(Reuters) – Ultrarunner Tom Evans has conquered the Three Peaks challenge in a world-first attempt at the famous mountain trails on a treadmill, clocking four hours, 32 minutes in a “savage” run on Thursday.
The former British Army captain had hoped to complete the real thing in a record time, but restrictions in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic forced him onto the treadmill at his home in Loughborough instead.
Not deterred, he scaled 5.5-kilometres up a virtual mount Snowdon, ran 4.5-km on Scafell Pike and trekked 8.8-km up Ben Nevis, with an elevation of 1,335-metres on the latter.
“Normally when you’re doing this challenge you get a bit of a break and have to drive between the mountains,” Evans said in a statement from Red Bull.
“But today we just had to keep going on the treadmill, non-stop. Typically the last 10 or 15 minutes of each climb were really tough, but I had to dig deep and keep doing.
“It was pretty savage! Physically it was so tough, but mentally too it was really challenging.”
Evans, who runs ultra marathons up to 250-km long, was understandably pleased with his achievement, but concedes the experience could not match the real thing.
“The great thing about trail running is the terrain that you get to run on, the views that you get to see, and the community of runners, so doing it in the ‘pain cave’ on a rainy day makes it that bit tougher,” he said.
(Reporting By Nick Said; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
