Hi Jock

Sadly Ed and I arrived in perfect time to change, register and urinate, with not a minute to spare for connecting with Rob. By the time we had finished and got ready to leave he was still on the course and we were unable to get in touch with him. Overall, though, it was a good experience - fun, invigorating and to some extent a man-test; Eddie and I both had the advantage of already having completed a winter Tough Guy each, so knew roughly what to expect. I found the winter version called for more resources when it came to the crunch of digging in and battling ahead against all that the course - and the weather in that instance - had to hold one back. What mattered then, back in 2000, was that I really was 'competing' at a very high level of fitness and aggression, against my Sandhurst training platoon buddies and a bunch of what we at the time though of as 'snivelling civvies'. This experience was very different. Ed and I agreed to go round together, though this proved difficult to maintain in practice. One has to be fairly aggressive to jostle and hassle one's way to the front of the queue at the obstacles or to muscle one's way past other people at all over most parts of the course. Suffice it to say, we were generally overtaking people rather than being overtaken until about two-thirds of the way round, when we lost each other. Ed had already been smacked in the head by an underground crawl-tunnel dangling wood log and I had already been landed on by a falling man of some bulk in one of the water obstacles, the overhanging rope-crossing of which I had already abandoned. But I was yet to smack my forehead hard against an underwater beam as I tried clumsily and hastily to emerge into fresh air having passed under it. C'est la vie - the event was all the richer for such minor mishaps and did nothing but serve to reinforce the idea that we were 'Tough Guys'. High obstacles, dark underground spaces full of dangling scaffolding bars and live electric wires, foul-smelling mud pits and snaking hill repetitions all faced one down and were vanquished. The weather was mercifully clement and made for a pleasant country jaunt round the course - arriving at the finish covered absolutely head to toe in various fine muds, with every slightest orifice clogged, smiling, in about 2hrs35mins (me), 2hrs40mins (Eddie) and I believe around the 4hr mark for Rob. A good day out. We even had a Burger King on the way home as a special treat.

Congratulations to Dan Byles, one of our competitors in Polar Race 2007, who has just been elected Conservative MP for North Warwickshire and Bedworth.

He was helped in his campaigning by the enthusiasm and determination of his Mum, Jan Meek, who in 2007 became the oldest woman to walk to a pole.

As I said in a text to Dan:

• Good looking
• Successful Polar adventurer
• Successful Atlantic oarsman

Obviously got the female vote!

Sadly this now rules him out of consideration for the "Row to the Pole" crew, for which he would otherwise have been a prime candidate. He will be otherwise very occupied!

Not content with applying himself to doing the Polar Race, Charlie Taylor with 48 hours notice is taking over a rowing position in this year's London2Paris Rowing challenge. One of the oarsmen has been advised on medical grounds to pull out and Charlie at short notice has stepped in.

It helps that Charlie was a member of the record breaking crew acrosss the atlantic in 2008.