The British man completed the challenge in under 72 hours with the aim of sharing a light on the stunning locations across the country
James Norbury set a record on September 18 for conquering 30 of Britain’s tallest peaks in an 161km endurance challenge.
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The 31-year-old finished the challenge in 70 hours and 49 minutes as he summited the 10 tallest mountains in England, Scotland and Wales.
The challenge involved running more than 14,000m of elevation – equivalent to one and a half times the height of Mount Everest.
It is a more demanding version of the well-known National Three Peaks Challenge, which sees explorers summit the three highest peaks across England, Scotland and Wales in 24 hours – Scafell Pike, Ben Nevis and Snowdon.
However, in recent years the famous peaks have created national headlines for becoming overcrowded and queues regularly forming at the summit.
Norbury, from Oxfordshire, undertook the challenge to encourage people to explore Britain’s lesser-known mountains and he hopes his record will inspire others to beat his time.
Despite averaging just three hours of sleep per night, the Columbia ambassador didn’t stop at 30 peaks. On a spontaneous decision, he extended his challenge by adding six more summits in Wales, conquering 36 peaks in total under 72 hours.
Now living in the French Alps, he is preparing for his next challenge in New Zealand, continuing his mission to inspire others to explore the outdoors.
Here is our Q&A with Norbury below:
James Norbury (Columbia)
How did you first get into ultra running?
I started running during lockdown because there was nothing else to do. I was running on the road but I didn’t love it because I grew up either skiing or playing team sports and it wasn’t really my thing.
When I got back to the French Alps, which is where I live, one of my friends invited me out on a trail run and I thought it seems very difficult, steep and complicated. But it was great. You don’t have to worry about your kilometre splits and half the time you are taking in the amazing views. I grew up doing a lot of hiking so it was more similar to that than running on the road.
It’s this long, slow adventure rather than running a 10km as fast as I can which is horrible. I stumbled across it accidentally but then realised I absolutely loved it. I wouldn’t profess to be a particularly good road runner. If you put me in a parkrun I would get beat by a lot of people.
How did you train for the project?
I didn’t have that long because I decided to do it about three months before the actual day. I exercise a lot, I hike a lot and I run a lot so it wasn’t like I was starting from scratch.
I had a 10 week block and I spent a lot of time in the mountains in the French Alps. There’s a lot of great trails there and a lot of appropriate terrain so a lot of it is actually getting used to the movement you are going to be doing because there was only a small amount of flat, easy and runnable trails.
The training was harder than the project in some way because it is relentless. On the project I was full of excitement and I had my team with me and we were very lucky with the weather. Whereas a lot of the time during the training cycle I would do a four hour run in the pouring rain and it was really cold.
James Norbury (Columbia)
What gave you the idea of the project?
I was trying to think of a challenge to do in the UK because that’s where I’m from. I thought of the three peaks challenge when you climb the highest mountain in Scotland, England and Wales in 24 hours. The more I looked into it the more I realised it is such a popular challenge which is great because it gets lots of people out into the mountains, but I think it’s over populated. When we visited those three summits, there was so many people that you had to queue to get to the summit.
I wanted to put a challenge on the map that gets people into more of the mountains that the UK have to offer, because we are so lucky to have these incredible ranges in such wild spaces. And that is where the challenge came from.
Originally the plan was to do it in a week because I thought it wasn’t possible to do it in three days. Then the more I looked at it I realised it might be possible, just. I quite liked the idea that it was on the edge, I really wasn’t sure whether I was going to finish it in three days or not.
How did you and your team plan the challenge in such a short space of time?
Sorting the travel was probably as much of a challenge as the physical side of it. For instance, in Scotland the peaks are distributed over three areas and they are all a couple hours away from each other.
I had a team of nine around me and it wasn’t possible without them, we had a camper van. One of the really challenging parts was we wanted to make a little documentary to show the challenge properly. Throughout the whole project we were trying to figure out how to get the camera guys to certain areas whilst carrying their full camera kits. I think one of the camera guys did nearly 70km overall.
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What moment over the three days stands out to you?
The last peak in Scotland was Ben Lawers and it’s the 10th highest peak. It’s all on it’s own so we had to make a special mission to tick it off. At that point we had already done 60km and close to 4000m elevation that day so we were really tired.
I was halfway up and I thought how on earth am I going to do two more days like this. I called my girlfriend and had a little cry on the phone. I hobbled up and as we got to the top we saw the clouds whip up over the peak. The mist had burst through and we saw this unbelievable sunset over the lower highlands.
There was not a single person there other than me and one of the camera guys. We had a 360 degree view of the lochs and the magical sunset which was just incredible. This huge blood full moon then came rising the other side behind us which was wild, we were getting a show from nature. From there I knew we were going to do this and I was so grateful to be there and to have seen it through.
Did you stick to the original plan of the project?
As if it wasn’t challenging enough we decided to add six peaks to the last day. There is a challenge called the Welsh 3000’s which is the 16 peaks in Wales above 3,000 foot and I thought that would be quite cool.
We woke up an hour earlier so we could get six more peaks in. So we did 36 instead of 30 which made it quite exciting because we were incredibly close to the time.
I had about an hour to go and one of my friends who I hadn’t seen for 10 years was waiting for me on the summit. We chatted and scrambled our way along a ridge to the end and I made it to the top with just over an hour to spare.
James Norbury (Columbia)
Would you do something like this again?
There’s always more on the cards but these projects for me are never the end goal. When I got to the top and I finished it, I didn’t have this big feeling of ‘wow I’ve done it’ because I loved it the whole way around. For the whole three days I was on cloud nine.
I’ve set a record and I’m really hoping that someone sees this and goes out and smashes the time that I’ve done, that would be really fun.
The point in the mission is to get outdoors and experience more of the outdoors. That can be something totally different and mean something different to each person.
When I was younger I watched the Lord of the Rings films and I became obsessed with the massive natural landscapes. I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand so my next plan is in January where I will take three months to run the length of New Zealand and visit every single Lord of the Rings film set on the way.
Learn more about Columbia here.
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