At the end of May I entered to do the Housman Hundred. I pre-qualified with a 50 miles walk – The Sussex Stride in 2010. I entered the event because I thought I would be at my fittest on my return from the Arctic, and this likely to be the only time that I could walk 100 miles in a single go. I knew it would be a challenging event – the route took you through Shropshire and North Wales and included a total climb of 18,000 feet!

We started the event at 10.00am, it was a damp drizzly day, which got progressively wetter! The views were fantastic and the hills challenging! I love the ups, but found the very steep declines were starting to cause my knees (mainly my good knee!) problems ….

I teamed up with a nice couple as it got dark and we climbed Offa’s Dyke. Navigation was difficult at times and I took two falls and lots of slips on the almost vertical descents. As dawn approached and I hit the 50 mile marker I decided that the I was likely to do some long term damage to my knees if I kept going (unusably sensible of me I know!), so I reluctantly pulled out of the event. Most of my training had been on gentle inclines and rolling hills with the odd steep challenge. I had not trained for this level of ascent and descent! We covered 9,000ft in the 50 miles completed!

I had been due to complete another hilly event at the start of July – The Welsh 3000, but we have had to post-pone this due to bad weather. This has been re-scheduled for Oct half term!

The immediate challenge now is The Nijmegen Marches. We are registered and ready for an early start tomorrow – 3.15am! One hundred and sixty kilometers in 4 days (40km/day)!

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