascent of Ingleborough, we made it up in sections as my mate Jon was starting to suffer with cramp and yet again the summit  was misty as hell, we made our way across the plateau and missed the trig point as we could only see about 20 metres, the GPS unit made it's  first real appearance and gave us an exact grid reference and from that we quickly map read straight onto the trig point.
 We  messed around slightly as we tried to locate the correct path back off the summit and once we found it and descended a few minutes it was back to good weather and plain sailing all the way to the finish. After 8 hours 37 minutes we had done it and in more favourable weather conditions I'm sure our 8hr 15min aim is achievable.
  I didn't expect the climbs up the peaks to be as long as they were and also how tough some of the terrain is on route. I can see now why the 3 peaks race is so bloody hard and the cyclo cross race must be an absolute nightmare.