Page 65 - The Cormorant Issue 14

The Tough Guy Challenge Or the “Tough Stupid Guys”
By Lt Col Dom Biddick
An intrepid Combined, Joint team decided to find out how hard the ‘Tough Guy’ really was, and raised £2530 for Combat Stress in the process.
The Tough Guy race bills itself as ‘the world’s most dangerous taste of mental and physical pain, fear and endurance’; one third of those foolish enough to attempt it fail (two have died). It’s organised by a weirdo called ‘Mr Mouse’!
Email can be dangerous. When Lt Cdr Al Wilson circulated an email asking if any ACSC 14 students were interested in entering the infamous ‘Tough Guy’ race, few of us realised how much pain and discomfort our responses would cause. We only signed up because the thought of being accused of being ‘too soft’ by a polo-playing matelot was unbearable. The Royal Navy’s gaunt- let was picked up the RAF, the Army, and the US Marine Corps (hooah!), in the shape of Major Jon Hamilton. In fact, the only cohort that shrank from the challenge was the Royal Marines. Readers may draw their own conclusions...
After weeks of arduous training (well, two laps of camp and watching last year’s race on YouTube) we headed to a random farm in Wolverhampton on a baltic Sunday morning in January to crack the race. Prior to the event we assumed it couldn’t be that hard, after all, civvies do it, right? Well, we were wrong. The answer to the question, ‘how tough is tough guy?’ is, ‘quite tough, actually’. We weren’t psyched out by having to sign our own ‘death warrants’ before the race to absolve the organis- ers from any blame if we crippled ourselves on the course. We weren’t fussed by 21⁄2 hours of phys and an epic obstacle course full of barriers with names like ‘Viagra Falls’, the ‘Vietcong Tun- nels’ or ‘The Battle of the Somme.’ But we didn’t account for the cold. The temperature at noon warmed up to a full zero degrees Celsius. The water obstacles (which seemed to make up most of the course) were deep and covered in inches of ice, which isn’t a problem, until you have to wade around in them for a couple of hours.
After about 3 hours the entire team made it round in various states of repair. The author was mildly hypothermic, but that’s the price you pay for having no body fat. Well, that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it. The rest of the team said I suffered because
The Water Jump
An Athletic Wg Cdr Pete Daulby
A Brave Lt Cdr Al Wilson
A Muddy Lt Cdr Mark Scott
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