Paddy Buckley Winter Round. Training Week 1 of 4.

The Paddy Buckley Round is a 62 mile tour around Snowdonia, which takes in 47 summits. It can be done in any direction, can start from anywhere on the route, with or without assistance, and there is an arbitrary goal of completing it within 24hrs.

It’s like the Bob Graham Round, but harder and less well known. Sometimes I wish I was harder and less well known.

I have tried and failed to finish it 3 times in the summer. I dropped a rock directly onto my knee cap and my knee has been reminding me of that fact ever since.

If you complete the round in Dec, Jan or Feb, then that is called a Winter round. A separate challenge with a separate record.

So I am going to attempt that. I’m just kinda hoping my knee will have healed itself by then. It’s a very funny injury. It doesn’t give me any warning-signs at all. It just goes like;

fine,

fine,

fine,

fine,

still fine,

fucked,

totally fucked.

Lockdown and the lack of races is a major problem for people like me.

It has taken me till the age of 39 to realise that I need goals to stay happy. That’s probably unhealthy and wrong and extrinsic and I should try and change it. But I would rather just find another goal and stay happy.

I wasn’t going to go for the Winter round. But, looking back, I remember my failed attempts at the round like soaring successes. The sunrise behind Snowdon. The badger scuttling away on Cnicht. Looking down onto my sleeping town, while crossing the Ysgafn ridge.

It’s going to be cold, slow, boggy, slippery, and just a lot more difficult. But that stuff doesn’t bother me so much. The problem for me is, well, as a kid, I used to have this nightmare;

I am driving on an empty road with my dad. We stop so I can get out and pee in a field. While I’m out there, another me, a doppelgänger, gets in the car and the car drives off. I’m alone in the dark. Thanks dad.

I’m not sure if this is the reason, but I’m afraid of the dark. I’m afraid of being alone in the dark. I’m really afraid of being up a mountain, alone, in the dark.

Also, there is a lot of equipment that I need that I don’t have. My fell running shoes are smashed up. My tomtom watch has ticked it’s last tock. My headtorch has faded. The straps of my rucksack keep falling loose.

I can replace one of the above things. I may try and borrow some of the other equipment, or use my enormous Insta following as a bribe.

But I am in good shape. Apart from this weird knee cap thing, I’m injury free. I am excited about this goal. It is very unlikely to get canned due to Covid. I don’t care what time I get, completion is the goal. It’s right on my doorstep.

I really want this. I know what it will take. I know how to do the training.

So I am going to go out there and do it. Just to make sure this isn’t some spur of the moment hot air bullshit, I’ve sat for a week on this blog. I’m a week of mountain miles down the road, and I still want it.

Three weeks till the Winter window opens. I’ll show you what training I’m doing. Share my thoughts and tactics. Then I will wait for a good day and I will do it. I will wear a tracker so you can all follow along (Hi Mum).