The Winter Fan Dance is the first weekend of January 2018 in the beautiful Brecon Beacons in South Wales.
In our artificial world of mortgages, smart phones and the incessant chatter of the voice in your head, there is an urgent need to return to the simple raw intensity of man against nature: the human will pitted against an unapologetic and silent adversary of rock and earth.
Sweat prickling the forehead and soaking the back, straps digging into the shoulders and the primitive urge to suck in the next breath and keep going smother out everyday concerns.
The glorious feeling of the body working to its maximum capacity washes over you, jockeying for position with dozens of other competitors makes your heart feel as though it is attacking the inside of the rib cage.
Fully dilated pupils drink in the richness of the surroundings as you pound up the mountain, scalding heat bursts through the leg muscles and the hypnotic rhythm of gravel underfoot and urgent breathing echoes around you.
This is what it means to be alive: the vital and overwhelming awareness of the present moment thrust onto you by straining lungs and aching limbs. This is what it means to do The Fan Dance.
For all those brave enough to start their New Year as if they are serious, this challenge comes in varying levels of difficulty:
· The Fan Dance Test: The original 24km SAS Test march
· The Fan Dance Double Tap Challenge: two Fan Dance attempts over as many days
· Fan Dance Exercise High Moon: A Fan Dance staged at night over an enhanced route
· Fan Dance Black Edition: The Fan Dance followed by Fan Dance Exercise High Moon or vice versa. There is a rest period of several hours between the two
· Fan Dance Trident: Our most demanding Fan Dance challenge. The Fan Dance followed by Fan Dance High Moon and then another Fan Dance.
· The Fan Dance Woodhouse Edition: The original post WWII Fan Dance with three ascents of Pen y Fan via two new approaches and an enhanced route. Standard Fan Dance veterans only.
For more information the link is below:
To all the amazing athletes we met this weekend, the Bulletproofbodies Team salutes you.
