Three women, three peaks, one target: to hike up and down each mountain, cycling from one to the next, in record time. CW finds out how they got on
In June 2021 three British women set a new Guinness World Record for the UK National Three Peaks Challenge by bicycle as a female team. They successively climbed, descended and cycled between the highest mountains in Wales, England and Scotland – Snowdon, Scafell Pike and Ben Nevis – in 67 hours, 30 minutes. Impressive, you might think. But when Liverpool Phoenix CC’s Colin McCallum heard about it, his first thought was something else: I know some women who could beat that.
“Colin read an article about the three women and sent it to me in February,” remembers Janet Fairclough. “It was accompanied by a note that said: Thought this might be up your street, Jan – how about a Phoenix team?” Fairclough is 62 and for the past decade has been recording TT performances the envy of women half her age.
After retiring from Tata Steel in 2019, she decided to train like a full-time athlete and, inspired by Ollie Bridgewood’s ‘Project 49’ feature in CW, took on her own ‘Project 59’ – to ride a sub-hour 25- mile TT at the age of 59. She achieved her goal that September, clocking 58.47 on the R25/3H.
Today Fairclough is speaking to me by video call from her home in Bickerstaffe, Lancashire, sitting alongside her Three Peaks team-mates, NHS podiatrist Louise Johnson, 50, and NHS kidney consultant Hannah Fawcett, 41. How did Fairclough find two other women equally as amenable to McCallum’s suggestion? “The first two people I asked were not interested,” she admits. “One of them said, ‘Ask Louise’; the other said, ‘No thanks’.” Fellow Phoenix CC member and long-distance TT fan Johnson jumped at the idea, and suggested Fawcett, a friend and NHS colleague, to complete the trio.
“Hannah is probably the strongest rider among us,” says Fairclough, recalling her delight when Fawcett threw in her lot without hesitation. “I’m the most experienced anyway,” Fawcett demurs, “as I’ve been road racing since childhood and have ridden countless races over the years, including the Rás in 2013.”
From champs to challenge
All three women had previously competed in the 12-hour time trial championships but none had ever taken on a challenge like this one, demanding more than two full days of unrelenting effort. What’s more, Fawcett was the only experienced hiker among them, so the mountain climbs would be quite literally a step into the unknown. “In early April, as a practice run, we decided to climb Snowdon, then cycle home and back,” says Johnson, “but there had been heavy snowfall on the mountain, so instead we cycled from Llanberis to home and back, then climbed Snowdon the followi
