{"id":112877,"date":"2013-10-21T20:32:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-22T01:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/mud-sweat-and-a-beer\/"},"modified":"2025-01-03T04:32:58","modified_gmt":"2025-01-03T09:32:58","slug":"mud-sweat-and-a-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-gb\/insights\/blog\/strategy\/mud-sweat-and-a-beer\/","title":{"rendered":"Mud, Sweat and a Beer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Training? Who Needs Training?<\/h4>\n

If you were visiting Edinburgh for the first time yesterday (Sunday 20th October 2013) you might have thought that it was the fittest and healthiest city you had ever seen. The centre of town was full of people stretching, lunging and running. There were hay bales strewn across the Royal Mile and an 8ft wall in Princes Street Gardens.<\/p>\n

Edinburgh is a city that does love to run, but even by our standards this was a pretty extraordinary day \u2013 it was the Men\u2019s Health Survival of the Fittest. A 10 kilometre obstacle course around the city centre, designed to make you jump, crawl, swing and splash around town, because, you know, running 10km just isn\u2019t hard enough.\"\"<\/p>\n

Here are Ambergreen HQ we have been discussing entering a team in to some sort of event for quite a while, but it\u2019s never quite happened. Until now. We\u2019re blaming Malcolm for the aches and pains today \u2013 he was the instigator of the whole thing \u2013 but yesterday Jen, Malcolm, Scott, Doug and myself (aka Craig) met up in our running gear to be the first racing Ambergreen team.<\/p>\n

Our training could have been better \u2013 Scott had a knee injury, Jen had been treadmill-based and I had all but forgotten about the race until I came back from holiday less than a fortnight ago \u2013 but for better or worse we psyched ourselves up. After all, how hard could it be?<\/p>\n

Pretty hard, it turns out.<\/p>\n

\"Ambergreen<\/p>\n

Off With a Bang (or a Fall)!<\/h4>\n

11:45am and we were off! Running down the Royal Mile leaping over hay bales (and making an unintentional face-plant onto the cobbles, in my case). Down we went to the back of Waverley train station to jump a dozen hurdles before encountering \u2018Obstacle 3\u2019 \u2013 an entire assault course. None of us had trained for this, but we carried road cones, clambered across monkey bars, crawled through tunnels and completed what I can only describe as a larger, muddier, soldier version of a kid\u2019s soft play area. Muddy from top to tail we ran on only to discover that the next delight was clambering up the steps at the side of Calton Hill. I never knew so many steep steps could be in one place. We made it. Just.<\/p>\n

Skip on a little bit and we\u2019ve run a couple of kilometres, gone through some inflatables, struggled up a ridiculously long muddy slope, encountered a fantastic slip-n\u2019-slide and run through an upward-sloping tunnel which never seemed to end. Now we\u2019re carrying sand bags around a little circuit before jumping through tractor tyres and getting tangled in the muddiest \u2018spider\u2019s web\u2019 you can imagine. But from here it was all downhill to the finish line, so we were pumped up and excited (if flagging a little). Obviously that would have been too easy, so we soon found ourselves running up the cobbled closes from the Cowgate to the Royal Mile where we were to haul ourselves up onto a lorry and back down. Three times.<\/p>\n

\"Ambergreen<\/a>The \u2018best\u2019 was saved until last though. With just over a kilometre to go we hit the walls in the Grassmarket. Two sets of 6 foot walls. With only two of our team being able to see over these we might have struggled, but thankfully we discovered that Scott is capable of pretty much throwing us over these.<\/p>\n

A Test of Will Power and Gravity<\/h4>\n
\n \n
\n
\n

\n Stay Forward <\/h2>\n

\n Get exclusive insights into digital
media's top-trending topics delivered
directly to your inbox. <\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n

\n
\n
\n
\n \n