Richard Romer-Lee and the team at Square Mile are taking on The Three Peaks
On Thursday the 8th June Square Mile are scaling three mountains in 24 hours: The Three Peaks in aid of Cancer Research UK as part of CASCAID. The cumulative height is 3408m (11181 feet in old money) and the challenge must be completed within the 24 hours, meaning they will be travelling through the night and sleeping and eating on the hoof. No mean feat! I caught up with Richard Romer-Lee, Managing Director of Square Mile to hear more about why they’ve chosen this challenge and how he thinks they’re going to get on.
Why have you chosen to do The Three Peaks challenge?
There’s three answers to that question:
- We can all do it – it was important to us that we completed our CASCAID challenge as a firm and have everyone involved. We’re embracing this together, 14 of us will be walking and the rest of the team will play a role in some way, either driving, keeping us refuelled or holding the fort back at the office.
- It’s going to be hard – it’s a huge challenge, the ascent of the route is 3057m and a total distance of 24 miles so we’re going to be pushed. We’ll be walking up Ben Nevis in Scotland, Scafell Pike in England and Snowdon in Wales, all in 24 hours.
- It will be lots of fun and we can raise a lot of money between all of us.
How is training going?
*Chuckles
We’ve created a training schedule of lunchtime group walks. Lots of us have also started taking the stairs to our 6th floor office instead of the lift to get those leg muscles working. We’re all starting to do our weekend walks and ramping up the training as we get closer.
How hard do you think the challenge will be?
I think it’s going to be extremely hard, it’s not only a huge total ascent of 3057m, we’ve also got to come down! We’ll also be doing this through the night and with little or no sleep. It’s going to be a challenge to get everyone up and then down again, but we’re all up for it!
Who do you think will be your star hiker?
Two of the guys, Mark James and Jamie Farquhar have done it before so we can expect a lot of chirp about how good they are – we’ll look forward to watching them battle it out. We’re also expecting great things from Victoria Hasler as she spent two weeks trekking in the foothills of the Himalayas last year. The team is made up of people in their mid-20s to mid-50s so it’s about everyone helping everyone up and down, it’ll be a great team building exercise.
How will you boost the morale of the team throughout the challenge?
I’ll threaten to cut bonuses to anyone who doesn’t keep up!!! In truth, we’re a very close team and I know we’ll all help each other. There’ll be a lot of banter along the way too, so that will keep our spirits up. We’re also keen to have suggestions of motivational songs for our mini-bus journeys, “It’s a long way to the top” by AC/DC would be my pick. We’d love some more suggestions if you think of any inspiration tracks via our donations page: http://bit.ly/2ohy0Mr.
We wish the team at Square Mile the best of luck! You can follow their progress and read about how they got on Twitter: @SquareMileICR
Share this: