The Grim Challenge? That sounds like a pleasant. way to spend a Sunday morning..

3 days on and my body has mostly recovered from the pain. Most of my toes have thawed too so that's good news.

Last Sunday marked my first taste of ridiculous events in ridiculous conditions, and i'm sure it won't be my last. On the face of it, the Grim Challenge seemed aptly named. An 8-mile off-road run on an early December morning. The course description on the offical website is as follows:

"This land is used to test Army vehicles so expect it to be interesting! You will reach a long hill shortly after the start before descending again eventually reaching a water filled ravine. You will run on over puddle-strewn paths before having to crawl under camouflage netting. You'll eventually reach some man-made mounds before arriving at and running through some rather large puddles. Expect to get very wet! You'll run on to the fast vehicle driving circuit where it is rocky underfoot. This brings you to some more large areas of water and the finish area."

When Glen sent me the details I agreed without hesitation. Due to a hectic holiday calendar I had missed the 10Km runs and half marathons the other guys have completed so far so I was up for the challenge. My training has ben progressing well and i have regularly been running 25 - 30Km a week so I felt well prepared leading up the the event.

Sunday morning started early with a big bowl of cereal and a few nerves. We left home at 8am and after scraping the ice of the windscreen, headed down towards Aldershot. As we pulled up in the race carpark I got quite excited. I had been looking forward to the race for a while and the nerves I had been feeling had now disapperared. They came back pretty quickly when I stepped out into the freezing air.

We made our way over towards the start area and grabbed a coffee while we waited for the rest of the guys to show up. Eventually the whole crew arrived - there were 11 of us racing which was a great turn-out and Kirt, Zoobs and Indre were there in support and photography roles. As we waited for the start time, which had been pushed back half an hour due to a road closure, we checked out the course. It was fairly grim. A rough dirt track with large expanses of water covered in a thick layer of ice. Apparently earlier in the morning a tank had been driven through some of the larger 'puddles' to break up the worst of the ice. Suddenly the thought of running through that wasn't quite so appealing.

We lined up for the start and at 11am got the signal and set off. My plan was to try and keep pace with Glen for as long as I could. He is a fair bit fitter than me, having already competed a half marathon in October, but I wanted to stay with him for as long as I could. We made decent pace early on, clocking up 8 minute miles for the first few. For the first couple of miles I did all I could to to avoid the water, even following a bunch of runners on a detour through the bush. I knew I would get wet and cold eventually, but wanted to delay that as long as possible.

After a couple of miles, my agressive hydration strategy backfired and I needed to pee. As I approached the first cargo net, I saw Glen was taking advantage of a bit of a backlog of people to carry out a tactical so I did the same. Unfortunately Glen had a better pit-stop than me and by the time I was back on the course he was past the net and out of sight. I didn't see him again till the end of the race.


After negotiating the first cargo net we started to hit more water. By this stage I was already starting to get wet, so I no longer tried to 'circumvrent' the puddles and charged through the middle. It was cold. I would say cold, to quite cold. And it hurt. Running through the freezing water was physically painful, and for about a minute after each water section my legs were both numb and stinging at the same time.

About 4 miles in I started to struggle a bit. I'm generally not very good at running in the morning and prefer to run once I have a few meals under the belt. My bowl of cereal 4 hours earlier had worn off and I was regretting not eating more. I was lacking energy and found myself fighting the urge to stop and have a breather.

As I approched the 5 mile mark I set myself the target of a 1.10 finishing time. I reached the 6 mile mark in just over 50 minutes so just had to run the last two miles in under 20 minutes and I was there. By this stage I was determined to crack on and make that time. I could feel the end of the race approaching and was counting down the distance in my head. I can run the 4.5 Km home from work in just over 20 minutes so was picturing the run home in my head so I knew how far I had left to go. I found this a really good technique to keep my motivation and pace up.

After a few more minutes and several more puddles I approached what I whought must be almost the 7 mile mark when a stweward who was yelling encouragement said there was 1.5 miles to go. I had already been running 9 minutes for that mile so thought she must be wrong. I swear it was a very generous mile but after 14 minutes, I made the 7 mile mark. My goal of 1.10 was now out of reach but the thought of the end spurred me on. The track led up a small hill and the finish line came in to view.

Unfortunately the finish line was to my left and the track looped round and then through another huge frozen expanse of water before I would reach it. I battled through the last 500m, struggling to breath and with aching legs. I hit the last water section at pace and dragged my legs through the thight deep water, overtaking people as I surged to the finish. I could hear Indre and the guys cheering me on, but was to tired to acknowledge them. I just wanted to get the end.


I made it across the line in 1.11.47, which was slower than I had wanted, but was still a good result. Most of the other guys were in already, the guns finishing in around 1.06, Glen about 1min 30 ahead of me.

After the rest of the guys came in we got changed and headed to find some food. We stopped at the Swan in Farnborough for a pint and a large plate of protein as Kiwi put it. I opted for the pig-based protein and was greatly satisfied...

A few days on, most of the pain has now gone, but my legs are still a little tender. I have taken the week off running and have been swimming instead which is a nice change. The runners will be back on this weekend though and I'm already looking forward to next years Grim...

Training and Tequila Don't Mix

So last weekend Glen, Brooksie and I headed up to the Cotswolds to get some training in on the hills. We planned to get 5-6 hours walking in on both Saturday and Sunday. My training so far has been mostly running and Trim Trail sessions, so this was a good opportunity to get a few solid hours hill walking under my belt.

The preparations for the trip had been going on for some time, and our original plan was to walk from Dowdeswell, near Cheltenham, to Winchcombe where we would spend the night before walking to Chipping Campden and catching the train back to London. However, thanks to the extreme awesomeness of Hillsy and The General, we had the offer of crashing at their place in Cheltenham, which was gladly accepted. Brooksie had a map that covered most of the path we were following and Glen made last minute trip to Cotswolds (the outdoor store, not the place Brooksie) to pick up a map that covered the missing section so we were all set to go.

Friday evening came round and Glen, Brooksie and I met at Paddington Station and experienced the joy of shelling out £44 for a one way train ticket to Cheltenham. We grabbed seats on the train and sat back for the 2.5 hour trip. Hillsy was there to meet us on arrival at Cheltenham Spa and we headed back to his to drop of the car before heading off to a brilliant noodle bar. The food was great and watching The General get visually molested by the hideous waitress was even better. After a couple of beers we headed home to prepare for an early start the next day.

We were out the door at 8am and rearing to go after some bacon and eggs whipped up by Hillsy. We found our entry point onto the Cotswolds Way and headed out into the freezing morning. After about 10 minutes we lost the path and decided it was time to consult the map. That went a little something like this:

Brooksie: "It's in the back of my bag, can you grab it out?"
Glen: "Um, is it?"
Brooksie: " Yeah I put it in there before we left - its just in the main bit?"
Glen: "Um, are you sure?"
Brooksie "*****"

So after 10 minutes of our walk we found ourselves lost and without a map.

Fortunately the previous day I had downloaded a new mapping application for my phone. The ViewRanger application uses the internal GPS on my N95 8Gb to plot your position. The application allows you to purchase and download Ordinance Survey maps - the same maps that Brooksie had left in the back of Hillsy's car. The maps come in tiles so you can just download the tiles that you are intersted in, which is good, cos they aren't particularly cheap. When I bought the app I got credit to download a few map tiles and so I had downloaded the tiles that corresponded to the route we were taking.

Unfortunately I had used up my credit downloading the tiles for the walk, but had missed one tile. A fairly crucial tile. The tile that covered the area in which we were lost, without a map.

Awesome.

I did have the tile directly north of the area in which we were lost and I could see the track heading north on that tile. So I knew we had to go North for about 2Km. And Brooksie had managed to put the compass in her bag which was quite an achievement. So we set off once again, with no idea where the path was, but knowing that we had to head North. After about 90 minutes, which included 45 minutes stuck in a paddock from which there seemed there was no escape, we stumbled back across the Cotswolds Way. Within a few minutes we emerged onto the section of the path that was covered by my map and we were laughing.

The morning was icy cold and as we headed up towards Cleeve Common the trees were covered in frost and it was so foggy that visibility was limited to about 10 meters at times.




The next few hours proceeded without too much drama, although a the path was quite hard to follow in places, especially given that it was so foggy We arrived at our designated meeting point at 1.40, after 5 hours and about 25Km and had time for a few stretches before Hillsy rolled up to meet us and take us back to Cheltenham.

After a very quick change out of dirty gear it was down to the pub to watch the English get schooled by the All Blacks which was a satisfying end to a long days walk.

When the first tray of Tequilas came out at 4.45pm I knew that the plan of walking another 6 hours the next day was looking shaky. 11 hours, several Jager Bombs, a couple of pubs, a club and £100 later we made it to bed. Glen and I dragged ourselves up and were set to go by about 9.30, the rest of the house emegrged about 11 looking decidedly rough. The General knocked up some sausage sarnies which we devoured and at about 12 Hillsy finially rustled up the energy to drive us up to Winchcombe for the second days walking. Brooksie decided that she had had enough and that another days walking wasn't quite what she needed.

Glen and I hit the path at about 12.30 and decided to try and get 3 hours in before catching the train back to London. The second day was reasonably uneventful, the hangovers slightly dampening our enthusiasm. We pushed through it though and got another 15 Km out of the way. We followed the Cotswolds Way for about 90 minutes before looping back on a footpath that led to the Gloucester Way which we then followed back to Winchcombe.

The friendly bloke at the coffee shop in Winchcombe gave us a lift back to Cheltenham for £15 which was good of him. We were then met with the joy of shelling out another £44 for a train ticket to London. It turned out a return was £45 so we were pretty gutted we hadn't picked one up in London before we left...

We hadn't quite achieved the goal of walking 5-6 hours a day and had deviated from the original path we were to take, but I'm not too disappointed. Once of the reasons I wanted to do two days was to get used to putting the boots back on tired feet and backing up after a long day. We did that. With killer hangovers. So to me, thats a pretty good result.

I'm relatively fit now and can run 10Km in 50 minutes pretty comfortably, but I found parts of the walk quite tiring. Walking uphill is very different to running on the flat so I'm going to need to rack up lots more hours in the hills.

Big ups to Hillsy and General for the hospitality and to Brooksie for organising the map - oh......