Part One is here.
Part Two is here.

Below is a video taken by a crazy racer who strapped a camera to his head. It covers pretty much what I cover in parts 2 and 3, and by the look of the state of the track, it looks like he was among the earlier group of finishers. I think anyone considering doing the race HAS to see this video. If you can’t see the video, click here.

Brandenberg Wall

I barely remember going up this thing, but I remember coming down the amazingly long blue and green net that is placed up high on the other side, and was happy to climb a little extra to reach it, because it meant I was able to avoid the pond below entirely. I was in no shape at that point to get wet again. When I stepped off of the netting onto dry land, I was extremely proud of myself, happily jogging back around the pond towards whatever the next hurdle was they wanted to throw at me. The race organizers are sneaky bastards though, because you don’t see what the next one is right away, so I was not at all prepared mentally when I came up to…

The Death Plunge

This thing really just snuck up on me. I rounded the corner of the pond and there it was. There are a series of planks of varying widths and lengths along this structure, all of which are meant to be jumped into the next pond. It’s maybe an eight foot drop into five feet of water. I was thankful there was a queue of people already lined up, as it gave me a moment or two to consider what I was about to do and decide which plank I ought to try. People were struggling with their balance on all of them (I saw one guy fall into the water halfway across), but I opted to go on a long, thin plank to give myself a few less feet that I would not have to swim once I was in the water.

While not the most gifted athlete by any means, I am happy to say I have a pretty great sense of balance, and still wasn’t trembling at this point. What that meant is that I was across that beam WAY faster than I expected to be, and had to decide on my entry. I had bragged endlessly to people before the race that I was going to cannonball into the water, but the reality is that once you are in that position, the notion of showing off is far, far less of a priority. Still, I hoped that a photographer would catch me pointing up in the air with both hands before I jumped weakly into the water. What the photographer actually caught though, was this:

Ah well. So much for hoping. When my head emerged from the water, I immediately went back to the whole growling at the water thing I had been doing before, while swimming as fast as possible towards the other side. I saw people taking a footbridge around this obstacle and recall wanting to throw them into the water and wring their necks. Once I could set foot on what was waist-deep water, I heard one guy yell out “My bollocks!” Yeah, no kidding buddy. At least you can feel yours. A volunteer we passed at this point shouted to us “Ten minutes, and those medals will be around your necks!”

Holy crap, that made me move.

Dragon Pool

On the way to Dragon Pool, I passed under a structure that no one else was going over. On looking at the map, this looks like Dan’s Deceiver and in retrospect, I probably should have gone over it despite everyone else skipping it. You should note in this video, even this guy who was much closer to the front of the race, skips it as well, as does everyone his camera picks up, so I don’t know if we were meant to skip it or not. Either way, I feel a bit guilty. As I made my way up this structure, I overheard a walkie talkie go off, the voice on the other side saying “We have a water situation. In twenty minutes, we will not have any water left.” which amused me only because I knew I had less than twenty minutes to go before I would be finished. The Dragon Pool is a nice sized pond with the longest ropes of the race draped across for us to use in the crossing. I had a feeling this one would be a nightmare, as the ropes are loose, and make for extreme movements back and forth, as if the rope had a mind of it’s own, trying to shake you off of it. No one looked like they had an easy time of it, but some were troopers and trudged along slowly, looking like they would make it. I went straight to a far rope where there were the fewest people trying to make it across, and actually made it a little more than halfway before enough people came up behind me that I was being thrown left and right like crazy. Rather than sap what I had left for upper body strength, I decided to drop into the pond and use the bottom rope to pull myself quickly the rest of the way. Apparently I was on to something, because I saw at least two people drop in after me and do the same thing. Others I had seen before this had dropped in and just walked across, it made no sense to me not to use what was on hand to help move me along.

Stalag Escape

After navigating Somme Surprise, a pool with a zig-zaggy path of beams to navigate over (which I did with no problems, thank you great balance o’ mine), I arrived at the obstacle I was looking forward to the least. Stalag Escape is small, just three small trenches filled with water, with a net of barbed wire overhead you are meant to crawl under commando-style. I had not given this part of the race any thought until I saw it the day before at registration, where I saw almost a foot of water covered in at least two inches of ice, which made me deathly afraid of the potential pain I might be in for in this stage of the race. Maybe it was the fact that I knew I was near the end, but more likely it was because more than two thousand people had warmed that water up by the time I got there, but I trudged through Stalag Escape like a rock star. There was no more ice, and the water didn’t feel that cold. When I stood up, I felt invincible. You could feel that everyone was aware the end was coming.

Tyre Torture

This is another part of the race that is probably more hazardous for the more elite level athletes. I navigated this tire littered part of the race safely, if a bit slowly, the end within reach.

Anaconda Sting

This is a series of cement pipes draped across the trail that were maybe four feet tall that one needed to get over to continue. I wish I had video of me doing this one, because it would have been hilarious to see a heavier set guy basically jump chest and stomach first onto each one of these, followed by throwing my legs over to one side and sliding off on the other side. I was really just going for results and not form on this one.

The final stretch is an uphill jog, another pool to wade through and then grabbing a rope to ascend a steep hill located near the start of the race. Once you are at the top, you slide back down the other side (I nearly took out some poor girl who had gone ahead of me) and proceed the last thirty meters or so to the finish. I finished at a good run with a time of 3:29 (three and a half hours) which is not that impressive, but actually faster than I expected. There were many cadets at the finish armed with space blankets and medals. There were yellow and red straps for the medals, and not knowing if there was a difference, I headed to a guy holding a red one (It seemed tougher than yellow to my addled brain). FINISHED!

The Aftermath

I then headed into the chaos that was the Horse Showers, a large barn where everyone had placed their belongings on pegs, and at the end of the race, also had volunteers giving out coffee, tea and hot chocolate with biscuits (cookies, for American readers). There was also a series of warmish showers on constantly. After pounding a coffee and a cookie, I waded under a showerhead to get come of the mud off of me. The water was up to my ankles, there were space blankets and coffee cups strewn everywhere, and there were people in various stages of disrobe throughout. It would have been a little revolting if I wasn’t dealing with the simultaneous feelings of elation at having finished, coupled with the cold finally creeping into my bones and making me tremble. I wasn’t the worst off in that regard though. I had seen several people who simply couldn’t hold their hot drinks steadily, seemingly unaware of the fact that the drink was spilling all over their hands. One guy actually poured the drink all over his hands on purpose, which I felt was a horrible waste of good tea.

There is more to this story, like the fact that my jacket fell in the mud and I forgot to bring dry pants so I basically looked like a homeless person as I rode the train back to my hostel in Birmingham, but this is pretty much the important bits of the race. I thought for such a large event, it was extremely well organized, the volunteers there worked their tales off, there was not a rude person in the bunch that I ran into, everyone was extremely supportive and cheered us on just when we (or at least when I) needed to hear it most.

My gear did it’s job amazingly well, though my boots essentially fell apart between the end of the race and my return home. The tech layers kept the heat in, and the hat wasn’t to hot when I was heated, and kept my head warm when I was cold. If I had to do it over I would probably do the exact same thing.

As far as recovery, I found that my body was basically fine three days later. I never ran hard enough to really do damage to any joints (though I wailed my right knee on a rock while wading through some water), and I would say for sure that the ten miles I ran took alot more out of me physically than Tough Guy. Mentally however, it wasn’t even close. Putting one foot in front of the other is alot harder than you would think when your legs feel dead and you feel completely wiped out. I feel humbled and fortunate to have taken part in this race, and proud I finished it at all, let alone faster than I had expected to. I don’t know if I will do Tough Guy again, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I probably will.

Part One is here.
Part Three is here.

I’m number 6532. Not at all looking happy to be there.

The Tiger

I was thrilled when I hit the first major obstacle, the “Tiger”. To me it meant that I was at least halfway done with the course, and I was now doing the tasks that I had researched the most about. As monstrous a structure as the Tiger is, when you finally reach it, you just put your head down and climb up the thing like a slanted ladder. It’s not until you reach the top that you realize you are three or four flights of stairs up in the air, which was a little shocking, but then once you are over the top of the first of two A-Frame structures, your head is down once again and you are simply doing the same thing you did before but in reverse. I successfully navigated through the electrically charged dangly bits in between structures and scaled the second a-frame without incident.

Colditz Walls

The next hurdle was a set of three walls of increasing height called the Colditz Walls, and was the most deceptively problematic obstacle in the course, because by the time I reached it, the queue of people to get up was up to several dozen people, maybe more than a hundred people for all I knew. I came to a dead stop with everyone else and waited my turn to grab a rope and climb the first wall. once over the first wall, back to back people greeted me and more waiting was done. We were all quite wet by this point, and I knew that stopping while this cold and wet was not at all what anyone wanted to be doing. It gave time for muscles to stiffen up, but surprisingly, I didn’t get as cold as I expected to get, I think because the collective body temperatures in such a huddled space created some warmth. While waiting for my chance to climb the next two walls, I watched what I assumed to be the captain of a team of men, feeding each man part of a chocolate bar he had on him.

I don’t even want to know where he kept that thing before that point.

I also caught a whiff in the air of what I knew for a fact was whisky, and turned to see two men taking pulls from a silver flask one had brought. And I don’t care where they stowed that, I thought it was pretty genius.

The Behemoth

A massive structure that was an absolute blast to navigate over, The Behemoth mostly consisted of climbing the structure and traversing across a series of ropes. I thought I had done quite well through this obstacle as I reached the end, then one of the Spartans who I had been keeping up with yelled something in a booming voice to the crowd and vaulted over the wooden exit that I was about to crawl under. At the time, it was really more amazing to watch than it was humbling, I promise.

The Firey Holes

This bit is easily the most impressive to see in photos, consisting of flaming bales of hay that, in theory, one would jump over in order to reach the watery ditch on the other side (there are two of these fire/water hurdles in sequence). As you can see by the photo, this makes for very dramatic imagery. The reality however, is that when one is a somewhat-less-than-elite-level athlete like myself, you get a lot of people standing around the fire before proceeding so they can warm their frozen extremities. I was a good sport though, jumping through the flames that some others were walking around. It seemed only right. I viewed this part of the course as a rite of passage for the race (and also secretly hoped an official race photographer would snap a photo for posterity). There is also a floating block of… maybe hay, that is meant as a temptation to people who want to avoid the water, you just have to be able to leap about six or seven feet to reach it, something I was not about to try. I did see someone make the leap, but there was no real way to get to the other side, it was a longer jump with much less space to get a running start, so that guy was getting wet for sure either way (this is where I make the “nyah nyah” face as I trudge through each long trench like the rest of the group). This obstacle butted up against the next one, the Tyre Crawl, which I came into with a specific plan for that actually went very well. Being a little thicker around, I was worried I would have a nightmare time shimmying through the small “tyre” pipe, but by starting on my back, I basically moved worm-like through, and made it to the other side really quickly.

I don’t remember Dead Leg Swamp particularly well, other than there was one point where I said out loud “This is why I wore combat boots” because there were muddy bits where the mud reached almost to my knees. If I had trainers on, they would have come off my feet for sure.

Vietcong Tunnels

This was actually a little unsettling. I didn’t know how long the cement tunnels would be when I crawled into the almost pitch black opening. I still don’t, really. I know that after some shimmying, the four or so pipes dumped out to a middle area still underground where people got to choose new openings to new pipes to finish in. There was an air opening above our heads in this cave-like area where two young women, maybe military cadets, were cheering people on and apologizing for not having any more jelly babies to give out to tired racers. The last part of the tunnel is up a steeper incline with even less room to move, so it was a real slog using the toes and elbows to get to the end.

Paradise Climb

This structure was close to the start of the race, almost the highest point on the farm, and overlooked the entire race area. This was lost on me though, I was busy climbing over rope netting, then I chose to not traverse the pond using shaky looking ropes, rather, I climbed down the structure and went through the icy pond. There were two ways one could go on this netted structure, one was clearly the more tough route, but I was so worn out that I went with the crowd who were, for the most part, happy to go the easier way. I do sort of wish I had gone the tougher path. It looked more fun for sure. I also need to say that at this point, I am seeing people visibly trembling from the cold, with no ability to control it or stop it from happening. This worried me, because I actually felt pretty okay. My feet and legs were terrible, but my body felt like it was holding up well, but what I thought at the time was “Oh crap, does that mean I am PAST the “I feel cold” stage and am into hypothermia? Aren’t you supposed to stop feeling cold just before it gets really bad?” But I kept on going, not realizing I didn’t really know what cold felt like yet.

Water Tunnel

After just enough jogging to get the blood pumping again, we came to the Water Tunnel, something I had been dreading. After wading into neck deep water, you come to a series of three logs that are meant to be gone under in succession. The logs are held together with planks that also held photographers and volunteers, who were there specifically to cheer people on and encourage them to keep going, something they seemed very effective at doing.

The feeling of going neck deep in freezing water sort of surprised me. It instantly chilled me to the bone as I got further in, but I guess adrenaline kicked fully into gear, because I moved with complete urgency of purpose, swimming when I thought it would get me through faster. I found I was growling at some point, I am not sure when that started, but I felt angry at the water for being such a bastard, hurting me so. HOW DARE YOU, WATER.  As if feeling guilty about doing the less tough version of the obstacle before, I opted not to go to the nearest part of the tunnel, but rather waded over to the farthest one. I was very concerned going in that there would be a queue of people waiting and freezing while people struggled to make it through, but when I got there there was just one older man who had gone under the first log but seemed to be struggling to find the willpower to get through the next two. I think I shouted something encouraging to him, and the volunteers were pressuring him to continue because I was coming in behind him. He gave this horrified look back at me before plunging in once again. I was not wasting time at this point, so I immediately grabbed the log and shot under and back up as fast as I could.

I don’t quite know how to describe the sensation of being fully submerged, even for part of a second, in freezing water. For one thing, it truly and utterly wakes your entire body up. I watched a video before the race where someone was midway through this obstacle and was apparently asked how he felt. His response was “I feel happy. Because I am alive.” This is actually fairly accurate, at least in retrospect. If I was angry with the water for being cold before, I was FURIOUS at it when I submerged, and even more furious at the poor trembling older guy who was trying to brave the last log as I started screaming “YOU CAN DO IT! GO GO GOOOOO!” which apparently was enough to send him into panic and finish. I continued the next two as fast as possible, getting slightly colder with each dip, and swam furiously to the other side of the pond. I remember seeing people on the other side who did not look wet, and I was very very angry with these people as I continued to growl at the water. Someone helped me out of the water, and I took a couple of steps, and realized I didn’t have any idea what was going on or where I was meant to be going. I felt like I had brought the pond up out of the water with me. I kept taking steps though, and fantastically, my three tech layers and hat started doing what they were there to do, taking any warmth I had left and keeping it from escaping. I had the sense throughout the race to know that stopping would be the end of me, so I took more steps, thinking to myself “Ok, you can walk, can you at least pretend to jog?” and then I was doing the weakest slow-motion jog ever, then “Ok you can fake jog, why not move a little faster?” and then I was jogging again. Some people were not as lucky, there were those silver emergency blankets on a few who warmed up by another fire that had been made, but I trudged past.

This is the end of part 2. Part 3 will be posted on Wednesday. To tide you over, I give you:

Click here if you are unable to see the video

Part Two is here.
Part Three is here.

I remembered to carb-load the night before. Orange juice doesn’t go with anything non-breakfast-y FYI

Race Day:

“the only people doing this thing are athletes and nut jobs…” this guy Jurgen from Holland said to me as we sat down to eat lunch on the field the day before the race. “…and I’m not an athlete.”

Yeah, me either. I will say this, however, I was not fully committed to my nut job title the way some were on race day. I saw several Supermans, two Batmans, two Spider-Mans, a couple of nuns, a team of Spartans (who I hung with through most of the race.) I would imagine there would be a shot or two of me running alongside some crazy leather clad Spartans, I will post whatever I can find as soon as the official photos come out.

And then there was the mankini guy.

Several people had worn the mankini in previous races, but most agreed this year was much colder than previous years. Still, the guy walked right up into my personal space as we queued up in our starting gates. I was in the last group to leave, being designated a “late bugger” but in this last group there were also “ghoons” and “dickheads”. Fittingly I think, he was in the dickheads group. I don’t know if he finished the race or not, but I sort of hope he did. As a group mind, we were all in agreement that he was the craziest of the bunch, especially considering we stood waiting for the start for well over twenty minutes, long enough to have the cold hit most people’s feet.

I had forgotten about the “gallows” that I had read about months earlier. If you are caught in a starting group you are not supposed to be in, they take you to the top of the hill where the starters are, and put you in these gallow-like contraptions where you would be loudly shamed by the group. I saw drinks thrown in faces and on heads, pink feathers tossed and stuck to them with what looked like honey. After 5-10 minutes they would be let out, I don’t know if they were allowed to run the race or not. It was a nice distraction while we all tried to keep warm before the start.

The race begins:

The crowd begins to get more excited, and I knew something was about to happen. After several fireworks are set off, something very loud explodes (I found out later they have a starting cannon they shoot off that you can’t see from the back) and the first group heads out, cheering like mad. And faster than we realize, we are off as well.

They get you wet and muddy early and often.

I had this naive notion that the first four miles of the course would be a challenging countryside run on uneven ground.  What I didn’t realize was that the organizers do not consider jumping in and out of water filled ditches an “obstacle”. I don’t recall seeing these on any of the maps! One quarter mile in, I start hearing laments and screaming, and look up to find the first ditch approaching way, way too fast. And then suddenly, you’re just in there, in an icy cold, water-filled ditch, scrambling to find an easy enough spot to climb out, maybe there is a rope, maybe not, and people are pushing your butt or legs up to help you. And then once you get up, you turn to the person behind you and offer them a hand, because that’s what the last guy did for you.

After about a half dozen of these, I was soaked well past my waist, but didn’t feel the effects of it until I ran a half mile with no ditches. From this point on, my legs felt like the waterlogged legs of say, one of Jim Henson’s muppets (which are useless even when not waterlogged), and my feet felt like I was klomping around in lumps of ice.  Then we hit the slaloms.

These are nightmares for anyone who has done them before. Many claim it’s the worst part of the race. As a rookie, here’s my take:

There were eight total slaloms. A single slalom is one sharp uphill climb followed by an equally steep downhill. By the time I got there, there had been hundreds (likely thousands) of people who had already degraded the terrain, so when it came time to go down a hill, it was so slippery that everyone would slide down the first part on their rear ends until the terrain allowed us to stand up. Each hill required a longer slide than the one before.

By the second one, I was thinking “Hey, this isn’t SO bad.”

By the fourth, I was done. Had it. Finito.

By the sixth, I was convinced everyone was lying, that once we had finished these, there would be eight more when we rounded the corner at the end. I don’t even remember the last two, other than knowing I nearly twisted my ankle badly on the way down one of them. A guy behind me laughed quite a bit at my near-calamity.

Eventually it does end, and it’s more running, onto what is called the “Ghurka Grand National” which is a series of tight nets maybe three feet off the ground that you must go under, where your head is constantly butting up or very near to the butts of your fellow racers as you get as low as you can to avoid being tangled in the net. After that, more jogging until you hit hay rolls that must be vaulted over, as well as more water-filled ditches timed ever so perfectly to make sure that as soon as you can feel your feet, you are robbed of them once again.

Once you feel as though you know the rhythm, you hit the “New Jungle Obstacle” which amounts to one long ditch (naturally, with water that gets deeper as you go) that has many fences breaking the ditch into smaller sections. This was madness and chaos, similar to the earlier ditches with the pushing and pulling of people, only without the pesky running between each ditch. It was literally jump in, push someone up if they were in front of you, try to climb out before someone had to push you, haul someone behind you up, walk three steps, repeat. The water got deeper as you went, and it was just a crazy mess from top to bottom. Here is video of the early leaders actually blazing the path on this obstacle. It’s insane to watch, because they had to break through an inch of ice on each jump. I saw photos of these guys at the finish with their shins cut to ribbons.

Click here if you are unable to see the video.

At this point I am about halfway through the course, and feeling frazzled but still fairly strong.

This is the end of part one of my race report. Part two will be coming shortly.

I don’t know what these sad-sacks are looking so sad for. I was screaming at the water by this point for daring to hurt me so badly.

I hope you have gotten a kick out of this whole deal. I know it has been really fun and rewarding to work so hard towards something. I just hope I do you all, and myself, proud.

Click here if you are unable to view the video. You know you want to. Bam Magera makes a special appearance!

There was a rumor that the race would be streamed online. I cannot confirm if this is a thing that is actually going to happen or not. If there is news about this, it hopefully would be posted on the race’s main page – http://www.toughguy.co.uk. To watch it live, most of you will have to get up damn early, 6am EST and 3am PST. There are 6000 participants, so the likelyhood of actually seeing me (assuming they do stream the race) is VERY slim, and I have no real idea what sort of quality they will put out, but if you are curious, check out the site to see if they put the stream up. I am not holding out much hope for it this late in the game.

It’s happening, people! Want to donate? I’ll draw you a portrait for your troubles!

This is the last time I will be asking for these donations or offering portraits at these rates.

What a surprise this town has been! I have to admit, this might be the most charmed I have been by any place yet. I could almost literally point the camera at anything and get a decent photo out of it. (Which is saying something, as I am a perfectly terrible photographer. My creativity does not extend to cameras or camera related equipment). Maybe because I had no expectations going in, or you know, possibly because I took a two hour spa session at the Thermae Bath Spa (The scented steam rooms were fantastic). But really, it is the most consistent town I have been too yet, evenly beautiful pretty much everywhere in the main part of the city, which is small enough to not overwhelm me.

The aesthetic is likely by design. Surely everyone there works quite hard to maintain the look they have going, but what can I say? I am a sucker for whatever it is they have going on in Bath. As a friend said correctly it was “very British.”

As I type this, I am on my way into London/Paddington, where I will meet up with some people I think I only know loosely through a message board I lurk in but don’t do much posting. It could be a quiet night, it could kill my liver, I have no way of knowing, but I think I will not be trying to write about it immediately afterwards regardless, so my “bath in Bath” is what you get for today.

Click here if you are unable to see the video

It’s happening, people! Want to donate? I’ll draw you a portrait for your troubles!

Turns out, it was a 5:50am to Crewe. Undaunted, I waited patiently for the 8am train in the cold, listening to Hanz Zimmer’s score for the boxing show “The Contender” and visualizing myself finishing Sunday’s race.

The train arrives, and what do you know? It’s a Virgin train. Swanky, roomy and with free wifi at a respectable speed! I am spoiled forever. I’m sending out tweets, catching up with the wife, working on the previous day’s video, enjoying the stunning midlands scenery, seemingly plucked from the minds of virtually all of my favorite fantasy novelists, life is good.

All of a sudden, it’s my stop! I say a hasty goodbye, grab up all my belongings, not thinking there was time to put them away before the train pulled out. A few minutes later I was boarding my next train. One that was hilariously opposite to the Virgin train in every way. No wifi, but that was expected. Oh, and no outlet to plug into. This was also not a deal breaking problem by any means. But the windows, they were quite dirty. And I am not sure how well I can enjoy the countryside in Wales through a layer of grime.

I get out at Shrewsbury and head to the information office to ask what platform I need for Swansea. The agent pointed at the train I had just left. “That one there. Err, the next one is in an hour.”

Awesome. Well, maybe the next train will be cleaner. Where the hell am I? Shrewsbury? I took a walk around, but it was rainy and there wasn’t much to do unless you are shopping. It is a pretty town though, great Tudors architecture along much of the downtown streets, and is apparently the birthplace of Charles Darwin. So that was interesting.

Back on the next train, and thankfully it is much more clean, but after a long ride, nearly to Swansea, I realize this isn’t doing it for me. I am nodding off, don’t have anything else productive to do, and I just feel like heading to Bath, where I had been considering spending a couple of hours at a spa. A “Bath in Bath” I thought would be great fun. So at Cardiff, I hop out and turn around for Bath, which, as many of these places have been so far, is far more striking than I expected. I have a lazy day tomorrow and have to make it into London in the late afternoon, so I think I will do the spa tomorrow in the AM.

Click here if you are unable to view the video.

After this was taken, the camera stopped working for the rest of the day. It was a banner day all around.

It’s happening, people! Want to donate? I’ll draw you a portrait for your troubles!

I was happy to leave party hostel early this morning for what would be a very long travel day. I didn’t particularly mind making enough noise to make the couple awkwardly trying to have drunk-yet-silent sex (hint: that’s impossible kids) even more awkward.

I was really looking forward to snow in Inverness, but it seems that area is too temperate to keep snow the way the rest of the highlands seemed to. Inverness is an incredibly charming mix of old architecture with well integrated shops. I shamefully admit I was expecting, and somewhat hoping for, some sort of barren tundra with hardened rural people (Siberia, I guess), but what I got seemed just a modest sized, incredibly charming town. I do very much want to come back here and stay for more than the two hours I was there.

Then it was back to Perth to a connecting train to Glasgow.

No one I have talked to bad mouthed Glasgow, nor were they very kind to the place, most politely saying something to the effect that it is “rough”, which brings to mind my memory of Naples, Italy. If it was comparable to Naples, in this regard, I knew the impolite description of the place might sound like “It scared the crap out of me.”

What I actually experienced on arrival was more of a sooty Madrid, a massive city that I happened to be coming into right at the beginning of rush hour, which meant that as soon as I stepped out of the station and into the merchant’s area, there were more and more people by the second coming through.

That’s when I had a bit of a meltdown, it seems.

I am not used to this sort of travel, but my wife has done it quite a bit, and told me before I left that it can be a beating, and she is right. Different beds every night in varying quality establishments, carrying 30-40 pounds on my back while wearing very new, very unforgiving military boots have been wearing me down some this week. It’s great for my waistline, and my body can take it, but when I discovered there was, in fact, no sleeper to Cardiff (A miscommunication, I should have gone to London then taken an AM train to Cardiff). The prospect of staying in Glasgow (something I had not planned on doing and had no contingency plan for) seemed terrible to me. I walked around for more than an hour just trying to find a place with internet, ordered a beer at Europa Bar because they claimed to have internet.

They did not.

Ordered another beer at ANOTHER bar after the girl at Cafe Nero said it had internet, and for the first ten minutes there was no internet until it magically started working. At this point, mind you, I am two beers in, and after not drinking at all in the month of January and most of December, I apparently became quite a lightweight. I digress…

Talked to my wife online, where I told her I was taking a sleeper to London, then the next day up to Birmingham and was just going to relax there and get ready for Sunday’s Race. I was in full-on pout mode, throwing up my hands at a couple of roadblocks. Christine calmed me down though, thankfully. Encouraged me to pay the extra for a private room at a hostel near Central Station.

I am smart enough at this point to take the wife’s advice. I don’t love spending extra money (I’m a cheapskate) but it was absolutely what I needed. Just a nice, quiet place to myself.

Click here if you are unable to view the video.

I did not do justice to Glasgow, which I think could have been quite an awesome little trip if I had more time and wasn’t complaining like a toddler through half of it. It’s a truly beautiful place from the little I saw, and I would love to make it back there sometime.

Somebody in Glasgow is quite the little prankster.

It’s happening, people! Want to donate? I’ll draw you a portrait for your troubles!

To be fair, one day is barely enough to make a dent in this unbelievably pretty town. I had meant to arrive via sleeper car between 6:30 and 7:10AM that morning, but upon discovering the sleeper cars cost 43£, I opted to head back to York the night before and stay at a hostel there instead.

So I arrive in Edinburgh around 10:30 AM. With some recommendations from friends, but no real plan other than to look for The Scotch Whisky Experience and take their tour detailing the history of Whisky (I had always spelled it “whiskey” before now. I am changing that starting now) I headed out.

I found the whisky tour in the first five minutes. Several taste tests later, my body was starting to feel the wear and tear of three days of carrying 30-40 extra pounds on my back all over the country.

Click here if you are unable to see the video.

An aside: It’s an interesting sensation, feeling the type of soreness one usually feels after a good workout merely from walking around and carrying this extra weight. It’s probably very good for the race, as I have done no formal training sessions during this time. My shoulders and different areas of my legs have been worked out well, and I am positive all the calories burned have had an effect on my waistline during this time. Physically, even though I am aching and a bit weary, travel is pretty much agreeing with me. Now back to Edinburgh:

Needing some lunch to soak up the early afternoon surprise liquor session, I walked around looking for a decent lunch place. I passed on the Frankenstein Pub, recommended by my friend Krissy, and opted for Favorit, a nice enough place that also had Wifi, where I uploaded yesterday’s video and had a ham and cheddar panini with french fries. When I stood up, I knew I was done for the day and guiltily headed to Belushi’s Bar (I would be staying in the hostel above).

“It’s Australia night. It should get pretty wild.” Said the blonde bartender who checked me in.

Awesome.

When I walked into the dorm room sometime around 4, there were a couple of young guys napping for who knows long. I realized they were getting some rest in before what would surely be a long and heavy night of drinking, and realized how much older and far removed from that I feel. I never really partied the way these guys were, but I felt old as I climbed into my bed for what was my own nap, brought on by my aching legs and too-early-in-the-day drinking. Their evening hadn’t started yet, my night was essentially done.

Better to get one very decent night’s sleep before a long travel day to Inverness, Glasgow and beyond the next day. I felt like between them and me, I was still getting more out of the trip. I, after all, would remember what happened the next morning.

It’s happening, people! Want to donate? I’ll draw you a portrait for your troubles!

These were scrawled in a small notebook piece of paper I was holding in my hand as I attempted to remember specific directions to The Whisky Shop. They were recommendations, written by the cafe owner I had just bought the “Full English Breakfast” from (complete with complimentary coffee) at The Habit Cafe, a small cafe I stumbled into specifically for that breakfast offer. Whisky was the man’s “second passion” he told me. I not only did not find out his first passion, but I did not even get the man’s name.

Bad traveller, BAD!

I woke up as early as I could manage that morning and made for King’s Cross station to York. A lovely and smallish place with a bustling shop area downtown, I was charmed by York, but with next to zero space to hold anything whatsoever, there really wasn’t much shopping to be done. Instead, I made it my mission to find The Whisky Shop, a place I had read about the day before. As mentioned above (And in the video below) I was aided in this by the man who sold me my late breakfast.

Regarding the Full English Breakfast: I like it in theory, but the truth is, in my opinion there are too many disparate flavors on the plate, and I pretty much always leave the experience dissappointed. I think that British food is largely underrated, but at least for me, the standard breakfast is somewhat overrated.

Click here if you are unable to see the video.

It’s happening, people! Want to donate? I’ll draw you a portrait for your troubles!

After following my fantastic wife’s directions* to my first London hostel, I found it, only to find no one answering the door. Not a big deal, sometimes check-in doesn’t open until 3 in many places. I decided to wait out the 45 minutes i had remaining at the pub I had walked by on the way. It was quite busy at 2:15 on a Sunday afternoon, an older clientele, who were about to begin what looked to be a weekly ritual of game show quizzing and karaoke! After a note thanking everyone for flowers and condolences sent for someone’s funeral, (obviously someone close to the group) the quiz began. All answers to the quiz had flower names in the answer, it was announced. After the first multiple choice question was asked, the MC let the group know that if they wanted to sing a song (karaoke) hey were welcome to.

The format was one quiz question, one karaoke tune. While I finished my pint of Fosters, I listened to the MC sing songs that were so well done I assumed they were studio recordings, a so/so version of a BG’s song, and a girl who could not have been more then 6 singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider”. You see, this pub is apparently a family joint.

I thought I had overpaid for my beer at three pounds, but after experiencing this, I think it was money well spent.

As for the trip out, it was a real slog. St Paul to London was an overnighter, and sleep was rough at best. My feet were already started hurting by the time I got to the hostel, which is not a good thing. I made the decision to not bring a second pair of shoes, hoping to break in these boots over the course of the week to get them ready for the race. It might be folly to put them back on after the race, but they are built in such a way that I suspect they will dry out quickly. I have my feet taped up now, and it has helped tremendously, and no blisters yet. Hopefully this will all end well for me and not in some horrific foot catastrophe.

Click here if you are unable to view the video

It’s happening, people! Want to donate? I’ll draw you a portrait for your troubles!

*I don’t think it can be overstated that the only reason I felt at all comfortable traveling for ten days here is because she agreed to plan every step of the trip. Granted, she loves planning, but I HATE planning, to the point where I wanted this to be a three day trip, in and out. Now I’m out in the world adventuring like Carl Fredrickson in UP. Thankfully unlike Carl, I have a wife to come home to, and no indiginous birds following me. So far…