So another early start to go and play in the mud and hoping to at least have a little sun, so it keeps the freezing wind away, though I've left cotton tops at home this time to avoid the mistake of last time. I pulled my shorts out to pack and discovered that they had a massive tear in them so that was a quick repair job, I would have used some other shorts but they're light and have a pocket in the back of them that I use for my camera.
I had a look at the course map which I'm glad that they've started releasing a couple of days before an event, so I got a sneak peek at what's to come and it looks very good indeed. The usual candidates are back with the addition of a new one from the US course. Much like the first one in May, I organised to team up with someone from Fitocracy, which is always better than running it solo.
I managed to organise my travel to the site far better than last year so I had a nice and easy journey compared to last year when I travelled blind and had to ask how to get to the event site. I met up with Kalestar in Edinburgh as he decided to be nice and rested for the event and we travelled over together.
The obstacles returning for this course were kiss of mud, glory blades, Arctic enema, walk the plank, boa constrictor, mud mile, electric eel, hero carry, cage crawl, hero walls, Everest and electroshock therapy.
They brought back island hopping, which I hope I don't end up almost knocking myself out on this time around, they also seem to have put funky monkey, trench warfare and into the obstacles cupboard for this course, which I'm disappointed about, like when they retired underwater tunnels, hopefully both make a comeback sometime this year.
For us lucky legionnaires, they've brought in the fire in your hole, which is great fun, a large slide into a pool of water.
We did the warm up this where I was the only 8th event participant in our wave and I got the applause again, wonderful for boosting the ego, then we set off an I didn't start my watch in time so missed tracking our progress, I also managed to lose my camera in the Arctic enema, which spoiled my video diary plan.
The weather looked a bit ropey when I checked it on the way up but the sun did get out and we had some lovely warm weather to run in, the course was unbelievably muddy though not the thin waterlogged mud but the super thick good bye shoes type, at one point I found a trainer that was buried, though weirdly no one claimed it, so at least one person finished wearing just the one trainer.
We took a leisurely run stroll around the course, mainly as running was almost impossible for some of the course. My mood was really lifted so I did electric eel, managing to avoid getting shocked, it did put me in the mood for doing the electroshock therapy.
I split off from Kalestar to do the legionnaire loop, they had another version of kiss the mud, a caber throwing contest featuring David Cameron and Alex Salmond, I opted for staying part of the union as I wanted to hit Cameron with a caber, there was also two large pits that were muddy so I felt like someone being taunted trying to get out of them.
We continued run walking the course and made it to island hopping without incident, though I had a hairy moment on balls to the wall where the rope was slick with mud and I feared I might slip and fall but thankfully I didn't, I only managed the second island before falling off, I had what I thought was a nasty potential injury fall on Everest where I landed on my back but after a few seconds I shook it off and made it over the top, stopping to help a couple of others.
As I approached fire in your hole, we were told it wasn't running and there would be a wait and I thought, there's no way, I'm skipping this one I've been looking forward to but I only had a couple if minutes to wait before climbing to the platform. You're told to put hands behind your head and cross your legs before your nudged down the slide and you fly down at a fair lick before landing in the splash pool, it was so much fun to do, I hope they have it again.
I skipped electroshock as I didn't want to wait for the rinse shower after no doubt face planting in the mud like one young lad. All in all a brilliant day and much more fun than London West.
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