I awoke to a sunny Saturday morning – gleaming kit including old trainers I did not mind being destroyed – to the news that Rob had dropped out. He had done something to his hand (knowing Rob this either involved hitting or throwing) and he was going to hospital.
I gathered my varied running ephemera and the beautifully packaged cakes Catherine had baked for each us the night before and we got to Battersea Power Station in good time. Roger was there already.
Malcolm despite being one of the most senior and respected lawyers in the UK could not grasp the concept of standing in one place for more than 30 seconds but I eventually tracked him down. Wai turned up on his scooter just after the designated closing time for registration and proceeded to achieve what had taken the rest of us 20 minutes in about 15 seconds.
We could see other participants (victims) who had completed the course, walking away soaking wet and wrecked but this only heightened the sense of anticipation,
We inspected the photographs of the 26 often huge and evilly complex obstacles over the 10k course and could see that the going would made as hard us whenever possible by adding mud, hoses, ice and plummeting women.
We started off together helping eachother over hay bails but were soon faced with my nemesis – high fences where you have to climb up and then drop down. When we reached the rope ladder I noticed that a woman was standing on my hand but by then this was just an abstract concept.
After numerous piles of tires, walls, crawling up and over scaffolding, inflatables which hit you in the face and climbing through a car and several skips full of ice there was an approximately 3 mile run, a 400 metres sprint with a traffic cone and a further 400 metres steeplechase ending with a plunge into waste deep water.
Once you have run another mile or so there are the main obstacles to get through. These include a number if very high walls where everyone helped eachother, a number of steep slopes, carrying a beer keg back near the finish line, tracks of mud and puddles and then the final group of obstacles inducing crawling on your belly in mud, lots of knee and elbow scrapes and belly crawling and a huge wall to clamber up and jump down. Facing this last wall – about 10ft high, I asked a kindly passing giant for a leg up. What he apparently heard was lift me 6ft in the air and and then drop me on my arse. That was not really what I wanted if I had wanted to be dropped 6ft on to my arse I would have been very specific about that.
This might explain why I am currently unable to put on my right sock without making a noise like a wildebeest with one lung.
Ollie, who had to drop out two weeks ago with a hurtie foot ( medical term) joined us at the end and made for a brilliant day. Malcolm was helped round by Wai and nearly died. I can honestly say that including poor Rob I cannot think of a nicer group of people to spend an afternoon doing a murderous event with and we raised a decent amount for the wonderful QCCA in the process.