Energy Challenge Day 3

Saturday morning started out very ominous, with the sound of rain on the windows and  wind howling through the trees.  I had hoped that it would soon pass, but the wind and rain was going to be with us for the next 12 brutal hours whether we liked it or not.  Our first stage was based in the Ashclyst Forest, and was the first glimpse 'Leaders' had into the challenge.  For many teams their 'Leaders' arrived the night before and they joined their teams on the soaking wet start line early in the morning.  Unfortunately we didn't have the pleasure of an additional team member to share in the fun.....er pain.  The stage was based on developing new gas fields, with funds that were earned by running through the forest and answering puzzles, and then optimising value through timely sales.  While our plan seemed foolproof, we ended up sending half of our team to what turned out to be the most difficult point on the map.  Unfortunately it was very time consuming to scale a muddy 20% grade, and we were behind the eight ball very early on.  Things didn't fair much better for the next 2 hours and despite the team leaving it all out on the course, and bringing back more than their fair share of mud, we finished toward the bottom on the stage.

We were trying to stay positive going into the final stage, but the rain was really dragging us down at this point.  To give you a better idea of the amount of rain we are talking about, we were forced to find a new route to the start point for the final stage, as the original route was washed out and under water. The organisers put our fears to rest by assuring us that the rain didn't affect the stage route.  Not quite sure what they meant by not 'affecting' us, because it was nothing but mud, water, and more mud.  The stage was split between running and mountain biking with puzzle solving challenges mixed in.  We were based at Fingle Bridge, at the base of valley in the Devonshire countryside.  Would have never expected to see the sights in the English countryside, it looked like the mountains of Colombia.  As if the rain and mud weren't bad enough on both the run and bike portions of the stage we had to scale and descend the slopes of the valley which was more than difficult.  If I thought the views were incredible from the bottom of they valley they were even more so from the top.  It almost made the assent worthwhile, but knowing that what goes up had to come down we couldn't bask in the glory for too long.  We finished toward the middle of the pack, and considering that we were nursing a knee injury for the final couple of miles it was pretty respectable.  With the Champagne spraying at the finish line, the pain of the last 3 days subsided, and we finished with a dip the river to clean up and cool off.

You can get a feel for how nasty the weather was, its this
dark at 2 in the afternoon, as we got ready for the final stage.

The views and terrain was amazing when you actually took
the time to look.

In the end we finished 21st our of 33 teams but all things considered we were pretty pleased.  More importantly the even raised more than £200k for the two charities, and we shared some incredible memories.


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