215 Days to Go: The Hard Part Isn't the Sessions
5 October 2026 · #Shadows2Giants
One year ago today, I wrote my first blog for this campaign. It was about a WaterAid 10k and a right knee that threw a tantrum 100 metres in. Twelve months on, the knee is behaving. Almost everything else is tired.
Today is 215 days from race day. And I'll be honest: the training is starting to bite.
The sessions aren't the problem
None of the individual sessions are beyond me, and that's by design. Mel at Smiling Tri Coach builds every week with real precision. Each session lands in TrainingPeaks with a clear purpose, pitched to stretch me just far enough to adapt without breaking me. A long ride, a steady run, a swim set that looks gentle on paper and isn't. That's the mark of an experienced coach: knowing exactly where the line is, and keeping me on the right side of it.
The problem is that the sessions don't come on their own. They come stacked on top of everything else.
Where I went wrong at the start
When I first started training, I made the classic mistake of a retired athlete: I tried to get fit again rather than build endurance. I chased parkrun times. I celebrated a 27:35 at Alderley like I'd won something. Strava threw me a party every time I went a bit quicker.
But the Himalayan XTri doesn't care how fast I can run 5km. It cares whether I can keep moving for the best part of a day, through a night swim, 165km on the bike and a mountain marathon to 4,000m. That needs an aerobic engine, and you don't build an engine by revving it.
The Brutal proved the point last month. My first bike lap averaged 182 watts. My second managed 143. That's not a speed problem. That's an endurance problem.
This is where Mel's experience has made the difference. The message has been consistent from the start: build the engine, not the ego. Turn up, week after week, and do the work as set. Not heroic sessions followed by three days on the sofa, but steady, repeatable training that accumulates. It's less exciting than chasing PBs. It's also what actually works.
The real training plan is fitting it all in
Here's the bit that doesn't make it onto Strava.
My working day typically runs from 7am to 6pm, plus travel. Then there's family, and a house that seems to generate DIY faster than I can complete it. And then there's this campaign: the fundraising, the content, the sponsors, and organising the Aurora Ball. Every one of those things matters to me. Every one of them takes time, and energy, and sleep.
Training at this stage isn't about whether I can do the session. It's about when. 5am before the commute. Late evening after the children are sorted. A long ride squeezed into a weekend that also needs to contain a family and a trip to B&Q.
Something has to give, and at the moment it's sleep. I'm not getting enough of it, and I'm not recovering the way I should. That's the uncomfortable truth: the training only works if the body gets the chance to absorb it, and right now it isn't always getting that chance.
It all takes its toll. And the toll is cumulative.
And then winter arrives
This time of year is the worst for it. The days are getting shorter, the mornings and evenings are dark and cold, and it'll only get worse from here. Rain is a given in Cheshire, and before long there'll be snow and ice too. None of that changes the plan. The sessions still need doing, and I still need to get out the door. And when the roads turn to ice, it doesn't mean a day off. It means more focused work on the turbo or the treadmill.
The swimming takes its own particular hit. The summer's open water, with its space, fresh air and the odd swan for company, gives way to the pool. A long swim set becomes 100-plus lengths of the same 25 metres, back and forth, with nothing to look at but the tile grout and the occasional rogue hair bobble drifting along the bottom. On a good night, I'll spot a plaster. It is, I can assure you, as thrilling as it sounds.
But with the XTri in early May, this is exactly where the race will be won or lost. Winter is when the volume builds and the intensity ramps up. Nobody sees it and nobody cheers it, but May will be decided by the sessions I do in the dark between now and March.
Keeping an eye on the dials
This is where the data earns its keep.
Whoop has become my early-warning system. It tracks my sleep, my daily strain and my heart rate variability (HRV), the variation between heartbeats that gives a decent read on how well my body is recovering. When HRV dips and sleep has been short, it's usually telling me what I already suspect: I've been burning the candle at both ends, and the long ride I've got planned is going to hurt more than it should.
TrainingPeaks is where Mel and I meet. It holds the plan, it shows me what I've actually completed against what was set, and it tracks my fitness and fatigue over time. Week by week, I can see the fitness line slowly climbing. Slowly being the operative word.
Strava is the public record. It's where friends, supporters and the occasional rival keep an eye on me. It's motivating, it's honest, and it's very difficult to hide a skipped session when everyone can see the gap.
Between the three, I have a fairly clear picture of what's going in and what's coming out. What I can't download is more hours in the day.
Fuelling the engine
Readers of my Brutal race report will know that my pre-race nutrition included a Big Mac. I'm aware my credibility on this subject needs rebuilding.
Fuelling is where TORQ, one of our campaign partners, plays a massive part. Their whole range is built as one fuelling system: energy drink, gels, bars, jellies and recovery drink. Each product uses a 2:1 blend of maltodextrin and fructose. The two carbohydrates are absorbed through different routes, so the body can take on more energy per hour than it can from a single source.
What makes it work for me is the simplicity. Every product is measured in "TORQ Units" of 30g of carbohydrate. Whether I'm drinking on the bike, taking a gel when I'm breathing hard, or grazing on a bar or jellies on a long ride, I know exactly what's going in. When you're already tired, simple matters. On the longest rides, I'm also trialling TORQ's new 1:1 Proto range, designed for athletes pushing their carbohydrate intake even higher. I'm not yet convinced it's right for me. There's some evidence that the gut becomes more temperamental at altitude, and the last place I want to discover that is halfway up a Himalayan trail. For now, it's something to test carefully in training, not a decision to make on race day.
Under-fuel a long session and it isn't just that session that suffers. It's the next one, and the one after that. So fuelling isn't an afterthought in training. It's part of the training. Every long ride and run is a chance to practise taking on fuel, so that by May my stomach knows the routine as well as my legs do. Over 18 to 22 hours, fuelling isn't a detail. It's the difference between finishing and not.
The numbers that worry me
Right now I'm averaging around 9 hours of training a week. To be ready for May, that needs to build to somewhere between 15 and 20 hours a week at peak. That's roughly double, around 200% of what I'm putting in now.
Mel is clear that quality comes before quantity, and every session in the plan has a job to do. But there is no shortcut. Without the volume, the body doesn't get the stimulus it needs to adapt to a day like the XTri. I expect to be out there for somewhere between 18 and 22 hours. You can't prepare for that on 9 hours a week, however good those 9 hours are.
So somehow, over the coming months, I need to find another six to eleven hours a week. From a week that already feels full, and with sleep already the thing that's giving.
And then there's the altitude
As if that wasn't enough, the Himalayas add their own tax.
At altitude there's less oxygen in every breath. For trained endurance athletes, maximum aerobic capacity drops by roughly 6–7% for every 1,000 metres climbed. By the time I'm running towards the ViewPoint at 4,000m, the research suggests I could be working with something like a fifth to a quarter less aerobic capacity than I'd have here in Cheshire. And because we'll only be in Nepal a few days before the start, there's limited time to acclimatise.
Over the course of the race, a rough rule of thumb of around 15% harder feels about right, and at the top it'll be worse. Which means every session I do in Macclesfield needs to bank a little extra.
And the clock is less generous than it looks. The race closes 26 hours after the start. But to earn the right to reach 4,000m, I have to be at High Camp, 3,500m up, within 13 hours 45 minutes of the start, after a night swim and 165km in the saddle. Everything I'm doing now is about making that cut-off.
Age is not on my side
I'll be 49 next month. The sessions I'd have shrugged off ten years ago now take days to recover from. Legs stay heavy for longer, niggles linger, and a hard weekend can echo well into Wednesday.
The biggest fear isn't the altitude or the distance. It's injury. Seven months out, a serious injury wouldn't just be a setback. It would be a disaster.
On Sunday I was reminded how fine that line is. Running on rough ground, I rolled my right ankle on a knife-edge rock. It's the kind of moment that stops your heart for a second while you wait to find out whether you can put weight on it.
So prevention has become part of the plan. I've added Core Collagen to my daily routine, personally recommended to me by Richard Laidlow, coach and father of 2023 Ironman World Champion Sam Laidlow. Tendons and ligaments are largely made of collagen, and because they have a poor blood supply, they adapt far more slowly than muscle. Collagen supplementation is about giving those tissues the building blocks to keep up with the load. It's not a magic shield. But approaching 49, with a freshly rolled ankle, I'll take every bit of help my tendons can get.
Which raises a question every endurance athlete wrestles with: how hard do you push in training? Push too little and the body won't adapt to what's coming. Push too hard and you risk losing weeks, or the race altogether. That balance is exactly why I trust Mel to set the plan, and why I'm learning, slowly, to listen when the data says ease off.
How you can help
Honestly? We can't do this alone, and there are plenty of ways to help that don't involve a wetsuit.
Share the story. Every share, like and comment helps Park Lane's story reach someone new. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and pass this blog on to anyone you think would connect with it.
Join me for a session. Long-distance training is lonely. Hours on the bike and on the fells, often in the dark and the rain, mostly on my own. If you fancy joining me for a ride in the lanes here in Cheshire or a run in the Peak District, at whatever pace suits you, get in touch. The company would mean more than you know.
Part of the answer is closer to home, too. I used to be far more active at Manchester Triathlon Club than I am now. The organised sessions, the company and the shared suffering are exactly what this winter needs. So consider this a public commitment: I need to get myself back along to some of them.
Help with the campaign. This is the big one. Behind the training sits a huge amount of work: organising the Aurora Ball, finding sponsors and keeping the fundraising moving. If you can help, whether that's raffle or auction prizes for the ball, introductions to businesses that might sponsor us, your time or your expertise, please reach out. Any help at all would be amazing, and very welcome.
Donate, or join us at the ball. We're aiming to raise £100,000 for Park Lane Special School, to fund specialist mobile sensory facilities for its pupils. You can donate at shadows2giants.com/donate, or join us at the Aurora Ball on 20 March 2027 at the De Vere Cranage Estate. Tickets are available now via the website.
Why I keep going
Some mornings, when the alarm goes at 5am and Whoop is telling me I've recovered about as well as a phone left on 3%, it's tempting to roll over.
Then I think about the children at Park Lane. For many of them, every day is a climb. Their milestones are reached through courage and perseverance that I can't begin to match. My 5am alarm is a choice. Their challenges aren't.
That's what gets me out of bed.
215 days to go. Consistency over heroics. One session at a time, and hopefully not on my own.
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