In hindsight I should have withdrawn after summiting Whernside, where I was having to stop every few paces for a minute or so to catch my breath on the way up. I'd become detached from the rest of the team at this point and didn't want to alarm them, as by the time I caught them up on the summit my symptoms had disappeared. I must have looked ill on the way up though as several concerned people stopped to offer their assistance. Unfortunately, having comfortably made it across the valley bottom to Ingleborough, my symptoms returned with a vengeance as soon as I hit the slightest incline. The galling thing is if I could have somehow dragged myself over Ingleborough I would have, despite my difficulties on the ascents, set a new personal best.
Just six weeks before the challenge I breezed through a 17+ mile walk including a very steep ascent in the Peak District. Then three weeks before, got more breathless than I should have done on an 11 mile hike around the Brecon Beacons. Although having done a few sessions in the gym afterwards with no ill effects, I put this down to a bad day at the office. Clearly, with the benefit of hindsight, it wasn't.
So with my GP ruling out an obvious chest infection, my lungs are clear and my blood oxygen levels normal, I'm waiting the outcome of a battery of blood tests and chest X-ray. While I have an ECG scheduled in a couple of days and just for good measure have to monitor my blood pressure twice a day. So hopefully it won't be too long before I get to the bottom of it and can back to the hills and the in gym, because I'm going stir crazy at the moment.
I've often said, partly in jest, that "I would rather die on a mountain, than on a urine soaked incontinence pad in an old people's home" although I've always worked on the assumption that a decision I won't have to make for at least several decades.
Particularly as I once I'm fit again I will be going back to Yorkshire to finish the job of setting a new personal best, not to mention the fact that the record for two complete circuits of the course, 48 miles and 10,400ft of non-stop ascent, has yet to set!