With just two days until the UK practice climb in the Lake district, I thought it was a great time to update you all on my recent training adventures!

While there aren’t any mountains to climb in leafy Surrey we do have some (almost) impressive hills.

During September a few of us took the opportunity to get some steps in, get to know each other better and break in our hiking boots by traipsing through some gorgeous local countryside.

This started innocently enough with a mild 3 hour hike around Box Hill – pretty tame I know, but some amazing views to be had regardless.

Having got the bug, we followed this up with a 7 hour hike between Leigh Hill and Box hill doing over 25Km, thanks to a few wrong turns adding 5K and an hour to the walk (bit more like it)!

And last week we did a similar 20K walk around Holmbury Hill.

While great physical training for sure, I learnt a few things on the way:

• I’ll be doing this challenge with some cracking colleagues – loving the individual skills, teamwork and support everyone is bringing to this
• My training has been doing the job. As you can imagine some of those hikes were exhausting and the thought of doing that every day for a week is still daunting, but I did it and am more confident I can meet the challenges to come.
• I’m really glad I spent a bit extra on my boots, my sore feet could have been much more sore!

So in summary: Bring on the three day Lake District Challenge and lookout Kili, I’m coming for you!