Having returned (and recovered!) from an amazing three days of training in the Lake District last month I’ve had time to reflect on the weekend, what I learned and what the upcoming Kilimanjaro challenge means to me, so here goes.

Firstly, what an incredible place the Lake District is! Truly beautiful landscapes and somewhat imposing mountains. I have to admit that looking up at some of our goals for the weekend from the valley was a little daunting, but what a sense of achievement reaching the top.

Secondly, I’ve got a totally new perspective on the challenge to come. With the highest mountain climbed over the weekend bringing us up to a peak of 960m from a start of 80m above sea level – so just under 900m of climb – the nearly 4,000m of climb on Kilimanjaro will be huge. I’ll be honest, I thought this weekend was going to be a doddle, as you know i’ve been doing some big hikes lately with relative ease. But I was wrong! By day two, when we did the 900m climb, I was already physically tired and wasn’t really prepared for the toll this was going to take on my knees particularly. This has very much put the fact that I’ve got 5 solid days of up and two days of down to contend with in February into pretty stark contrast for me. I’m still looking forward to the challenge, but boy is it going to be a challenge!

Thirdly, I’m stoked to have had the opportunity to do this with such an amazing team of people. It’s a diverse bunch of people from all over the Autovista Group, so to start with people naturally stuck with the people they already knew, but by the end we’d all made fast friends and got to know each other better than I ever expected. Anyone that knows me will know I tend to try to do everything under my own steam and don’t often seek support (not necessarily a good trait!). I’m grateful that I’ll be doing this challenge with a group of people who won’t let me get away with it! Whether it was lending me equipment or even taking my bag for a while, I was humbled just over these short days by the generosity and genuine supportive nature of my colleagues. This goes a long way to settling my nerves about February from point 2!

I think one of the things that has become apparent in all this, is that this is really going to be a tough one. The idea of raising so much money to help Unicef protect, vaccinate and rescue in need children around the world is going to make it worth it, but I’m going to be sore at the end.