Float like a butterfly, mountains there’s 3

“So began the third act of the fight. Not often was there a better end to a second act than Foreman’s failure to destroy Ali on the ropes. But the last scenes would present another problem. How was the final curtain to be found? For if Foreman was exhausted, Ali was weary. He had hit Foreman harder than he had ever hit anyone. He had hit him often. Foreman’s head must by now be equal to a piece of vulcanized rubber. Conceivably you could beat on him all night and nothing more would happen. There is a threshold to the knockout. When it comes close but is not crossed, then a man can stagger around the ring forever. He has received his terrible message and he is still standing. No more of the same woe can destroy him. He is like the victim of a dreadful marriage which no one knows how to end. So Ali was obliged to produce still one more surprise. If not, the unhappiest threat would present itself as he and Foreman stumbled through the remaining rounds…..A fine ending to the fight would live in legend, but a dull victory, anticlimactic by the end, could leave him half a legend.”  (extract from The Fight by Norman Mailer)

Now for the fitness diary:

Right so the Three Peaks are now roughly 2 weeks away and to my remembrance I've only ever walked up one mountain in my WHOLE LIFE a few weeks back. I’m sure I walked up Moel Famau when I went to Colomendy with my primary school I was about 10 though so I’m not even including that one. Here’s me, the apprentice, the least organised person in the three peaks team – the guy who turned up to a training walk in a vest and a pair of Boston Celtics shorts when everybody else had thoroughly exhausted the shopping list of items and turned up with a packed lunch, a backpack, a bottle of water and a waterproof coat (amongst others). What can I say? I’m just happy if I’m there and I’m not too late – will this be my downfall? Will I pay for my complete lack of organisational skills or will I triumph on behalf of all the people who think it will be alright on the night? Now I know it will be hard and maybe one of the hardest physical things I have ever done so I’ve got to do some training at least and so far this is consisting of: the gym on my dinner hour 3 times a week – it takes 10 minutes to get there and 10 minutes to get back so I usually have 30 minutes in the gym on weight training (which won’t help too much when it comes to the three peaks) also I’ve been doing this weird sprint, then jog, then a panting walk thing en route to work. The moral of this story is running to work and gyming on my dinner hour means that I’m a pretty smelly guy at the minute.

Even though it seems as though it’s hard to train my ‘walking skills’ how exactly do you train for 24 hours of walking, outdoor exposure, and freezing cold/boiling hot weather? So by that reasoning I see this all as a mental thing. 'It’s all in your head Niall just be strong lad', so I’m going to get the ‘eye of the tiger’ on when the time comes, a bit like Rocky Balboa – and you saw that guy, I mean he can go up against the Russian machine that is Ivan Drago and knock him down after taking a beating. This is what my personal three peaks will look like – sure I’ll take a beating, I may fall over from time to time, at times it will seem like I’m alone on this challenge, the crowd will leave me but what matters is at the end of the day I’ll have come out with a flurry of punches left, right, jab and then to finish with that sweet uppercut the referee counts, 1 mountain, 2 mountains, 3 mountains and just like that I’m standing at the top of the 3^rd Mountain having knocked out George Foreman, leave him tumbling down the side of the rocky cliff face.

"He who is not courageous enough to take risks risks will acomplish nothing in life" - Muhammed Ali

So come on then people! If you haven't sponsored please do, lets get another former looked after child in here as an apprentice www.charitygiving.co.uk/trothreepeaks