January 27th 2002

In Wolverhampton, England in late January, in the dead of winter, there is only one thing that matters: Tough Guy. It is billed as the hardest mass competitor in the World. Others would bill it as the most stupid event of the year.

Tough Guy starts with an 8 country mile multi-terrain course stomping around muddy fields, falling into ditches, staggering up steep hills and sliding back down, wading through ponds and dodging through acres of woodlands.

Just when you feel ready to quit, the real fun begins: you must negotiate a three mile assault course of ridiculous obstacles known as The Killing Fields that involves mud glorious mud, tunnels, underwater dives in freezing water, towering skeletons of wood and netting, and slithering beneath barbed wire. It results in a trail of hypothermia, broken bones, bodies up to their waists in mud, and grown men and women weeping. And yet - every year we keep coming back for more.

Mr Mouse, an eccentric man at the best of times, has been organising Tough Guy since 1987 to support his horse orphanage. That first year, 95 daredevils turned up. This year, the participants topped 6,000. The stupidity is spreading. European, Americans, Australians and other global nitwits are now turning up to give it a go and boy are they sorry afterwards. Every year has a theme and some new obstacles. The Toughest complete the course in around 90 minutes. The rest of us take up to six hours. The winner gets a hot shower! The rest of us crawl back to our cars covered in mud.

Back in January 1999, I had taken Tough Guy to a new dimension - by doing it naked. Er, let me explain. After far too many beers, some friends dared me to do the event in just a black jockstrap and running shoes. The crowds almost died laughing as I stripped off for the start in freezing wind.

With my well padded (ok - flabby) body gleaming amongst the other more responsibly dressed competitors, someone yelled Su-mo and it caught on. There were choruses of Suuu-mo as I plodded around the event, a general consensus that following my bare ass hanging in the wind was not the best motivation and a forest of camera flashes and TV cameras capturing the moment where someone had `finally lost the plot`.

Nevertheless, bruised and scratched, I finished in a respectable 3 hours 30 mins around a course that left over 200 cases of hypothermia and 4 broken legs. My immortality was guaranteed on Good Morning America afterwards, which must have had them hurling into their Cornflakes.

I had missed the next two winter events because of my two year overland trip around Asia. When I returned to the UK, I entered for the 2002 Year of the Braveheart Warrior as The Return of Sumo.

The organisers suggest that the best training for this event is to strap yourself to the bonnet of your car and get someone to drive it through the automatic car wash a few times on Full Wash. My training involved some high altitude hiking in Nepal in September at the end of my trip and then 3 months of sitting around, eating, drinking, napping, and er -drinking. This added 20 kilos to my weight and by race week saw, in the words of the late, great Frank Zappa, 98 kilos of Sumoan Dynamite -volcanic hell.

To complete the training, on the night before the race, I polished off two bottles of red wine and vaguely remember hearing `Here lies the highly tuned athlete on the verge of greatness` before passing out. Cut to Race morning. I awake face down in a plate of pretzels with a pile of wine bottles around my head. Finely tuned indeed.

This year I had company. My old college mate Steve had offered to accompany me - fully clothed. For twenty years, I had been badgering him to join me in stupid escapades. In 1998, for example we`d completed the Three Peaks Race where you climb the highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales in under 24 hours. We added an extra handicap. We had to drink half a case of beer between each climb on the 5 hour drives (obviously, we were not driving). Steve had just spent three years working in Bermuda and his training involved mostly lying on a beach. Lets just say, he didn`t look fit. Well, to be honest, he looked like the golfer Craig Statler carrying a golf bag on his stomach under his shirt.

We had a chauffeur, Trevor, who had accompanied me to Albania and Macedonia in 1999, AFTER the Allies had started bombing Kosovo. He concluded that Tough Guy -Ewas `much worse than anything we saw. Even the refugees looked better than people finishing this event`.

Fortunately, this years weather was pretty mild - maybe 5`C. In 1995, the ice had been broken off the water. Everyone had to park in surrounding fields and how we laughed at the People Carriers and 4WDs getting stuck in the mud by urbanites. (I think it’s so important to have 4WD when you`re going down to Safeway).

Steve primed himself with Bacon butties as we watched the front runners performing a haiku for the cameras. Many had dressed in kilts and painted their faces (ala Braveheart - movie) as this years theme. They had removed their underwear and lifted their kilts to Show the rabbit to the dog. Once re-clothed, a gun went off and so did we - in gangs of a thousand at 3 minute intervals. We were part of the fourth wave known as the Wobblemuckers - and some of my parts were certainly wobbling.

The start itself was a killer. A steep climb up a dirt hill followed by a 1 in 6 slid down the other side. My jockstrap with my number pinned over my arse was caked in mud within the first minute of the race. As we clambered over large concrete construction pipes, I realised that Steve was already missing. He had lost a shoe in the mud. He retrieved the shoe but already looked miserable. Steve`s training had paid off. We were soon overtaken by everyone in the race. I kept morale up by asking the passing women athletes Does my bum look big in this?

Then disaster struck. In the first ditch I fell face first into the water. My face was ok but my jockstrap became waterlogged and fell down. Houston, we have a problem I mentioned to Steve. I had to hold it up with both hands for - oh about 5 miles, while most of my masculinity flapped in the wind. Noone had any string! A group of off-duty policemen dressed in shorts, pointy hats and rubber truncheons threatened to arrest me for indecency - as they passed us. How Steve laughed - the bastard.

Finally, a First Aid ambulance rescued me. A very surprised nurse-woman held up my jockstrap while her male colleague applied a plaster tourniquet around it and tightened it up. They apparently radioed to HQ about the event. Trevor told me later that the loudspeakers boomed around the course Sumo has apparently lost his jockstrap - Oo-er.

Re-united with my costume, we got soaked in a downpour. No matter, we were already soaked from the ditches and running through streams. We pacing ourselves (ie walking) up and down the dreaded Slalom Hills - which were so muddy, we slid down most of them on our backsides which was not fun in a jockstrap.

The Killing Fields - assault course beckoned. 5000 people had already passed through and it was a disaster area - the Ground Zero of mud and mayhem. People lay sprawled with sprained ankles, staggering around in the knee-deep mud or shivering from freezing water. Steve had brightened after passing a poor girl lying in distress in the mud. At least I won`t come last, he concluded charitably.

Steve wisely decided to skip the high wire events. So he stood around and had to wait while other poor sods followed my fat arse as I climbed up the timbers and netting of the Tiger - with the electrified wire. Then it was a tough climb up car tyres and over the Behemoth where you tightrope walk on one rope and hold onto another which stretch wider apart as more people shuffle across.

Fiery Holes is simply awful. The fires of straw had burnt out but the ponds of freezing water full of horse piss were still there. You attempt to leap across and usually fail miserably and end up neck deep in sweet scented water. It is not fun. Steve was heard to mutter to TV cameras, I`d wade through shit for Bob Jack.

Tunnels of tyres and acres of mud followed. At Dead Leg SwampI watched a girl disappear up to her waist in mud and need four men to extract her. It was now a matter of mind over matter. Who, in their right mind would spend their Sunday afternoon doing something like this, while the body is yelling why am I so cold and covered in shit and why does it matter?

Steve was getting slower and I was starting to freeze standing around waiting. We negotiated the lengthy Vietcong Tunnels which had been widened but were still 25 metres of darkness and mud. Paradise Climb was another tall-netted obstacle. I`ll see you on the other side weaseled Steve. He never did because there was no way round. I zipped across and kept moving. Steve told me later it took me 10 minutes to find the bottle to do it but I had no choice - But he dug in and crossed it.

So I missed him tackling Waterworldwhere you wade through a canal and duck under water level telegraph poles and then plunge through a water tunnel for 3 metres. Steve lost his new hat at this point and was not impressed. Apparently he gave one of the official photographers short shrift.

Tough Guy - is becoming so internationally renown that TV coverage is appearing from everywhere. This year, Japan and Korean TV companies had moved in on the action. However, by the time we slogged our way around the assault course, they had got their footage and buggered off home. Yet it is watching the, er - sadder, slower competitors that results in the best footage. Just watching Steve`s face and sad dejected body was worth a mini-series.

Waterworld - was a chance to wash off all the mud and laugh at people reeling from hypothermia. There followed more plodding through some new obstacles with water which were great fun, clambering over walls of straw and through more mud until we reached Stalag Escape - Here, you slither for 30 metres through the slurry, under very low sections of barbed wire. Inevitably I got my jockstrap caught on the wire and some very tricky negotiation followed I can tell you. The final mile was a long assault over mounds of tyres, endless mud, traversing the starter killer hill from reverse using ropes, and finally the welcome finish line and a cup of tea.

All things considered, (and Steve`s lack of speed was the major consideration), we did well to finish in about 4 hours. If you ever, ever come up with any more stupid ideas like this I will stuff them where the sun don`t shine was the generous conclusion of my colleague. Another convert.

So, I`ll see you there in January 2003.