Level Three Outdoor Education Students
During the second year of the Level Three in Outdoor Education at Shrewsbury Colleges Group, students are tasked with organising a sports event. This also coincides with their expedition module. In small groups students outline potential fundraising challenges. The winning challenge was the Coast 2 Coast Cycle Route 72 via Hadrian’s Wall. Following on from last year’s successful 3 Peaks Challenge the students wanted to a different type of physical challenge to push themselves and raise as much money as possible. Hadrian’s Cycleway, National Cycle Route 72, takes you on a ride through some of England’s most wild and dramatic countryside. The 172 miles was split into three days.
The students said:
This challenge will be a test of our logistical planning, money management and most importantly our fitness. This challenge is to raise money for the wonderful charity Children with Cancer UK. Cancer is an awful disease that is all too common, and it is unfair that children are robbed of their lives so prematurely. Let’s defeat cancer united as one.
Sam, a member of the student group, wrote an expedition review. Sam said:
Day one was by far the most chaotic riding day, for a number of reasons. If there is anything that I learnt, it’s that during a difficult period, you just have to keep your head up, think positively and stay focused, yes it was a physically challenging day, but equally a mental game too. If you are not in the game mentally, you won’t achieve anything. There was definitely a much greater sense of teamwork throughout the second day, I think this is because everyone was hit with a reality check, this challenge was going to be much harder than they had originally thought.
Looking back on the second day I can see it was the day where I truly broke mental barriers and realised what I am truly capable of, it also made me learn the importance of being in a team, because we all needed each other for those last fifteen miles. Day three started much more positively, I had gotten much better sleep and was feeling very positive and motivated about the day ahead. For the majority of the miles that day, we were able to ride as a fairly tight group and use each other’s slip streams to our advantage. However the day did not come without its difficulties, we did have several hurdles still to overcome.
The final kilometre
As we rode along the sea on the final kilometre, I felt overwhelmed, for me personally it had been a very mentally challenging expedition, I had stepped well out of comfort one, pushed myself to new limits and saw a side of myself I hadn’t seen before, I felt so confident and motivated. When doing a challenge of that scale, you need a team to motivate each other along, this challenge really showed me personally the criticality of teamwork.
