I have signed up for Rat Race Man V Mountain. For those who don’t know what it is, it’s an endurance race that will find me running from Caerarfon (at sea level) to the top of Snowdon (3,560 ft), and back down again to Llanberis. During this grueling 20-mile race, I will have to run up a ‘vertical’ kilometre and abseil down again; navigate an aquatic obstacle course, and swim across a river that links Llyn Peris and Llyn Padarn.

You may think, as I am the co-creator of a magazine for extreme sports and the outdoors, that I am very fit. Well, you are wrong – I have had a very lazy winter, and in all honesty I’ve barely hiked, ran or cycled for months.(This is due to most hiking routes being closed in the winter in Vancouver) The most exercise I have done is a handful of snowboarding sessions, and the odd guilt-motivated jog of about 1k. The longest I’ve ever ran is six miles (10k) which I did once, last year, at the Vancouver Sun Run. So Man V Mountain – or as I have dubbed it in my head: Little Welsh Girl V Big Mountain – is going to be a quite a challenge.

Why have I signed up for this? Well, my lazy winter means I have gone up a dress size – I blame the cider, wine, meat and bread (the best sandwich shop in Vancouver), and my own laziness. I do want to get fit again. I felt so much better, and I was much happier with my body.

Also, the race is taking place in Snowdonia (Eryri) – where my family lives, and have done for many generations. No matter where in the world I live, Eryri is always home, and after living abroad for two years it will be nice to reconnect with the land of my fathers and mothers again.

So – to training! Getting motivated to start has not been easy, and to be fair to my co-founder and partner, Robert McCrimmon, he has had to put up with me moaning about my lack of motivation. To break the cycle, I needed to do something hard. I persuaded Rob, to drive me to Deep Cove, a beautiful suburb of Vancouver.

Rob and I currently live in Vancouver but are emigrating back to the UK soon. The aim of going to Deep Cove  is to run up Quarry Rock. According to the Vancouver Trails, this is an easy hike. It is easier than others, as its short – just 3.8K – but it has steep sections and many steep staircases. All the hills and mountains in the Vancouver area are steep, so it makes for a perfect training ground.

Quarry Rock is not however easy to run up – especially with a hangover. As I pick my way over rocks and roots in a slow jog, Rob is walking not far behind telling me to go faster. He ran parts of the route with me and didn’t even break into a sweat – the guy never works out…

I didn’t manage to run the whole trail. I walked some parts and ran others, and my lungs still felt like they were going to burst. My legs felt incredibly heavy, and I failed to get up any real speed going uphill. I have a long way to go to be ready for Man V Mountain.

The view at the top of Quarry rock, however, is worth every lung-bursting step. As hard as it was, I was glad I did it, as it did the job – it has given me the motivation to start taking this challenge seriously and train a harder. No more 1k jogs.

Full disclosure: I was invited to do the race by the outdoor brand Merrell who are covering my race fee.