THE ULTIMATE DIRTY WEEKEND
Tobias Mews discovers there are no obstacles that romance can’t overcome
When I told Zayne, my long-suffering other half, that I was taking her to Burghley House, one of England’s finest Elizabethan country estates, for a dirty weekend, she practically purred with delight. What I perhaps failed to elaborate on was the exact nature of our extra-curricular. Now, you can throw sticks at me if I’m wrong, but when going on a date, it would be fair to say most women (and men, for that matter) don’t like being wet, cold, hungry or tired. Nor do they expect to emerge from said “date” battered, bruised, covered in mud and looking like they’ve been dragged through a bush. So, when I dropped the bombshell that our “Dirty Weekend” was, in fact, the world’s largest assault course, the purring was replaced by a very feline scowl. Inspired by military training exercises, obstacle course races have become all the rage over the past four or so years, although they’ve been around for much longer. The first time I looked an assault course in the eye was in 2003 as a rookie officer cadet at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. In those days, it was my job to be able to leap over walls and crawl through ditches. Today, I can do it for fun. We arrived at Burghley to a scene vaguely reminiscent of Glastonbury: a gigantic marquee complete with music stage, beer and food tents, and camping facilities. In the centre was the most enormous obstacle – a veritable skyscraper of three 8ft walls. At first look, I thought I’d need a stair climber to get over just one; I knew that Zayne and I would have to negotiate all three to be able to call ourselves “Full Muckers”. Although “romantic” wasn’t perhaps the word she had in mind when I told her the details of the race and how we’d be sharing our date with 3,500 others, we both agreed there’d be plenty of opportunity to get dirty. Very dirty. Moreover, at 20 miles long and containing 200 obstacles – including a world recordbreaking set of 395ft-long monkey bars – I felt this was one event we’d have more fun running together than apart. To avoid congestion on the course, we opted to be in the “elite” first wave. Within 10 minutes we’d already scrambled through wrecked cars, jumped a series of giant hay bales, played on a bouncy castle and leopard-crawled through a ditch full of muddy water. And that was the easy bit. Over the next three-and-ahalf hours, we passed through the 20 zones in dazed shock, weary but smiling cheerfully none the less. We trail-blazed through a wood, waded across a lake where the bottom was like a quagmire, trudged through a mud run, jumped off a 12ft high plank, swam across a second lake full of obstacles akin to Total Wipeout, clambered over horse jumps, and did a form of parkour in a construction site. By the time we got to the monkey bars, I didn’t feel much like running another 120metres, let alone swinging for that distance. So we opted for the slightly shorter, chicken route that had us jumping over barriers – which was a core workout in itself. As the mile markers ticked by and the gaps between the competitors grew, Zayne and I helped each other – I’d give her a leg up, or she’d give me a tug, as we got over obstacle after obstacle, pulling each other out of the water, shouting words of encouragement and laughing happily at each other’s muddy appearance. Finally, we came to the series of walls. They served as a clear reminder that obstacle-course racing is more fun – and more do-able – as a pair or part of a team than separately. Unless you’re well over 6ft or have Spiderman dexterity, you’d struggle to get over the walls on your own. Perhaps you’d make the first, but by the second and third the puff simply leaves your body. Competitors have to give each other a leg up to conquer these beasts. And lend a hand they do. As we crossed the finish line, we were ready to collapse. Sodden, cold, bruised, dishevelled and covered with mud, we clutched our medals and gave each other an enormous hug, before heading back to London on the train. It wasn’t quite what Zayne had expected, but we both agreed it was one of the best dirty weekends ever. Visit ratrace.com to enter Dirty Weekend 2015 or one of their other 16 events this year