A Week in Progress

 So even though we have not taken part in an event in the last 2 weeks there has been a lot of work going into really getting the challenge motoring.

Firstly the blog site, although useful, we thought isn’t really going to cut it and so with some help from my brother and El Mattador we will soon be launching a dedicated website. On this we plan to not just have blogs but an interactive calendar, galleries, forums, and lots more. We’re also trying to make a system where people can sign up to join in with us which we are excited about.

As well as the site Tommy and I have been busy sourcing events and spending a fair bit of cash signing up to some. It is clear this whole challenge is going to be rather expensive but hey, it all goes towards charities so not all bad.

Some events of note that we have, or are going to enter, are the Bath Half marathon (which is in like 5 weeks!!!!), The Crazy Golf British Masters, Hellrider, South Downs Trail Ride, The Great South Run, The Great North Run, 3 Peaks Challenge, London to Brighton cycle, and a monster event called The Drambuie Challenge. The magnitude of what we are doing is slowly sinking in and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous but that why they call it a ‘Challenge’. If it was going to be easy we would have called it the ‘30B430 Walk In The Park’! 

The stage for the Crazy Golf British Masters. Amazing!

 Anywho. One thing we have been focusing more on as we go through is ‘team’ events. We feel that these will make it easier for more people to get involved, which will make every event individual and special. We are recruiting heavily for lots of events, whether it be a ‘more the merrier’ approach, or if there are specific numbers needed. Go to our facebook page to register for now, or email me a sully@30B430Challenge.co.uk if you are interested in any events.

Training for the upcoming Helly Hansen Challenge on Sunday 30^th January is meandering along, if anyone wants to come and laugh at us then come along, it’s in Pirbright in Surrey, more details here http://www.trailplus.com/adventure-challenge-series.php.

There are so many other things going on with 30B430 but I don’t want to write an epic post, all I shall say is that there is so much more to come and so much to look forward to. The most exciting part for me is the involvement of other people, some have already shown a keen interest and I know we will get many more. If you want to get involved but don’t think you’re up to it, get in touch and I’m sure we can find an event for all standards.

Next up. The Helly Hanson Challenge.

There was method behind our madness in running the Brutal 10k last week. Not only was it ticking off another event of our journey but it was a little ploy to get some serious off-road practice in. The ‘Porridge Pot or Bust’ Helly Hanson Challenge is the next event in the calendar and is certainly going to be the toughest yet.

This challenge is set to be a riot as the event involves a 10k assault course, 25k trail mountain bike and a 1k canoe. What’s more, the entire event must be completed in a team of 3, and they don’t tell you the order of the three disciplines until the day.

Team 30B430 consists of Tommy and myself, naturally, and we have recruited Alex Kershaw (Kersh) to make our trio. A big thank you to Kersh for joining us, we couldn’t have recruited better.

To make it even more interesting and to add to the ever growing list of people getting involved with us, my esteemed housemate Oliver has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged us to a race. He his team, ‘Macho Macho Macho’ (and no that’s not a joke), consists of his honourable self, and two other great guys in Ben Lakin and Alex   Dulewicz (Wideboy). A very fit bunch indeed which is why Olly has registered his team in the front group of three, with the elite runners, ehem. Team 30B430 will be starting in the more conservative second wave, so we won’t know who has won until we have both finished, very exciting.

There is a small gentlemen’s wager of dinner at stake which will serve as incentive enough and anyone with nothing to do on Sunday 30^th January should come down and laugh at us, or cheer us on depending on which way you are inclined.

To get more of an idea of what the day holds go visit the site here http://www.trailplus.com/adventure-challenge-series.php

In other news I have run into an amazing site being run by an old buddy of mine John McInroy. Some of you will know John, some of you won’t but his site www.redsockfriday.com is spreading good vibes all round the world with a simple idea and is something that 30B430 can certainly relate to. 

 I was lucky enough to be his 1000^th member which is a great achievement for them and I will soon be red socking at many of our events. John has even mentioned possibly joining us for an event when he is over from his home in South Africa. Big shoOops to them. Go check them out and sign up.

Meanwhile, the search for events is still ongoing and our FB page is up to 44 followers. We want people to get involved with us so make sure you sign up to the page and the blog and we’ll keep in touch about what is happening next. http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=158069597573821&sk=market#!/pages/30b430/158069597573821

Event 2: The Brrrrrrrrutal 10k

3 days into 2011 and our final day of the long break from work, Tommy and I thought, ‘I know, let’s get up at the crack of dawn, drive down to an Army training base just south of Hindhead, and run something simply called ‘The Brutal 10k’!

Not sure what we were expecting here given the title, but funnily enough it was quite, well, brutal! We arrived at Longmoor around 8:45 to register. Registration was in a hall, a little like the one I remember scouts was held when I was a kid.

It was freezing. So after turning down the optional camo paint that was available, we spent the next hour sat in the car talking about how fit everyone looked and who we thought we could beat (namely one, slightly chubby lad, whom we both agreed would struggle). 10 minutes before the gun we decided we couldn't justify waiting anymore and left the warmth of the car to warm up, trying to look as 'I do this all the time' as possible.

We stretched as we watched the start of the ‘Canicross’ race. For those of you who know as much about canicross as we did before arriving, it is where runners strap their dog’s leads to a harness around their waist, and essentially get pulled around the course. Cheating we thought. Jealousy ensued.

Sully. Changing after finishing. Cold.

We were relatively happy at this stage aside from the cold, but the running would sort that. Until the organizer informed us that there were three lakes we needed to traverse as part of the run, but not to worry only one is over waist height! I was lucky, having opted for some running tights which helped, poor Tommy however was only in football shorts. If this wasn’t bad enough the organiser then added that they had been kind to us runners and broken the ice on our behalf!!!

Much like the Santa run, there was no gun as such but the man with the megaphone counted down from 3 and shouted go go go go, very military!

To cut a long story short the lakes were deep and properly cold, so cold that when I gracefully fell over in the first one, I managed to hold myself above water by grabbing onto the ice that hadn’t be broken yet. The hills were sandy, long and steep. One of which we had to climb up rather than run up.

Tommy, After finish. Colder.

The final kilometre or so they had seemingly just made a series of 15ft high hills out of purely sand which felt like running in treacle, bastards. And to add insult and realisation to our naive outlook on how well we would fair, only one of us managed to pip the chubby guy from the start to the finish line.

In summary, we ended up finishing somewhere in the middle to top of the bottom half, we put this down to there being very few people there, like us, who were stupid enough to just do something like this on a whim. It was physically gruelling but somehow a shed-load of fun. It was also good training for our next challenge on the 31^st January at the Helly Hanson Challenge. More on that to follow soon.

There is a video that the organizers put together. Fortunately for Tommy and I and unfortunately for you, we don't feature. I doesn't do the course justice so I have left it out but go find it if you so desire. (www.brutalrun.co.uk)

Charity. We Chose ONE.

Tommy and I have been doing quite a bit since 'Event 2' on the weekend (report to follow) on getting this thing really motoring. Initially this challenge wasn't going to be about raising money, for a few reasons. Firstly this was a challenge we wanted to do as a personal feat rather than to give people a reason to donate to charity. And secondly because we thought that we would already be giving a fair bit of our money to various charities for taking part in the events.

We realized though that actually it didn't matter, we could pick a charity, set up a just giving page, and just have a place where people can donate to a cause that we believe in just to show support along the way. This way meant that we would also only ever be asking people to sponsor us once rather than 30 times!

We will, of course, be inviting anyone and everyone to join in the events with us, so having one place and one charity that we can get everyone to point their sponsors towards the easier and simpler the process can be for everyone.

We had a chat about who to raise money for and finally agreed on a fantastic charity, One Water. We chose One because they do some unbelievable work providing water to children in Africa amongst many other projects. We also have a connection with the charity itself and all of their profits go to straight to Africa.

One traditionally have raised funds through the selling of their bottled water, and do not rely on, nor ask for donations, but we thought that it was only fair that they received some donations from someone else's legwork.

So, go check out the great work they do at http://www.onedifference.org and our JustGiving page is now available at http://www.justgiving.com/30b430/.

We are not going to knock your door in for donations but of course if you want to show your support to the cause then chuck a few quid in.

Cheers

Event 1: Ho Ho Hoooooooh no!

Ok so it has begun! A bit late posting this but it has taken Tommy and I a while to get our rears in gear and then this thing called Christmas got in the way and all computers were turned off for 2 weeks!

We started our 30B430 quest in the first week of December, at Old Deer Park in Richmond, on a rather chilly Sunday morning. We were joined by 2 other intrepid explorers in Zoe and El Mattador (Matt to everyone else).

So excited at embarking on this fantastic journey, Tommy and I decided to have a few celebratory drinks the evening before. All night we marveled at our greatness, safe in the knowledge the event that lay ahead in the morning, a humble 5k run dressed as santa, would be a gentle start to a tough road ahead.

A very sore head met us both in the morning, and on rousing the young Mathew he pushed past me, into the bathroom, and emptied his stomach into the basin. Apparently his preparation had been worse than ours! Thankfully one person was sensible and Zoe turned up bright eyed and bushy tailed (damn you).

Arriving at the event feeling very cold and very sorry for ourselves, we were met by, well, nothing, but a field full of children's rugby matches! Peering around the park we could just about make out a handful (60 or so) people all in red. Not as popular as the website made out we think!

We picked up our Santa suits, did a very lethargic warm up with the masses, joined the 'joggers' group and then the gun went (well I guy shouted go!).

The three laps did not go well. Not only were we being watched by some 10 year olds, laughing at our stupidity, but a large chunk of the runners went out the blocks like Usain Bolt. Clearly they had a different preparation programme to us. Also the suits we had been given were clearly not made for running, they were made for sleigh riding. As a result the trousers repeatedly fell down to your knees, which you didn't notice as you couldn't feeling them through the tracksuit bottoms underneath. The beard was rather tricky to breathe through without constantly having a mouthful of hair. Tommy resorted to wearing his around his chin for most of the run, making him look slightly armish.

With the finish line in sight Tommy and I thought it would be a great idea to do a sprint finish! It wasn't. In fact it brought us both very close to being sick.

Desperately in need water we hoped they had some waiting. They were out. All they were offering us was a mince pie! A MINCE PIE! Who they hell wants a mince pie after a run?

Overall we certainly learnt our lesson on pre event preparation, and will not make the same mistake again. It would have been a lot more fun had we not been hanging so much, and it was certainly the most festive thing I have ever done. We also raised a very small amount for the Princess Alice Hospice which made it worth while.

Big thank you to Matt and Zoe for joining us.