We survived.

We made it around in 2hrs 34mins and were placed 321st (out of 1690 finishers and ~2000 starters). It seemed harder than last year but we did do it 20 minutes quicker. A few changes to the course (notably the Berlin Wall was another 10 foot higher and was mainly a climb up netting - oh, and no more Bailey Bridge either).

Many thanks to Pix for taking pics and shooting video. You’re a star.

More updates (and photos) soon.

I’ve been dreaming about Tough Guy lately. In fact, I’ve been having dreams about Tough Guy on and off for the last few months. The dreams have all been on the same theme: I’m late for the start, forgot to go or, having remembered to go and been on time, I’ve forgotten, lost or brought the wrong kit. I think my subconscious is trying to tell me something. (My wife reckons it’s that I shouldn’t do it but I think that’s actually a mental telegram sent directly from her conscious mind.) I wasn’t entirely prepared for TG in January because although I had an entry, I only decided to ignore the cold I had the night before (after a couple of pints down the pub) and so spent most of the Sunday morning delaying our departure by trying to get my kit together in a hurry. This wasn’t helped by my mate realising that he’d left his pants at home. (Special moisture wicking, non cotton pants for running in!)

Like most things in life, having the right kit is useful. So here’s a list of things I need to remember to take (and hopefully a useful list for the countless number of people who find this site when searching for Nettle Warrior information).

• Shoes (Well you’re hardly going to Zola Budd it are you?) Trainers are fine but I prefer fell shoes because they’re light (even when wet) and have good grip which is useful on wet, muddy grip.
• Socks Again, obvious, but again, I go for a pair that are likely to wick water and that are also double layered to help prevent blisters.
• Gloves There’s a fair bit of rope work - climbing, traversing etc, so gloves are useful for avoiding rope burns (unless you’re into that sort of thing). I favour a pair of rugby gloves which are light enough you don’t feel you’re wearing them (and your hands don’t get hot) but have a very good grip, useful for wet ropes.
• T-Shirt/Vest & Shorts There’s one real rule I follow about this: cotton is bad. Polyester or some “dri-fit, microfibre, ultradry, hexlite” gear is best. Whether you wear long sleeves or short sleeves, leggings or shorts is up to you. Full covering will stop you scraping your skin so much but might be heavier out of water and may well be quite warm in summer. (Fancy dress is optional. I am considering it for this year but may or may not do it).
• Vaseline Stops blisters and chafing. ‘Nuff said
• Safety Pins Needed to keep your number on. I’ve seen some people actually sew their number to their vest but I’ve never had a problem with safety pins. Don’t use less than 4.
• String Always useful! In this case, it’s to tie the number tag around your waist to make it easily retrievable at the finish line.
• Towel To dry yourself with.
• Shower shoes/flip flops/beach sandals Not essential but a nice to have when leaving the showering area.
• Shower gel You will be thankful you remembered to bring this. Make sure you have plenty and feel free to share with others.
• Another towel Believe me, you can’t have too many!
• Clean clothes to change into Another obvious one but people forget. Socks, jogging pants, sweatshirt (you may get cold), t-shirt, underwear.
• Clean pair of trainers Don’t. Forget.
• Plasters You may need them for scratches, blisters and shallow cuts. Just in case you do draw blood, bring
• Antiseptic Spray to help clean the wound. There’s a good Savlon spray which is very useful. Make sure you clean the cut well first. (If it’s a deep cut, St John’s Ambulance are your friends).
• Eye Wash I’ve always suffered from mud in my eye (and that’s not just from drinking too much). I’m going to run without contact lenses this year to see if it makes a difference but it’s probably an occupational hazard of submerging your head in muddy water.
• Carrier bags For wet and muddy kit. Bring plenty. You’ll need a largish one for your shoes.
• Big bottle of water By big, I mean those 6 liter plastic bottles you can get in the supermarket. Bring two if you need to. This will be useful for rinsing kit, washing hands and feet etc. Bring smaller bottles for drinking.
• Another carrier bag or gym bag or something. You’ll need to put your shower gel, towel(s), shower shoes, clean clothes and carrier bags in here to leave in the showering area. Believe me when I say you’ll be thankful that they’re close to hand. Yes, there’s the possibility of them being stolen or mistakenly picked up - but better to risk it than get cold (and have to run back to your car naked).
• Laundry Marker Waterproof ink pen to write your number on your arms/forehead/chest/legs etc. By no means necessary but it means they’ll know who you are in case you lose your
• Race Number THIS IS IMPORTANT. Don’t forget this nor your
• Death Warrant although you may be able to get one on the day. You’ll also need your
• Car Park pass otherwise you won’t be able to park, will you?

Now I just need to find a bag big enough to put all this in!

I’ve started playing F.E.A.R. (which stands for First Encounter Assault Recon which is awful but never mind.) It took me the best part of a week to be able to even get to the main menu because the DVD is copy protected using Securom. A bit of searching shows that this has caused a lot of controversy and Monolith, the developers, have taken a lot of flack over this.

Essentially it meant that, although I have totally legit software and have a ridiculously application free system (I am not geek enough to even know what a disc emulator is!), I still got an error message saying “Cannot authenticate disc.” I ended up updating my DVD-ROM firmware (I am, however, geek enough to know how to do that), patching the game, replacing the exe with a Securom patched version (because Monolith were damned if it was their problem) and ended up uninstalling the game and re-installing it before it finally worked. The Securom patch I used may have been for a more recent version of the software (1.05 or 1.06) than I patched the game up to.

I’m detail this because if this post ends up being Google friendly, it might help someone more than the official knowledgebase helped me.)

Anyway, I can play the game now and it’s a doozy! The enemy AI is very reminiscent of the troops in Half-Life - using cover, throwing grenades (and hiding from the grenades you throw) and even jumping over railings to a lower level. They duck, drop to the floor and, if you hit them in the leg, limp around. One even tried to crawl under a tipped over shelf (which wasn’t very intelligent as I could stand over him and put bullet in his cranium - at least he had the decency not to beg for mercy!)

But, again like Half-Life, one of the best aspects of this game are the scripted sequences. F.E.A.R. is quite creepy. (When I say “quite”, I mean “very”). I suppose there’s a clue in the game title that there are some scares to be had and these are all done in a very cinematic way. The story is some gubbins about psycho paranormal cloned soliders or something and you’re a bit “special” (being marginally psychic and prone to visions and also having super fast reflexes which is simply an excuse to use a “bullet-time” Matrix-esque capability to slow down time and take out the bad guys). But one of the characters is a creepy little girl called Alma.

Alma pops up from time to time - sometimes running past a door way, sometimes behind a door, once she appears exactly where you were standing before you descend a ladder. In good old creepy girl style, she’s got long dark hair (Ringu) is wearing a red dress (Don’t Look Now) and brings to mind the best creepy little girls there have ever been (The Shining, The Exorcist, The Haunting of Julia, Wednesday Addams, Shirley Temple).

The scene above was a great moment where I jumped down and in front of me was Alma. The room suddenly caught fire (Charlie McGee?) but, captivated as I was, I figured it was just a hallucination. Uh uh! It didn’t take long before I flatlined and had to reload to figure that his was a cunning trap. (Actually, once again, there’s a moment in Half-Life that I remember being similarly impressed by - you’re crawling along a pipe when the end opens and a soldier chucks a satchel charge into the pipe. As you go backwards as fast as you can, it explodes and you see the flames coming towards you. Classic!)

Scripted sequences are often accused of taking you out of a game experience but to me they’re a very good way of providing immersion and of driving the narrative. One of the things I didn’t like about Doom 3 (and, for that matter, Quake 4) was the occasional cut-scene they threw in whenever they introduced a new monster. As such they took you out of the characters viewpoint and broke the immersion. F.E.A.R. goes a little further than Half-Life in that it introduces ‘visions’, as if your consciousness is being interupted but you see it from the characters viewpoint.

And let’s not forget that it’s got dissolving ghosts that I keep shooting at in a blind panic!

Oh. My. God.*

Update: My initial reaction was because I thought this was actually part of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 but it turns out it’s a single player puzzle game, although the portal technology is well suited to the HL2 world. A shame as I was looking forward to using a combination of portable portals against the Combine. Perhaps in Episode3.

Other big news is that HL2:EP2 is going to ship with TeamFortress 2. A game which has only been in development for, let’s see, seven or so years.

I left university over ten years ago but only today have I finally figured out what the title of my dissertation should have been.

Instead of “Can censorship ever be justified?”, I should have researched the answer to the question “Why are films and music censored and given age ratings but books and paintings are not?”

This is going to trouble me for at least 25 minutes.

I received another newsletter about Tough Guy today and along with it, my race number and Death Warrant (the disclaimer which I sign to say that if I die before I complete the course, I won’t be eligible for either a medal or a nice refreshing cup of tea) and some last minute info about the race. Considerate beings that they are, they’ve added lots of advice about dealing with hot weather.

The long range forecast over at Metcheck seems to think that it’s going to be quite a cool day for the event, maxing out at about 20 degrees. Quite a change from this coming sunday which is going to be 30 degrees (and - fortunately - has put me off any idea I had about doing the Milton Keynes Half Marathon). 20 degrees is quite balmy and perfect racing weather so I’m pleased about that.

This years event theme is called Celtic Tigers and the logo is a nod towards (read, copy of) the 2000AD character Sláine. I’m tempted to sort out some sort of kilt and perhaps some woad (or blue body paint at any rate.)

They’re also pushing the “extreme bootlacing” challenge too although I’m not going to bother. However, one little snippet I did notice was a reference to a “Special Tree Top Monkey Climb”. This is intriguing. Despite my dislike of heights, I’ve got a thing about climbing trees. The other day, after a certain World Cup Quarter Final penalty shoot out, I went to a friends new house and saw that they had a very climable tree. It was even more enticing considering I was, how shall I say, shit-faced! So, drunk as a rare, tree-dwelling skunk, I decided to climb it, much to the amusement (and concern) of the onlookers. It was fantastic - just like being a kid again (only more alcohol soaked than I ever remember being). So I might have a crack at this new event, depending on how knackered I feel at the time.

I also note, with a little trepidation but even more excitement, that they’ve (allegedly) doubled the height of the Berlin Wall (a large stack of hay bails with ropes to ascend up the side) from 20 to 40 feet high. This is something I haven’t mentioned to the wife because the first year I took part, she saw someone fall from this obstacle and land with their arm and elbow in a position that nature didn’t intend it to ever be in. I’m not sure she’s going to be amused.

More updates soon.

(Still no takers for a videographer or photographer for the day. It’s not too late to volunteer! E-mail me at dragon (a) this domain or leave a comment below.)

This pretty much sums up my life since last week:

Wading through shit!

(Metaphorically speaking of course. I won’t actually be wading through real shit until the weekend after this!)

Back soon.

I resigned this morning.

My manager’s first question was “Have you found another job?” My answer? “Nope. I’m going to be a gentleman of leisure.”

Well, as much leisure as is left over after looking after an 8 month old baby for 3 days a week.

I rule.

You know how, after an evening’s drinking and after you’ve put the world to rights and explained exactly why, in your opinion, the country would be a much better place if all the trees moved one inch to the left, you sometimes end up discussing a personal issue and come to the conclusion that there’s only one course of action and then make a life changing decision on the spot?

And you now how the next morning, in the cold light of day, the idea you had is so utterly implausible that you realise that you’d drunk considerably more than you thought you had (a fact backed up by the extra couple of digits on the credit card receipt from the pub)?

Well, I made one of those decisions last night. It seemed like a very good idea at the time.

I might very well go through with it tomorrow.

The JPM run last night was horrendous. There were around 12000 people taking part and I didn’t get that close to the front so had to fight my way through the sweating horde. This made for an interesting fartlek of a race as it was easy to get stuck behind a slow paced jogger and then have to dash through any gaps as and when they became available. As such, it wasn’t really that easy to get into any sort of rhythym or decent pace. Came home in 26m42s for the 5.6km course though. Don’t think it’s my best time for that course.

Why is it, though, that people insist on jogging for about 200m and then start walking before they’ve even got to the first kilometer marker. I mean, what the fuck are they thinking? I probably wouldn’t care too much but the fact that these people get as near to the start as they can and then don’t even bother to pretend to look like they’re making any sort of effort really pisses me off! Great that you’re taking part and great that you to round, but next time, get the fuck behind me and out of my god damned way or I’ll trample you.*

*I realise that this makes me out as some sort of running Nazi and I probably am. It might be discouraging if you’re thinking of starting running or taking part in a race. Don’t be put off because I’m quite friendly really. It’s just that in any normal event there’s a sort of race etiquette which dictates that if you don’t think you’re going to be running a 5km race in less than half an hour, you don’t start at the front. Also, if you’re going to walk (which I frequently do which is the type of hypocrite I am) then move to the side of the course (unless it’s on a bend in which case, take the outside of the bend and let the runners keep as close to the inside as they can).