Fit enough?

300km.
Three. Hundred. Kilometres. 
You're asking yourself, can I do it? Everyone who's done the Challenge has asked themselves the same question.

The answer is you can! But you need to put in hard work up front. Here is some hopefully useful guidance as to how.

It's all about strength, endurance and recovery. We don't go at a fast pace on the Challenge, but we are constantly moving covering big distances and often lifting heavy weights, then building camp everyday - setting up shelters, communicating our position, cooking, purifying water, digging latrines, washing and hygiene, treating injuries, going over the route. If you cannot recover you will slowly succumb to fatigue, increasingly having to dig deep to perform basic tasks. More importantly, fatigue impacts your decision making and good decision making is vital in the wilderness, far from help.

So we're looking for good all round conditioning and you're going to have to do exercises you don't like to achieve that but at the same time there's no need to kill yourself and we have developed a fitness training program since 2016 that is proven to develop strength, endurance and flexibility. We do this by following a 21 week training plan in three 6 week cycles, combining jogging, weight training, HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) and things like Boxing and RPM (indoor cycling).

Our benchmark fitness test every 6 weeks is a 5km row best effort (which gives a very good indication of both fitness and strength), a 300m carry of a 60kg gym tyre and a 15km walk with weight on your back. Everyone goes at their own pace, all we're looking for is improvement, follow the plan you will be fine.

Some of it does require pushing yourself hard, but you'll be surprised how relaxing some of the other training is and all of it is fun. You will be amazed at what you can achieve and the shape you will be in.

​If you're interested in following our training plan please contact us for more details.

300km? You can do this. 100% commitment and you will be there.