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Pennine way
looks great Lil sis.........cutoffs look a bit steep for me.............the record is 15 hrs odd to do 95 miles of tough climbing
............some people are amazing........would need a support crew
Thanks for starting this thread, Seren. Brilliant. With or without .........
I have been looking at that a few years cougie but never seems to fit in with my other races............i rememebr you doing it..........i have thought i could get away with my hybrid for it........i will have to pencil it in to my 5 year plan.........
long races that and long walks will have to wait 3 years until i can hopefully do them with my OH..............
Seren you could mtb with me. We have loads of lovely trails. Downhills are great. I always carry a whistle and my phone so that hopefully if the worst happens I can get help. so far I have been lucky
Seren,
Everyone has given you longer, harder, tougher. What about trying to knock 5 minutes off your 5k time? You are right there are lots of great distances and lots of great events.
Multi-day self organised/solo we could list every national and regional trail in the country. Wainrights Coast2Coast is the best. The trails vary from 50m up to 350m for South West Coast Path so would take 1-2 days or up to 3-weeks to complete. This is a significant time investment (I did most of them before having kids)
Multi-sport outside of triathlon typicaly seems to involve MTBs at some point.
A lot of tough Ultras include navigational requirements rather than just the IM/Double IM ability to just keep moving forward. The OMM is quite a challenge.
Other than that there is single sport events where even the longest sportives and swims are shorter than a full IM in time. Audaxes cover some good distances on the bike and are low budget as are the LDWA events for walking/running (most challenges allow runners). The LDWA would also introduce you to some navigation (easy when fresh not see easy at the end of 50miles)
M.eface
why not just take a look in the Ultra/Adventure racing section of the forum - enough challenges in there to keep someone happy for a while
if you want ultras, then look no further than the Ultratrail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) - generally reckoned to be the ultra equivalent of Kona IM. hard to get into and bloody hard to finish. there are tougher ultras in Europe like the Petit Trotte du Leon (UTMB on steroids), of plenty of long UK ones like the Thames Path
MTB races - start with TransWales, move up to TransAlps and the onto TransRockies
If your swimming's improving why not look at a SwimTrek holiday or some of the long challenges like Lake Windermere or the Channel??
as Meface suggests, step back from long distance and see what improvemenst you can make over short. that can be hard wor
or try something new - mountaineering, paragliding, kitesurfing, rock climbing, ski touring as examples
you really are only limited by your imagination, time and money.
beginning of last year I did a lot of running and knocked my run distance down..knocked 2 mins of my 5k and over 30 mins of my marathon..........so would have to work really hard to knock anything substantial off either of those...........
i will definitely look at the LDWA events as i like those.........and i do want to do the lakeland 100 one day but need to do some other 100's first as that is a big toughie............
Money is my biggest limiting factor which is why this country is my focus for now..........
you are giving me some great ideas...just got to see which direction i want to go in
Thanks for starting this seren. I've got my 5 year plan worked out and now know which 10K swim to aim for
West Highland Way is not the toughest National Trail by far. Most of the route follows low level drovers roads and climbs with the grain of the country rather than against it. But yes the climbing still has to be done.
keep the options coming folks. My bucket list at the moment is
2013 LeJog / swim the Bosphorus... after that we will see..
last year they did a cycle sportif thing of the welsh leg of the tour of britain....if they do that again this year I fancy having a go if i'm not on holiday...........also want to do the two moors way in devon
Seren, looks like if you needed teams for things there're would be plenty of takers. Count me in
If I had a bit of cmoney I would definitely be entering this next year.... 50km running and 10km swimming, basically run across an island, jump into the sea and swim to the next island... repeat about 30 times!
<span style="color: #009933;">www.otillo.se/
I really fancied the enduroman arch to arc as a relay team.........could never do it on my own but you can have teams of 2 to 6........4 to 6 in a team would be brilliant.....but its about £6000 per team I think so a tad expensive.and there is a lot of extras I believe to pay for........I would love to swim in the channel in a wetsuit......but couldn't managed long
might cycle north to south wales in one go........that would be acheap alternatoive to lejog to keep me busy
Go for the WHW race - it looks amazing! I was marshalling it halfway along the route this past weekend and am now determined to have a go at it myself. Might not be the toughest but I think it has to be one of the best - fantastic camaraderie, support and banter and some of the views are unbelievably beautiful.
Seren I was thinking of cycling the route of the Welsh Castles Relay ie Caenarfon to Cardiff. Dunno when...
Spent a happy half hour this pm on the SwimTrek website. *sigh*
i was just looking up train prices to holyhead AH
.......I hate swimming indoors but love it outdoors........are the swim treks wetsuit ones
The WHW has joined my list
GB....looked at that swedish race.looks amazing...............what do you do about running shoes and what do you wear in the water................loved the look of it but i would struggle to swim that far withouit a wetsuit
Have you seen this, new for 2013
http://www.hxtri.com/
I really fancy the idea iof the swedish one - I'd love to do something like that perhaps somewhere warmer though
Doesn't it just! It's relatively cheap as well (I think about £70-80 if I remember correctly?)
I think that is all part of the fun...
if you head over to Tripetalk (spit!), there's an active thread about OtillO and reports around that some have done in the past.
it's pretty tough going all round and there are checkpoint times that you need to be inside to be able to carry on. think of it like Norseman but without the bike or the big feck off climb at the end of the run.
great challenge though.
and whils talking of Scandinavia, there's a tough tri called Trollveggen - http://www.trollveggen-triathlon.com/engelsk.html. the bike leg goes up the Troll ladder which climbs 750m in 9km - that's steep - and the run finishes above the Troll Wall which has the biggest vertical drop of any cliff face in Europe with a 1000m drop. Google Troll Wall and look at it - wow! and there are plenty of videos around of people base jumping from it
AH there is a annual Bosphorus swim every July when they shut the channel to shipping http://www.bosphorus.cc/
I've had my eye on this for a couple of years, mainly because it doesn't have any swimming in it: http://www.coasttocoast.ie/
I like the look of the Bosphorus swim!!
To think a little over 3 years ago I was terrified of a 1500 m swim, how times have changed!! 
Bosphorus swim is 6.5k and they say the average time is an hour. Fastest times last year were 45 mins. There must be significant current. Def one to go on the list.
Oooh! Extreme tri with a lake swim! Tasty
A girl I know through tri club is doing the Bosphurus swim next month - sounds like fun, definitely better with no ships...
There are some great ideas here - I may steal some! Thanks for starting the thread.
Different reasons but also looking for new challenges, as I retire (?) from tri, so a great read, thanks. Running is my issue for the forseeable future - more precisely not running. Taken to swimmimg for now, but involving kyaking could be a possibility.