The 10 Summits Challenge

So what is the .10 summits challenge you ask? Well its simple really; I run the elevation gain of the 7 highest summits on the 7 continents and I added 3 local summits to round it up to 10. 

Why? well again its pretty simple. I am doing this to raise money for a local occupational centre close to the town in which I live. 

I started this challenge back in September 2020 with the highest mountain in the region of Alicante; this meant that I had to run 23km with 1557m of positive elevation. I did it by running up and down a local hill 12 times, which was pretty straightforward to be honest. 

The next challenge saw me tale on the highest mountain in the region of Valencia which stands at 1838m above sea level; again it was pretty easy going.  I then ran Mt. Teide which is the highest mountain in Spain. This was a different story!!  This was actually pretty hard. This challenge meant that I had to run 54km with 3718m of positive elevation; this equated to 30 repeats of the same hill... 

The day began pretty well but after about 2 hours i was feeling a little peaking and unable to take in any food. my stomach was doing summersaults and the only thing I felt like doing was stopping. 12 hours later i completed the last repeat completely and utterly exhausted. 

Challenge number 4 was again a jump up with 70km covered and 4884 meters of elevation. This challenge took me out of Spain for  virtual ascent of the highest mountain in Oceania which is the Cartensz Pyramid.  

​Unfortunately due to COVID 19 restrictions here in Spain I had to split the challenge into 2 separate runs; this meant running 37km on the Saturday with  2500m of height gain and 33km on Sunday with 2392m of height gain. On Saturday the temperatures were around 25 degrees which was pretty hot for February; the last 3 repeats were tough as I developed cramps in my left thigh and couldn't shift them.  Sunday on the other hand was a lot cooler and the run went perfectly to plan with no issues. 

The next challenge is planned for February 20th where we move to Mt. Vinson in Antarctica. Mt. Vinson stands at 4897m ASL which is again 70km and 40 repeats of Torre de'l Aguill0.