The 7 principles I follow for taking on physical challenges that intimidate me

“If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President.

An elderly Italian nun, Madonna Buder, is nicknamed ‘the Iron-nun’.

She has finished over 40 ironman triathlons, and she completed her first when she was 65 years old. She holds the world record for the oldest woman to ever finish an Ironman Triathlon, when she finished the Ironman Canada at age 82.   

82 years old and completing an Ironman triathlon. That’s a 2.4-mile (3.8-km) swim, followed by a 112-mile (180-km) cycle, and finishing with a 26.2-mile (42.2-km) run. Just think about that for a second longer.

It’s stories like her's that motivate me to keep going when the journey ahead seems impossible to move forward.

In the next few years, I'll be aiming to complete the Silk Road Mountain race, a 1700-kilometre continuous bikepacking race in Kyrgyzstan, and one of my biggest personal challenges since a mountaineering accident in 2019 almost permanently stopped me from doing things I love altogether.

 There are the 7 principles that I use to fit training to previous adventures that I’ll use to get myself to the finishing line.

1.     Training has to be fun.

 Life is busy, but it’s moving faster than I can keep up with some days. If you don't enjoy running, cycling, swimming or whatever discipline you're doing – you won’t break free of the sofa when it's raining, cold, or your friends want to hang out. Don’t get me wrong, I love all these things, however, they’re also barriers to achieving my personal goals in life.

Whilst I was training to set a world record for carrying a 100-lb backpack at the London marathon in 2016, my training programme was incredibly dull.

I would train my legs and core in the gym twice per week and do one heavy walk for conditioning every Sunday afternoon. Any remaining time outside my job, was spent in recovery or in my job at the BBC.

A few months in, I was yearning for some interesting training and decided that a Brazilian Ju-Jitsu (BJJ) session would be fun and a nice break from the monotony of just walking. However, this didn’t work out very well for me, when I got a little too enthusiastic during a sparring round and tore my pectoral muscle. So that was the end of that idea.

From then on, I went mountain biking more often - something fun, that would get me outdoors. But not dominant my life like this personal ambition to set a world record would.

For the Silk Road race, I'll mix in more mountain biking and BJJ sessions (with tempered sparring this time) around low impact work like swimming or on the cross trainer.

2.     Sign up to it first, then figure out the rest.

 Back in 2006, an Army friend of mine completed his first Ironman triathlon. He’d been putting it off for 2 years due to the unpredictable and frenetic nature of his job in the military. Finally, in a moment of frustration – he signed up and paid the money to enter. From then on, his focus was on the event. The added pressure of a guaranteed race place (and threat of lost money) meant that he couldn’t put it off or allow it to fall so low down the priority list any longer.

I believe that in signing up to it, you have ‘skin in the game’, an incentive to prepare. There is a good reason why event organisers’ entry fee is non-refundable (besides all the hard work and effort they have to put in to make it possible). It means when you face the inevitable moment of doubt - you won't pull out.

3. Only tell (a few) people about it.

But only those closest around you to give support and make you get out to train. Research suggests that we actually feel like we've achieved it if we tell too many people. This psychosocial phenomenon around the ‘intention-behaviour gap’ is understood to fool the brain into thinking it’s closer to achieving the goal even when the work hasn’t been put in. I believe you can mitigate the effects of this issue by using more social forms of training (such as group sports) that you enjoy doing and thereby not seeing it as training.

4. Draw a roadmap of stepping-stones.

By designing a number of smaller challenges into your training strategy, you’ll increase your confidence come challenge day. It seems like the most obvious advice of all, but I’m absolutely convinced of its power. 

14 years ago, I decided I wanted to run a marathon - so I started running 10 km races until I felt comfortable I could do that distance. Then I felt ready to move up to a half marathon. After that, I visualised a full marathon as just a series of 4 x 10 km runs (with a 2.2 km cool down). It slowly broke down the size of the challenge, brick by brick.

5. Do it for a good cause.

You'll be surprised at how seriously you take it when you’re doing it for a good cause. It's a small nudge in the right direction when you don't feel like training or eating right. Building a community of other fundraisers allows you to share information, knowledge, experiences, and mutually support each other when training and life push against each other.

6. Celebrate your training achievements, no matter how small they are

Once you've done a big conditioning, endurance, or strength session - give yourself a treat. By rewarding yourself - you build up a mind-set that makes you value the hard work that has to come before you can treat yourself. After every conditioning session I did in preparation for the world record attempt, I’d sit in a hot bath with a cold beer and allow myself to relax for at least 30 minutes. The habit of earning a reward made sure I completed the full distance every Sunday.

 7. Make it a little competitive.

By adding in a healthy level of competition, your mind becomes a little more focussed on winning as opposed to how much it hurts. When I tore my pectoral in the BJJ session, I did so partly because I’d not given myself any good competitive training, it was always me in the gym or out walking with a heavy bag on. By including some slightly competitive sessions (such as group rides and BJJ) into my silk road race training plan; I’ll be working at the highest intensity, for longer; but still enjoying it.