I wanted to find challenges that would make real physical demands of me so that when you decide to support me, you'll know that I have earned your sponsorship, and was not just asking for support and giving nothing back in return. That might seem a little unnecessary to some, but it was important to me that I put in this effort for this cause - CANCER RESEARCH UK. I'm trying to raise as much as I can for this charity so I really believed that I should undertake significant challenges across the year to earn your support.

Because I work for myself, unfortunately I was unable to take time out to undertake these challenges in situ, so to speak, so I devised several virtual challenge, where, over the course of one year - my 365challenge days - I used equipment in my local gym - Total Fitness, in Chester - to build up the distances required over time to achieve each final target distance.

Believe me when I tell you that I wasn't the fittest person around when I started out on this. I was just getting back to exercising after too long away following my own illness. But I knew also that getting fit again would help my own fight against cancer, so over my 365challenge year, those tough physical challenges would benefit both me and Cancer Research UK. Hopefully, you'll want to support me. You can sponsor me by clicking on the Just Giving button on the sidebar.

The challenges I took on were:

This is the classic UK long distance route from Land's End, in the extreme south-west tip of England to John O' Groats, in the north-east tip of Scotland. Various routes have been tried, but the average distance covered is around 1000 miles or 1600 Km. I did this on a stationery bike in the gym - on the Hill Training setting, to ensure I had to put in the effort, of course! I also managed some "real world" cycling around the roads of Cheshire, but the majority of the work was done at the gym.

Swim the English Channel

Swimming the channel is another classic endurance challenge. To do this in the pool at the gym, I needed to swim a lot of lengths until I reached France! 64 lengths of the Total Fitness 25 metre pool is equivalent to 1 mile, so cumulatively, 1408 lengths took me the 22 miles / 35.40 Km across the English Channel!

This isn't a challenge I'd heard of before, but I thought it would be good to try to keep the challenges themed within the UK, and as the Thames is the most famous English river, rowing it seemed like a good idea. It's 215 Miles / 346 Km long, so I had to spend quite some time on the rowing machine!

The Three Peaks Challenge

The Three Peaks Challenge involves scaling the three highest peaks in Wales, England and Scotland - Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis. Their combined height is 3407 metres, and I climbed this distance on the Stairmaster and then decided to take them on for real too ... really enjoyed them ... you can read about my adventures on my blog).

As things went well, and I got fitter - I completed these challenges with 2 months to spare, so I invited suggestions for what else I could attempt in this year-long fund-raising challenge. This resulted in me taking on a further challenge:

*** Extra 365CHALLENGE *** Run Hadrian's Wall

After a little consideration, I decided that, seeing as I'd covered the length of the island on my cycle, I might as well tackle the width too! So, my final challenge was to run the length of Hadrian's Wall, the wall built by the Romans to keep the Scottish out of England! It's a distance of 135 Km/ 84 miles, and I gave myself the months of July and August to complete it, meaning effectively that I had to run 5 Km every other day or so ... I was a little worried as to how I might get on ... especially as I have an old running injury that could flare back up ... read my blog to see what happened!