Dave and Martyn’s training regime started many months beforehand – fitness testing, hours in the gym, time in the pool and pounding the streets of their home town, Southampton.
For Dave, it meant a return to the kind of regime he had experienced on his way to the top echelons of triathlon but it proved to be one of the most physically demanding challenges he had ever attempted.
As a club athlete, Martyn’s road to the kind of fitness required to successfully complete the Great Wight Attack was even more arduous but he was determined to succeed and knew how important it would be for both he and Dave to work as a team.
The Great Wight Attack consisted of:
Day 1 – Swim from mainland UK, to Ryde on the Isle of Wight, followed by a 20 mile run.
Day 2 – A gruelling 30 mile endurance run around the Island.
Day 3 – Another 15 mile run back to Ryde Pier before swimming back across to the UK mainland.
Owing to the nature and demands of this challenge, pretty much every aspect of fitness training needed to be addressed, from anaerobic (without oxygen) exercises to distance running and various regimes designed to give us the ability to cope with hours of effort and still be standing up at the end of it! This was however an endurance event, so of course the bulk of the training required was done at an aerobic level (with oxygen).
Read more about the kind of training required for the challenge by clicking on the links above.
